Cool Building Wednesday: St. Dominic's Church
May. 26, 2010
(photo by Lee Bey)
The former St. Dominic Roman Catholic Church has stood at Locust and Sedgwick for 105 years. Two completely different neighborhoods have come and gone during that time.
The old neighborhood was the first to go; bulldozed in the 1950s and 1960s to make way for the Cabrini-Green public housing development. Four decades later, most of Cabrini is gone--pushed aside for yet another a new community. The church has been closed since 1990. It hasn't fallen, but it sits. The Roman Catholic Archdiocese still owns the building and keeps it up rather well.
School's out for...ever at old Kennedy-King College
May. 25, 2010
(photo by Lee Bey)
Demolition is going on full-tilt at the massive old Kennedy King College campus at 69th and Wentworth. Aw, don't act so surprised about the building being torn down. I told you about it earlier this year.
The Brutalist concrete college once straddled Wentworth Avenue, much like the Old Main Post Office does at the mouth of the Eisenhower Expressway. But as you can see from the above photo, the wings on the west side of Wentworth are gone now, leaving behind rubble and upturned dirt.
Alphabet City: Graphic arts on North Clark Street
May. 24, 2010
(photo by Lee Bey)
Kitty Moon on Clark and Thome has been shuttered for many a--well, moon--now. But they left the letters behind; an inviting gold on a field of blue. Why these buildings caught my eye, I do not know. But it caused me to take a look at the building and the two neighboring storefronts on Clark Street
Getting to the bottom of Mies' 860-880 Lake Shore Drive
May. 21, 2010
(photo by Lee Bey)
I checked out the base of the John Hancock building a few days ago, intrigued by how the tower's 100 stories meet the ground in a relatively simple granite plaza.
Today I'm looking at the base of Mies van der Rohe's seminal 860-880 Lake Shore Drive. The 26-story steel-and-glass high rises seem to ride above the earth on a transparent band of glass, light, and air.
The Monkey Hustle: When Hollywood came to Woodlawn
May. 20, 2010If you grew up on the South Side and are of a certain age,‚ it feels funny to drive down east 63rd Street between Stony Island and Cottage Grove in the Woodlawn neighborhood and see block after block of emptiness.
But here's a way to see what the Woodlawn community and 63rd once looked like: check out "The Monkey Hustle," a 1976 film starring Yaphet Kotto as a kind of Fagin teaching black kids how to run rinky-dink hustles and street scams as they talk jive and slap five.
Spending time on Barack Obama Drive
May. 19, 2010
(photo by Lee Bey)
The southern suburb of Calumet Park last week said it wants to officially rename 127th--the town's east/west main street--after President Barack Obama. An honorary designation was approved by a 5-0 vote of the village council. Now the small suburb wants state permission to officially rename the town's 10-block stretch in honor of the 44th president, the Chicago Tribune said.
No surprise.
The John Hancock Center: Where 'Big John' meets the ground
May. 18, 2010
(photo by Lee Bey)
The John Hancock Center--the dark, obelisk-like tower stitched up on all four sides with iconic x-bracing--is still a commanding presence on the city's skyline.
But what caught my attention recently wasn't how the 1,127 feet of offices, shops and residences scrape the sky, but how it all meets the ground. The world-famous 100-story building lands without much fanfare on a simple granite plaza that has a sunken portion. The muscular X-braces reach all the way down to just above the first floor.
I've always liked the spiraling parking ramp in the back...