(photo by Lee Bey)
I took my three daughters to see the Romare Bearden exhibition at the Cultural Center over the weekend (definitely recommended, by the way).
As we walked down the stairs from the Yates gallery, we saw a man washing the windows that face an open interior space that separates the north and south wings of the 1893 masterpiece at 78 E. Washington.
(photo by Lee Bey)
I was on the top floor of the parking structure behind the Best Buy on Roosevelt Road a couple of weeks ago when I caught his view of‚ the 62-story One Museum Park and its little brother, the 54 story One Museum Park West.
Compressed by my western vantage point (and with the help of a monstrous 500mm camera lens I was using), the two towers don't look at all like Chicago--or even of this time, quite. Standing together they could be excerpts from a futuristic skyline imagined by designer Norman Bel Geddes back in the 1930s. Yet, it is the very recent work of Chicago architecture firm Pappageorge Haymes Ltd. The buildings stand at Roosevelt and Indiana om the northern edge of the Central Station development.
You have to wonder will Walmart one day use its billions and tremendous procurement power to do two things that would help stop it from getting border-checked when it comes seeking to build a new store: Either build the town itself, then put in the Walmart, or create a package with so many true public amenities that a city like Chicago--or anywhere---would have a hard time saying no.
Imagine that: a town or a city neighborhood predominantly financed, planned and built by Walmart.
(photo by Lee Bey)
The main branch of the Chicago River--that watery canyon with walls of steel and glass--gets all the attention. With its tour boats and river walks, the Main Branch is almost a second lakefront; a place so scenic, we forget the river was once a rough and tumble industrial waterway on which Chicago depended for its survival.
(photo by Lee Bey)
Liberty Bank at Fullerton & Kedzie Milwaukee caught my eye a day or two ago--and it wasn't the architecture.
It was the typeface above. Rounded, modern, kinda 1970s funky. Kinda like:
Turns out the typeface predates the 1970s and the Mary Tyler Moore Show.
(photo by Lee Bey)
A reader emailed me a day after my post on the mid-century modern Pride Cleaners on 79th Street in March.
"Check out Trim n Tidy Cleaners on Higgins if you get a chance," he said. Over the weekend, I got the chance.
I visited the cleaners at 5939 Higgins in the city's Jefferson Park neighborhood. I'm not sure if it's as clever a piece of architecture as Pride Cleaners--and it seems a little more weather-beaten than its South Side counterpart--but the cleaners has got two things going for it: that great sign and the quite modernist lighted carport canopy supported by the three jauntily-angled trusses.
(photo by Lee Bey)
We like the view from higher ground. Probably something encoded in our DNA from times past, when staking out a place on a hill or bluff meant you were drier--and you could keep a better eye out for approaching danger (or food.) In a city without hills, we made our own. And the views can be amazing.
The above photo is the corner of Randolph and Columbus, shot from the 22nd floor of the Aon Building--but with a long lens that probably makes the shot appear about 15 stories closer.
(photo by Lee Bey)
The low-slung brick buildings in West Rogers Park once held the world's largest Chevrolet dealership. Today the space is empty, except for a red Target shopping cart, some boxes and--on one recent day, at least--a lone silver Corvette.
It's been that way since "Z" Frank Chevrolet changed locations a couple of years ago, leaving behind its former headquarters and the iconic 4-story neon sign at 6060 N. Western.
