My Downtown World

I have to admit I really liked my last freelance job partly for one reason: I was absolutely delighted with the building I went to work in every day.  

The Wrigley Building on Chicago's touristy-named "Magnificent Mile" just looks fucking delicious from every angle.  It's actually composed of two towers that are connected by a two short pedestrian bridges, on the 14th floor and the 3rd floor, which also forms a cool sort of windblocker of windows underneath it.  According to the internets, the building was the first office building constructed north of the river in the 20s, built by William Wrigley Jr. to house his offices. It was designed by the local architecture firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst & White (Burnham's legacy) taking inspiration for the tower from Seville's cathedral, and using Renaissance touches throughout. I worked in the north tower, which felt newer even though it was built only three years after the south tower was in 1921. If you took the footbridge to the south tower (as I did once to get my building pass from management) you noticed a discernible difference in the hallway decor. Perhaps because these were Wrigley managed floors, everything had more of an old school Chicago feel - the wooden doors with the gold painted square letters that demarked "janitorial" and so on. Love love love it.

As I exit the building, either to walk to a session (everything is so much more convenient when you start at 410 N. Michigan) or to cross the street to go to the Equitable Building's cafeteria (which is only so-so, but cheap and the only thing around), I am greeted by this  lovely couple, always surrounded by a throng of tourists getting their picture taken with them. Ah, American Gothic. Our own set. Now the Equitable Building, as you can see in the background, I can do without. I did a temp job there once in the late 90s, working for a non-profit all about hand health, and the job nearly gave me carpal tunnel, and the office was dark and cold.

However, just north of the Equitable building is yet another historic landmark - the Tribune Tower. Although the paper is going downhill, riddled with typos and bad writing, this building will always stand for what the monolithic newspaper business used to be. The design of the Tribune Tower was the result of a contest called for by the Tribune company, which resulted in a great deal of interesting entries, the winner of which was this very Gothic building by a team of New Yorkers called Hood and Howells, who are immortalized above the main entrance's doors by images of Robin Hood and a howling dog.  A lot of the tourists like to take pictures of the far flung and historical bricks that are built right into the building's facade. Owner Colonel McCormick had asked his foreign correspondents to bring back samples of the world, and you can see pieces of stone from the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon, the Palace of Windsor, the Great Pyramid and the Alamo. 

Another randomly fun thing to do is cross the river at Michigan! Either to go to my bank , which is still  over in the AON building which I have a fondness built of seven years employment, or to just pop over to the corner bakery and get lunch. This bridge is known as a bascule (French, for seesaw and balance) type bridge and has helped populate what is now known as a "Chicago style bascule." When it was completed it was the main link between the north and south parts of town, having replaced the Rush street bridge as part of Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago. Also, when you walk across it, it bounces!

Some other buildings I got to visit in my travels:

The Playboy (aka Palmolive Building)

      

Courthouse Place @ 54 W. Hubbard (completed in 1893, housed the Cook County Criminal Courts for over 35 years)

      

I found good scooter parking near the newest piece of Chicago architecture, the Trump Tower. Everyone complained about it when it was going up, but it really isn't all that hard on the eyes, and the view from inside is divine. My favorite is seeing the Wrigley Building and tribune in the same vista. Because the ugly Sun-Times building was there for many years, this is an entirely new way to see the city.

      

Of course we can't forget my train stop every morning, the beautiful and imposing Merchandise Mart. When built in 1930 it was the largest building in the world, owned by the Marshall Field company to centralize Chicago's vendors. It was later bought by JFK's daddy and was in the Kennedy family's possession for over fifty years. Today it houses many wholesale showrooms, antique furniture shops and other retailers (including my housemate's place of work!)

So now its off for some well deserved travels, so upon my return I will appreciate my home town even more. Hopefully, summer will set in soon and I can put up pictures of the beach and motorcycles and road trips, oh my!

E.

Comments

[Terri]

Love this, E! A nice architectual tour of Chicago. I've always wanted to work in the loop, but that's not really where the undocumented immigrants needing ESL live. Oh well! Enjoy Texas!