Magnificent Mile and River North
Saturday morning I was out on the streets by 8:00 am. The skies were still overcast, which made me grumble, but the weatherman had promised a warm sunny day ahead, and indeed by mid-morning the clouds were breaking up.
The stretch of Michigan Avenue known as the Magnificent Mile features some of the biggest names in shopping, from Gucci, Armani, and Swap Meet Louie (er, I mean Louis Vuitton), to Saks, Neiman Marcus, and Nordstrom. The Magnificent Mile is obviously a shopaholic’s paradise, and I’m not just stereotyping when I say there were large numbers of well-heeled teen girls and Asian women mobbing the sidewalks. Even for those of us not inclined to max out our credit cards, the people-watching is well worth the visit.
Fourth Presbyterian Church
John Hancock Center
Along with all the stores, there are hotels, restaurants, and a few office buildings. Near the northern end, the John Hancock Center, locally known as “Big John”, towers above all else. Designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, and completed in 1970, the building has 100 floors and rises 1,127 feet above Michigan Avenue. It was the tallest building in Chicago until the Sears Tower (also by SOM) was completed a few years later, and may still be the tallest mixed-use building in the world (most of the upper half is residential). The tapered form gives the impression that Big John is even taller than it really is, an overkill of forced perspective. The distinctive cross brace tubes on the exterior carry most of the weight of the building, and eliminate the need for interior columns. On the 94th floor there is an observatory, with excellent views all around. The building has won numerous awards, including the AIA’a Distinguished Architects 25 Year Award in 1999.
While I was photographing the John Hancock from across the street at the Fourth Presbyterian Church, two high school or college guys approached me to ask if I would take their picture with the John Hancock Center in the background. They had a little disposable idiot-proof camera, which was a good thing, because I often find point-and-shoot cameras frustrating to use. They stressed the importance of getting the “triangle” formed by the cross bracing in the photograph. I composed the shot and told them to smile, but they just had serious looks on their faces. Perhaps this was for some odd school project. Out of all the people on the sidewalk, I have to assume they singled me out because I was the one geek with an SLR on a tripod.
Old Chicago Water Tower
The castle-like Old Water Tower on Michigan Avenue, built with limestone blocks, was one of the few structures in Chicago to survive the Great Fire of 1871. The water tower was completed in 1869 to house a large standpipe to equalize pressure in the city’s water system. At that time, before electric pumps came into use, Chicago brought water in from Lake Michigan using Corliss steam engines. This water tower kept the pressure steady through the city water pipes.
Tribune Tower
In 1922, editor-publisher Robert “The Colonel” McCormick and co-editor Joseph Patterson heralded the 75th anniversary of the Chicago Tribune newspaper with an international architectural competition to design their headquarters building, offering $50,000 for first place. The winning design by New York architects John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood was selected from over 250 submissions. Other notable architects in the competition included Eliel Saarinen (his sleek Modern design was second place), Walter Gropius, Chicago firm Holabird and Roche, and Adolf Loos (who envisioned the skyscraper as a megalithic Doric column).
Dripping with carved decorations, the tower is Gothic in style, with English Arts and Crafts trappings. However, despite believable flying buttresses near the top, the structure is actually steel frame. Even with all the hand-carved stonework and other details, it’s amazing that the building cost $8.5 million to build in 1925.
Undoubtedly the most unusual decorations on the Tribune Tower are over 120 fragments of buildings and other structures from around the world, including pieces of the Great Wall of China, Reams Cathedral, the British Houses of Parliament, the Forbidden City, and the Berlin Wall. The collection was started by Colonel McCormick while serving as a war correspondent in World War I; he picked up a chunk of Pyres cathedral that had been dislodged by German bombs. Later he would send Tribune reporters across the globe to collect other famous fragments.
Wrigley Building
Across Michigan Avenue stands the “Jewel of the Mile”, the 1924 terra-cotta Wrigley Building – yes, home of the chewing gum company. Designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, the building is based on the Seville cathedral’s Giralda Tower, but decorated in a modified French Renaissance style. The two towers are connected by a common base, as well as an enclosed walkway bridge above. The tallest section features a giant clock tower, visible for some distance up and down Michigan Avenue and along Wacker Drive and the Chicago River.
The gleaming white building has been illuminated at night, almost without interruption, since 1921. Currently this display includes 116 1,000-watt metal halide lamps mounted above the tour boat docks and promenade on the south side of the river.
In the basement of the Wrigley Building, accessible from stairs leading down from the sidewalk out front, is the greasy dive known as the Billy Goat Tavern. This obscure hamburger joint gained fame in the 1970’s from a Saturday Night Live sketch in which John Belushi insisted customers have a “cheezborger, cheezborger, cheezborger” no matter what they wanted to order. Just thinking about the food made me a little queasy, so I didn’t venture downstairs to take a look.
Michigan Avenue Bridge
In the early part of the twentieth century, most of Chicago’s north-south traffic across the river was crowded onto the Rush Street swing bridge. Local architect Daniel Burnham, after planning the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, went on to develop a Plan for Chicago in 1909 which included the Michigan Avenue Bridge and Wacker Drive esplanade. When the bridge was opened in 1920, it set in motion a series of developments that changed unpaved, industrial Pine Street into wide, tree-lined, affluent North Michigan Avenue. The bridge was modeled after the Alexander III Bridge in Paris, and was the first double roadway bridge ever built.
The lower level originally handled commercial traffic for the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times newspapers, and now is favored by taxi drivers and delivery services. To allow large boats to pass, the bridge has two leaves, each of which is supported at the shore end by a shaft containing a 3,000-ton counterweight. This bridge mechanism is known as a trunnion bascule, and can clear the waterway in less than a minute. The city would go on to build many more of these bridges, though most are only single-deck.
lunch
After strolling along Michigan Avenue for most of the morning, I decided to try Giordano’s again for an early lunch. In stark contrast to the ridiculous wait the evening before, I walked right in and got a table. After the waitress talked me out of the 10-inch, I ordered a personal stuffed pizza, which was plenty. While “deep-dish” pizza is offered across the country, true Chicago-style stuffed pizza is nearly two inches thick.
River North
Away from Michigan Avenue to the west, the River North district quickly loses the commercial gloss and crowds, and is home to numerous art galleries mixed with remnants of an industrial past. I might compare this to the Pearl District in Portland, but more spread out and with fewer loft apartments.
Merchandise Mart
One of those buildings you just have to see to believe is the Merchandise Mart, built in 1931 on the north shore of the Chicago River for department-store giant Marshall Field. The purpose was to consolidate Chicago’s wholesale goods vendors together in one location. At 4.2 million square feet, it was the largest building in the world. It even has its own zip code. Timing couldn’t have been worse when it opened after the stock market crash, but Marshall Field and Company held onto the building until 1945, when Joseph P. Kennedy acquired it at a phenomenal bargain by agreeing to pay the back-taxes. The Kennedy family owned it until the 1990’s. Today it hosts showrooms and trade shows such as NeoCon.
Smith Museum of Stained Glass