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My first good taste of downtown came in 1978. I was 12 and caught the Jeffrey bus to the Loop with some buddies to see second-run (if not third-run) kung fu flicks at the Oriental Theatre.

I missed most of the movie because I was instead staring at the theater's ornate interior. And look where that got me.

Downtown was different then. There were the still-young postwar skyscrapers, but they shared the streetscape with aged buildings, time-warped restaurants, men's shops with Superfly-grade clothes and other places. Randolph Street was a faded rialto where rats were as plentiful as the cheap double-features. And across the river, Michigan Avenue seemed swank and cosmopolitan to my young eyes.

Pardon the flashback. But it comes courtesy of the above clip, posted on YouTube by user Anila from Poland. Shot in 1978, the nine-minute Super 8 film appears to begin somewhere in the Northwest suburbs, then finds its way downtown--along the way, a nice shot at 0:56 of the Howard Johnson's restaurant that once spanned the O'Hare oasis. The Old Country by the Michiel Borstlap Trio provides the score as we see the new downtown coexisting, and yet emerging, from the old.

Some scenes are surprisingly unchanged since then.

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One of the many treasures of the Music Box Theatre's 70mm movie festival: Jacques Tati's Playtime from 1967.

Playtime is a personal favorite, because one doesn't often see architecture and "place" played for laughs. It's an infinitely fascinating French film with endless and ingenious sight-gags, set-ups and visual puns--often playing out simultaneously at various spots on the screen--involving Tati's character, the befuddled Mr. Hulot in an increasingly modern Paris.

Indeed, Paris is so gray, glassy and architecturally modern, Hulot and the characters can hardly function within it. Glass-walled lobbies, low-slung leather furniture all become problems. And then there is a magnificent, 45-minute scene in which a modern restaurant slowly goes haywire on its opening night.

Beneath the laughs, Playtime is asking real questions about what architectural modernism was doing to authentic and individualistic places.

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Much too often, Chicago neighborhoods get stuck with a bad pieces of architecture.

So it is worth celebrating when good design occurs in the community, as is the case with La Casa Student Housing and Resource Center, a college dorm that opened last fall in the Pilsen neighborhood.

The six-story building at 18^th and Paulina cuts a tall, graceful figure along 18^th,  with masonry exterior walls that pull back—and up—to reveal glassy corners and a base.The building hits the right note in the historic neighborhood by using heft and masonry of its older neighbors, then reworking the elements into a contemporary form.

Designed for Chicago college students who want to stay close to home, the $12 million building is the brainchild of The Resurrection Project.  La Casa has 25 four-bedroom suites and amenities such as a fitness center, tutors and on-site counseling.

The building’s purpose and program have garnered it early acclaim, including a New York Times profile. And now its design is getting notice.

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The Area from The Grid on Vimeo.

For the past few years, Chicago photographer David Schalliol has been telling us--showing us--that Chicago's West and South Sides are disappearing. Building by building; block by block.

As a native South Sider, I see Schalliol's haunting photos of clipped rowhouses, single-family homes standing alone against wide vacant lots and I am reminded of Johnny Ola's great and wistful line in Godfather II: "One by one, our old friends are gone. Death--natural or not..."

Earlier this week, I told you of a beautiful old printing plant in the Washington Park neighborhood that is now being demolished to make way for a Northfolk Southern Railroad truck depot. But look above and check out The Area, the fascinating mini-documentary that appeared on Gapers Block The Grid series this week.

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Goes Lithographing Company was a Chicago fixture for better than a century, with stock certificates, iconic colorful posters for the 1933 World's Fair, the Illinois Central Railroad--even President Obama calendars--rolling out from its Washington Park neighborhood plant.

 

Built in 1904, Goes building was a bit of an icon itself: a handsome 75,000 square-foot complex with a three-story main building topped with Flemish diagonal bond brickwork and masterfully-done brick dentils. Tucked away at 61st and Perry, the family-owned business was a remaining bright spot in the neighborhood's long-faded industrial corridor.

 

But no more. In 2010 Goes left and moved 92 miles north to the town of Delavan, WI.  And now within days, the company's 109-year-old former building--a beautiful example of early 20th century industrial architecture--will be demolished. Northfolk Southern Railroad bought the building and will build a truck depot on its site.

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