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Chicago, Illinois
Here comes the night time
Instead of spelling Chicago like it should be (which is Chicago as we all know), the AIA Convention guide spelled it ChicAIAgo, which is obviously wrong despite the clever use of AIA and the sudden emphasis on Go. That last part makes some sense, for even if you didn’t go on lots of tours (like me), chances are that you still had chances to get out and see the city and views just like this one.
As for the view, people familiar with the city have to know where this is from just by what you’re seeing. On the left is the London Guarantee Building, on Michigan Avenue at the bridge, and to its right are all of the towers that follow the river. Straight ahead is a close up of the unmistakable clock (and clock tower) of the Wrigley Building. This picture could only be taken from a high floor from one building.
As you may have already guessed, that last picture was taken from the terrace of the Tribune Tower, which was open to AIA members as a special Dining and Design event. The dining part was really unmemorable (I think there was cheese and crackers or something), but the location couldn’t have been more memorable.
The Tribune Tower Dining and Design event started at 6pm and lasted until 9pm, and even though the dining part didn’t make the event worth staying for, the views sure did. And a late summer solstice sunset time of 8:30pm made me stay for the entire three hours, taking picture after picture after picture up at the buttresses or out across into the city as ever so slowly day became night.
I have been down towards Hyde Park a few times, usually by Metra Electric train, and usually to see the Robie House or the Museum of Science and Industry and the (devil free) White City. I have even walked the entire Midway Plaisance and the length of Washington Park to get back to a Green Line train. Still somehow, I had never been to the University of Chicago campus, despite almost circling it a few times.
ET 406 took us to the University of Chicago and specifically to Helmut Jahn’s brand new Joe and Rika Mansueto Library. From the outside it doesn’t look like much and it sure doesn’t look like a place where millions of books are stored.
The library at street level is all about the reading room, a place where you can grab an uncomfortable wooden chair, sit at a long wooden bench and desperately try to ignore the spectacular all glass room and everything going on outside to try like hell to concentrate on whatever book you came there to read.
As for the books, if the library at street level is all about the reading room (and it most certainly is), then the where the hell are the books?
The library at street level may be all about the reading room, but you have to go underground to find the 3.5 million books hiding just under your feet. Rows and rows and stacks and stacks of books are served by a rather fast yellow robot slave that takes three minutes to bring your book from the depths of storage hell right up into the light of day. In many ways its just as spectacular as the reading room are those five story deep high density book shelves supporting all of that openness above, something you can only see if you’re a robot repairman or if you’re on ET 406.
I have been to Chicago seven times in the last five years (more if you count layovers at O’Hare), and each of those times, I find it hard to not to end up in Millennium Park. Even on this trip I was there almost every day at the Metra station. But instead of including even more pictures of Cloud Gate, the Crown Fountain or the Frank Gehry bandshell, I’m instead focusing on the south side and the Art Institute addition by Renzo Piano. It’s been open for five years now and I’m still honestly getting used to it. There are things I love about it, like the fun but totally unnecessary bridge that connects to the park (I mean look, there’s a crosswalk right there), and there are things I don’t love about it, like the uncomfortable escalator well you need to take down after you cross that fun but totally unnecessary bridge to the museum.
And while this particular slideshow does not include even more pictures of Cloud Gate, the Crown Fountain or the Frank Gehry bandshell, I did of course spend some time there. I even attended a concert there (Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass) although I did not stay to the end. At the start of the concert, the clouds were starting to look a bit ominous and a quick check of the radar app on my phone saw a heavy, unmistakable purple mass headed right towards me. In the heavy, heavy rain and thunderstorms, I decided to just give up and take the 20 minute walk back to The James on Ontario Street, wondering the entire time why Chicago never decided to build a subway line under Michigan Avenue.
This particular slideshow does not include even more pictures of Cloud Gate, the Crown Fountain or the Frank Gehry bandshell, and it also does not include any pictures of my favorite painting anywhere, despite the fact that it includes pictures from inside the very building where we all know it hangs. Instead, I’ll give you two other pictures from inside the Art Institute, First up is the maquette Alexander Calder’s Flamingo and the second is a close up of Marc Chagall’s wonderful America Windows, my second favorite piece of art in the entire building.
