For your weekend amusement, I found this over on Taste the Bacon: Shit Chicagoans Say.
Progress on DePaul’s New Theater Building
posted by Paul Kulon
Don’t let the hole in the ground fool you. A real drama is underway at the corner of Racine and Fullerton. Six months after groundbreaking, the opening act of DePaul’s new Theater Building is well underway. Heavy machinery guided by men with orange vests move the earth, pour concrete and lay pipes as they transform a parking lot into a modern arts facility. The architect of this play is Cesar Pelli, the former dean of the School of Architecture at Yale University with a portfolio full of notable international projects. DePaul has made an unusual move selecting someone as creative as Pelli for the commission. After a ripe...
Status Update: Linco...
posted by Editor
The exterior of Chicago’s most heavily advertised skyscraper in recent memory looks like it’s nearly complete. Television commercials for Lincoln Park 2520 no longer feature its architect, Lucien Lagrange, whose eponymous architecture firm went out of business last year....
Status Update: The C...
posted by Editor
Magellan Development’s latest water-named tower is progressing nicely. The Coast (345 East Wacker Drive) is going up in Lakeshore East, obliterating the lake and city views of thousands of people in the Swissôtel, The Tides, The Shoreham, and Aqua. The Coast is a 45-story apartment...
Grant Park Renovatio...
posted by Editor
The latest plans for replacing the northern portion of Grant Park are on display. Large display panels went up on the Pedway level of Block37 last night, allowing people who normally aren’t able to attend the Grant Park meetings to see what’s coming. This is part of the Chicago...
Briefly: Hotels, Cou...
posted by Editor
Sorry there wasn’t much in the way of updates last week. We were in the deep South on an architectural photography shoot. As we’ve flogged before, architectural photography is our primary business here, so if you have a skyscraper, hotel, factory, lobby, office, wigwam, yurt,...
A Brutal Cohesion at UIC
posted by Paul Kulon
The 1960′s were boom years for campus construction in the United States and Chicago was no exception. Mayor Richard J. Daley decided it was time to construct a quality public university accessible to the children of the city’s working class, something the city still lacked. Daley selected his favorite architecture design firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill for the project with architect Walter Netsch leading the design team. Two themes dominated the project: Brutalism and Field Theory. Brutalism, a offshoot of Modernism, is an architectural style combining repetitive angular geometries with concrete as the predominate material....
Questions Readers As...
posted by Editor
Every now and again someone e-mails us a question about Chicago and its history. Ordinarily we try to answer them ourselves, but considering the thousands of people who read this publication each week, chances are there are people out there with better answers than the ones we give....
Frank Lloyd Wright Turns Down Offer of a Life Ti...
posted by George Pudlo
This is the first in a series of articles about Frank Lloyd Wright by George Pudlo. George operates the Frank Lloyd Wright tour for Chicago Savvy Tours. For more information, see his contact information at the bottom of this article, or visit his web site at www.TheFrankLloydWrightTour.com William Winslow was an entrepreneur of sorts, and he had faith in the young architect he commissioned to build his River Forest home. The Winslow House would later be considered by architectural historians to be the first early Prairie House. With its low hip roof and broad overhanging eaves, the Winslow House completely broke from historicism....
Saving Michigan Avenue’s Ugliest Building
posted by Editor
Johnson Publishing is moving out of its eponymous building at 820 South Michigan Avenue. It’s moving into the top three floors of the Borg Warner Building (200 South Michigan Avenue). It was just last week that the Tribune mentioned that a company was interested in the top three floors of that building, and it turns out to be Johnson. The old building is now owned by Columbia College, which is spreading through the South Loop like a well-intentioned educational virus. Columbia has done some very interesting things with its recently bought buildings, like its Theater and Film Annex (1415 South Wabash Avenue), or the ghost...
Jan11
Briefly: New Towers,...
posted by Editor
The on-again off-again plans for 400 West Randolph are on once again. The Chicago Sun-Times reports that John O’Donnell has bought the patch of land between the Randolph Place Lofts (165 North Canal Street) and the Chicago River. He wants to put up a 40-50 story office tower, which...
Update: Bakers Shoes...
posted by Editor
The scaffolding is down at the Bakers Shoes Building (133 South State Street). You’ll remember this was the store that the Chicago Tribune described as a “late 1940′s retail gem” before having a conniption fit in February, 2011 about its then-impending...
Jan09
Briefly: Wacker, Wol...
posted by Editor
The new Wolford store in the Shops at North Bridge (520 North Michigan Avenue) opened on Friday (January 6th, 2012). Last Thursday we saw CDOT workers putting up new signs in preparation for Stage Three of the Wacker Drive reconstruction. The changes go into effect today (Monday, January...
Fishing for History ...
posted by Paul Kulon
On days when the sun splashes on its golden terra cotta, the Fisher Building (343 South Dearborn Street) glistens like a gem. The building is one of the finest examples of the Chicago School of architectre, designed by the accomplished architect Charles Atwood, under the direction of the...
Flagship Walgreens A...
posted by Editor
You can feel it in your bones as you walk through The Loop — Like a spring mushroom, a new Walgreen’s is about to burst to life on State Street. Both our Gold Coast Spy, and one of our Loop spies sent in photos in the last few days of last-minute preparations for the new Walgreens...
Even More Building U...
posted by Editor
We’ve added more buildings to our ever-growing catalog of Chicago architecture. We now have 1,297 items online at Chicago Architecture Info. Here are the latest additions, mostly from the Gold Coast and the Prairie Avenue District: 213 East Cullerton 215 East Cullerton 217 East...
Building Updates
posted by Editor
Another round of updates has been made to Chicago Architecture Info. Here are the specifics: New Buildings Rush University Medical Center Hospital Tower 333 South Ashland Chicago Office of Emergency Management and Communication Notre Dame de Chicago Church Oxxford Clothes Factory Rush...
Briefly: New Loop Ho...
posted by Editor
The Chicago Sun-Times reports that the historic London Guarantee Building (360 North Michigan Avenue) may become a hotel. A similar plan was floated in 2004. The same Sun-Times article notes that the hotel planned for 330 North Wabash, formerly known as IBM Plaza, will open next year....