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Chicago, Illinois
Leaving isn't quite the same, he said to me, as running away
Chicago is one of my favorite places and one of the places like Los Angeles and Maine that I will find almost any reason to visit again and again, even if that reason may be considered somewhat suspect. This was (by my best recollection) my ninth visit there in the past fifteen years, each visit slowly starting to blur with the others, each visit never enough to keep me from wanting to return.
It's hard to imagine a Chicago building with more history or pedigree than The Rookery. Designed by Burnham and Root, it was the city's first skyscraper and also the home to their firm's offices (featured heavily in Erik Larson's "The Devil in the White City"). Burnham was responsible for a few big things, including New York's Flatiron Building, but more than that he was responsible for the plan for the incredibly influential 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition (The White City part of "The Devil in the White City") and, even more importantly, the Plan of Chicago, a master plan that was partially implemented that took control of an otherwise out of control city and created Grant Park, among other achievements. Burnham's most famous quote "Make no little plans, they have no magic to stir men's blood" is, for me at least, just about as inspiring a quote as you will ever find.
And if all that wasn't enough for The Rookery, its lobby was later renovated and redesigned by a young Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright made a lot of changes, most notably he covered the original darker metal with bright stone panels decorated with a gold pattern, a pattern and design which seems out of character when compared to his later work. I guess we all had to start somewhere.
It may be 2010 outside but it's still 1985 inside Helmut Jahn's look-at-me State of Illinois Building (now called the James R Thompson Center). It's hard to miss and hard not to be impressed by it's open atrium, despite some of the unfortunate color and material choices that seemed like good ideas 25 years ago. After it opened, the atrium caused more problems than anyone would have hoped, including an atrium design that heats things up in the summer and freezes in the winter, making it somewhere between highly uncomfortable and unusable. At least it still looks cool though, and that has to count for something. Right?
And if you're feeling ambitious, compare and contrast these images to the Rookery image just above and see if you start to notice any similarities, intentional or not.
Adrian Smith of (then) Skidmore Owings & Merrill is responsible for Chicago's brand new Trump International Hotel, dead center in this photo and atop the ruins of the old Chicago Sun Times Building. When first proposed and when under construction, I wasn't too crazy about this building. It will destroy the scale of all that is great about that part of Chicago I said. What about its famous neighbors, the Wrigley and Tribune on one side, Mies' IBM and Marina City on the other. These iconic buildings will be lost, their context destroyed, their essence gone forever I said.
In retrospect I might have over reacted a bit. The Trump building isn't that bad at all (despite its short-fingered vulgarian "owner"), its setbacks acknowledge the surrounding buildings, its massing able to almost hide its massiveness. Plus it just couldn't be on a better site. Crossing the river it just sits like a giant exclamation point, and it's even better in the city grid where it sits dead center in the middle of Wabash, impossible to miss and even harder not to admire from blocks away deep in the Loop.
At the very end of the Magnificent Mile, where it hits both Lakeshore Drive and the lake, Friday night traffic seems to be a lot heavier getting into downtown than out of it, thoroughly understandable for someone like me who is always looking for an excuse to go to Chicago.
The last slide for this page is the view from the observation deck at SOM's still wonderful after all these years John Hancock Tower. I went up late afternoon and decided to wait out another spectacular sunset, watching another day slip away and a city once again give itself into the night.
