Architecture River Cruise
Monday morning I struck out again, walking down Michigan Avenue towards the Loop. It was a warm day, almost 80°, but mostly cloudy skies threatened to rain. The rain never came, but the clouds made for a muggy day.
After wandering around for a while, I headed down to the docks by the Michigan Avenue Bridge to get onboard for the Architecture River Cruise. A knowledgable docent told us the history of most of the buildings along the river as we sailed by. I shot three rolls of film during the hour-and-a-half cruise, but unfortunately the mostly grey skies made the photos somewhat dim and not particularly dynamic. Still, the cruise was definitely worth it.
333 North Michigan Avenue
The Art Deco tower at 333 North Michigan was completed in 1928. Holabird and Root based their design on Eliel Saarinen’s second-place entry for the Tribune building. At the base of the building, in the sidewalk and street of Michigan Avenue, there are metal markers indicating part of the outline of Fort Dearborn.
Mather Tower
35 East Wacker Drive (Jewelers Building)
While today known only by the street address, this building was originally called the Jewelers Building, opening in 1926 for the city’s diamond merchants. Two other names over the years were the North American Life Building and the Pure Oil Building. The most unique feature of the building was a central auto elevator. Tenants, often carrying quantities of precious stones and metals, would drive into the building and ride in their cars up the elevator to their office floor. The novel idea lasted until the 1940’s, when the freight elevator was decked over for more office space. The little temples on the four corners of the main tower were the water storage tanks common at the time, but much more eloquently designed than usual. Murphy/Jahn Architects have occupied space in this building for many years, including a showroom in the dome.
Clark Street Bridge
LaSalle-Wacker Building
225 West Wacker Drive
North Fork
The Chicago River splits into two forks, creatively called the North Fork and the South Fork. The South Fork forms the western border of the Loop, while the North Fork historically saw more freight traffic to the mostly industrial River North district. Today most of the warehouses have been torn down or converted into condos and apartments. The cruise took us up the North Fork a ways before turning around and then heading down the South Fork for a while before turning back again.
Old Railroad Bridge
River Cottages
Warehouses turned into Residential
South Fork
180 North Wacker & 150 North Wacker
Civic Opera House
Hartford Plaza South
311 South Wacker Drive
River City
Architect Bertrand Goldberg never recovered from the 1960’s, as can be seen in this condominium complex built in 1986.
Our boat turned around here and returned back north and then around the bend to the east. We sailed out far enough towards the mouth of the river to see Navy Pier, and then headed back to the dock.
Riverside Plaza (Chicago Daily News Building)
Boeing World Headquarters
Perkins and Will designed this as the Morton International Building in 1990. It features the second-tallest clock tower in the country after the Met Life Tower in New York. In 2001, Boeing announced their intent to relocate their offices from Seattle to Chicago, and chose this as their headquarters building.
Central Office Building (Reid, Murdoch, and Company Building)
The 1914 Reid, Murdoch, and Company Building, designed by George C. Nimmons, is one of the last remaining examples of buildings along the Chicago River from the early twentieth century. Among the first built after the 1909 Plan for Chicago, the building combines elements from Chicago School and Prairie School architecture.
Marina City
The twin towers of Marina City, sometimes referred to as the “corncob” buildings, opened in 1963, the tallest apartment towers in the world at the time. Bertrand Goldberg (who was also trained as an engineer), designed the thirty-five-foot diameter central core to bear 70% of the weight, with the outer post and beam cage supporting the rest. At a time when most people were spreading out to the suburbs, this unusual mixed-use urban development included apartments, office space, stores, a theater, health club, swimming pool, skating rink, bowling alley, and of course a marina complete with artificial lagoon. In the 1990’s, the theater became the House of Blues, and the thirteen-story office building became the House of Blues Hotel.
When I was a kid, I read a series of boy’s adventure books called The Sugar Creek Gang, written in the 1940’s. One of the books was The Chicago Adventure. The cover of the 1968 edition I have features a montage including the Marina City towers. I was intrigued, but didn’t imagine I would actually see them one day.
IBM Building
Mies van der Rohe’s last American commission was the IBM Building, completed in 1973. To offset the heat generated by the then-unusual number of computers in the building, the walls were sealed by a plastic thermal barrier, and a reverse refrigeration system reclaimed the heat.
Gleacher Center & NBC Tower
Nicholas J. Melas Centennial Fountain
lunch
After the cruise, I headed back north on Michigan Avenue and stopped at the hotel to drop off my backpack. Then I walked a couple blocks for a late lunch at Cafe Spiaggia, an upscale Italian-French restaurant located on the second floor of One Magnificent Mile (a fifty-seven-story mixed-use tower designed by Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill in 1983). Cafe Spiaggia is the younger, more casual, and less-expensive sibling of the four-star Spiaggia restaurant next door. The waiter made several recommendations from the menu, and I went with perciatelle all’ amatriciana; thin hollow pasta with guanciale, onion, garlic, cherry tomatoes, basil and spicy peppers. For us mere mortals, guanciale is fancy-smansy bacon taken from the jowls of a hog rather than the belly. Compared to more traditional bacon, guanciale is leaner, more delicate, and has a much richer flavor. I never would have imagined putting all those ingredients together, but it was quite tasty. Although the waiters wore vests and cummerbunds, and the decor included marble floors, reproduced 15th century frescos, and hand-blown Venetian glass lamps, the atmosphere was still relatively relaxed, if restrained. I wasn’t troubled about wearing jeans, but felt like I should sit up properly in my chair and hold the dining implements correctly. My guidebook described the prices as “moderate”, but my lunch was $22. Moderate?
John Hancock Observatory