Chicago: It’s All About the River Now

In the fifties and sixties George’s father traveled to Chicago twice per year to buy furniture for his store. In the summer George would get to tag along. His mother would take him to the museums, Marshall Field’s department store (now Macy’s), and the L train. George has distinct memories of the German U-boat at the Museum of Science and Industry which is still there. George also has memories of the great Chicago restaurants they would go to like The Berghoff German restaurant which closed only a couple of years ago.
On early trips in the fifties, they would stay in the Morrison Hotel (picture below) which was the tallest hotel in the world at the time at 46 stories.  Apparently they stayed in the tower on a high floor because George remembers the windows would open and the people on the sidewalks below looked like ants. George recalls his mother would buy fresh peaches from a street vendor and George would promptly throw the seeds out the window – normal behavior for a rural southern boy, but not appropriate in the big city.
                                       
George remembers the fast elevators that would leave your stomach on the floor. The Morrison was torn down in 1964, but we visited the site at Clark and Madison on a previous trip and found a plaque about the hotel on the Chase Tower that replaced it. George will always love Chicago and wants to visit every decade or so.
Upon arrival on a Thursday afternoon we took the Chicago hop on hop off double decker open top bus which gave us a good look at the major tourist venues and skyscrapers of Chicago on the north side, loop, south side museum complex, Navy Pier, and Lakeshore Drive. On another occasion we took the city lights version of the same tour at night.
      
      
      
The old Chicago Water Tower was one of the few buildings remaining after the great Chicago fire.
                        
We stayed at the Sheraton downtown on North Water Street because of its proximity to the bike shop, architecture tour boat, and Michigan Avenue. It is located on the north river bank and we had a marvelous view west down the river with the Trump Tower setting the scene.
                        
                        
To our surprise the Clinton Global Initiative was being held at the hotel while we were there and President Clinton and Hillary were staying there. We saw the Chicago police detectives and the canine unit. We were told that the Sheraton is one of two Chicago hotels where presidents can stay as a whole floor can be closed for the president - a Secret Service requirement.
         
Apparently there was also an event at the Field museum and one of the tour guides on a tour bus told us the Clinton party had leased fifteen of their trolleys to take meeting attendees to the museum for the event.
Another day we took a “city highlights” tour by motor coach given by the Chicago Architecture Foundation. We had a very knowledgeable guide. Chicago is famous for its skyscrapers and architecture. We went into the loop and went inside two architecturally significant buildings. The first was The Rookery built in 1888 by famed architects Burnham and Root.
                                    
It represented a landmark transition between the familiar (load bearing walls), and the new (steel superstructure) developed by Chicago architect William Jenny that ushered in the skyscraper era. The lobby was redesigned by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1905. The second building was 190 S. LaSalle Street, a modern office skyscraper with a huge tapestry in the lobby depicting the original plan for Chicago by architect Daniel Burnham.
              
We then went south to the Hyde Park area, home to the Museum of Science and Industry and the University of Chicago campus where we visited the Robie House designed in the prairie style by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    Heading north out of UC we passed near the home of president Barak Obama.  South Greenwood Avenue where the home is located is blocked off by the Secret Service, and only residents of that block of the street may enter.
While traveling back north to downtown we passed through one of the infamous south side Chicago neighborhoods. George spotted one guy he thought looked like a drug block captain, and another who looked like a gang enforcer. We were told that high density low income housing complexes had been a failure, and that now the theory is to spread low income housing into mixed income areas comprised of smaller living units, and we saw some of that.
After the “City HIghlights” tour, we went to the Chicago Cultural Center which has the largest Tiffany dome in the world.  The building is quite ornate and was originally the Chicago Public Library. 
     
                               
             
The evening restaurants on our agenda were Le Colonial, French-Vietnamese; Vermillion, Latin-Indian; and Benny’s Chop House. Who could visit Chicago without eating steak?
                    
On this three night trip taking an architectural boat tour on the Chicago river was a high priority for us although we didn’t realize that architecture would be an important theme every where we went in Chicago.  We went on the boat tour narrated by a Chicago Architectural Foundation docent who was great. From the river we were able to see the most noted skyscrapers in the loop area and hear about their architectural features and the architect who designed them. “Verticality” was a frequent architectural theme.
           
            
                                 
We saw several architectural styles from different eras including classical, modern, international and Chicago style. We prefer classical including Roman, Greek revival, Gothic revival and Renaissance revival. Of the more modern styles, we thought the 311 S. Wacker building was particularly beautiful with its pink Texas marble cladding. We also learned, and found it interesting, that architects try to make their buildings fit into their surroundings by repeating themes in adjacent buildings. You can see how 311 S. Wacker picks up one of the “bundled tubes” in the Willis Tower.
If we had to choose our favorite Chicago skyscraper it would be the Wrigley Building  with its glazed terra-cotta (“baked earth”) cladding that contributes to its gleaming white color, but also has to be hand washed continually.
                                 
Our other priority was bicycling so one day we took a seven mile guided bicycle tour on the north side including Lincoln Park, The Gold Coast, and North Beach. Chicago is one of the most bike friendly cities in the country and has a bicycle center down town with showers and lockers that bike commuters can use.
       
              

     

 

       
             
       
       
The last day we rented bikes and explored the south side on our own including Millennium Park, Buckingham Fountain, and The Bean/Coud Gate, and had lunch at The Park Grill in Millennium Park.  At the park we met a chihuahua all geared up for biking in his owner’s basket.
       
       
        
                      

              
Our bike shop was on the north side, so we crossed the Chicago River and continued south on the Lakeshore Trail past the Field Museum, Soldier’s Field and Adler Planetarium. We made a side trip down Northerly Island before continuing south on the Lakeshore Trail past the McCormick Convention Center as far as the McCormick Marshaling Yard (truck parking). George wanted to see the marshaling yard because they take RV’s on a dry camping basis. We covered about 13 miles before heading to Midway Airport to return home.
       
Chicago is the birth place of the modern skyscraper (William Jenny’s Home Insurance Building 1884) in part due to the reconstruction opportunities created by the great Chicago fire, and partly due to Jenny’s development of the idea of a steel superstructure instead of load bearing walls.
            
           
The Wrigley building was home to Wrigley chewing gum which reminds us of the impressive number of major American corporations that called Chicago home including Sears, Montgomery Ward, Swift Meat Packing, International Harvester (Harvester and McCormick), Walgreens, Kraft Foods, Palmolive, and McDonalds.
               
All these companies, especially Sears and Montgomery Ward, remind us of the reason they chose Chicago: it is the transportation hub of the country. The mail order companies could ship their goods all over the country by water, rail, land and air. Chicago became the rail hub of the country and at its peak had six passenger stations and 1,500 passenger trains a day passing through. The huge downtown post office that handled all the mail order packages is abandoned, but there is rumor of a developer with a redevelopment plan.
Chicago is currently undergoing a boom centered around revitalization of neighborhoods, and renewal of the river.  Mayor Richard M. Daily vowed to develop Chicago’s dirty industrial river into the show place of Chicago. He travelled to most of the river walk projects in the country including the best known, The San Antonio River Walk.
        
He also got a law passed by the city whereby any business that builds on the river has to construct a section of river walk. The Chicago River Walk project which is still in development has cleaned up the river and stimulated the conversion of old warehouses like the Montgomery Ward building into condominiums. Mini parks along the river like Erie Park are making it an attraction to Chicagoans rather than something they once shunned.
All in all, it was a wonderful city trip full of old memories and new adventures. We both concluded Chicago is now the best city we have visited in the U.S. in terms of beauty and livability.