We research stories from Chicago history, architecture and culture like this while developing our live virtual tours, in-person private tours, and custom content for corporate events. You can join us to experience Chicago’s stories in-person or online. We can also create custom tours and original content about this Chicago topic and countless others.

Sophia Hayden

The first female architect to make a big splash in Chicago was Sophia Hayden. She was the daughter of a Chilean mother and a Bostonian dentist. In 1890 she became the first woman to graduate from MIT’s architecture program. That fame contributed to her winning the commission for the Women’s Building at the 1893 World’s Fair. (You can learn more about her contribution during one of our virtual tours of the 1893 World’s Fair.) As we’ve written before, this structure “was proposed as a forum to show the artistic and social achievements of American women.” The design was endlessly tinkered with by socialite Bertha Palmer. Palmer eventually fired Hayden from the project. Still, architects at the fair widely admired Hayden’s design and she won an award for her work. That said, the difficulties she faced meant this early female architect never designed another building.

Marion Mahony Griffin

You know that saying “Behind every great male architect is a female architect doing all the drawings but getting none of the credit#8221; That might not be exactly the saying, but in any case, it’s based on Marion Mahony Griffin. She was born in Chicago mere months before the Great Fire ravaged that First City in 1871. Griffin was the second female architect to graduate from MIT, after Hayden, of course. She then returned to Chicago to become the first employee of Frank Lloyd Wright’s newly-independent practice.

Griffin collaborated with Wright on the groundbreaking designs which emerged from the studio in Oak Park. Perhaps most consequentially, she created the renderings of Wright’s designs, employing Japanese influences in the gorgeous and lovely watercolors. Her work became the focal point of the famous Wasmuth Portfolio that established Wright’s worldwide reputation.

Wright, being the cantankerous and proud type, kept all credit for himself. His self-promotion erased Griffin’s immense contribution to the burgeoning Prairie School of architecture. Despite their 15 years of shared work, and Griffin’s later collaboration with her husband Walter Burley Griffin on the design of Canberra, the Prairie School capital of Australia, this female architect is almost unknown in Chicago.

Georgia Louise Harris Brown and Beverly Loraine Greene

If Chicago had scant few female architects, then there were even fewer women of color in the field. Yet women of color, especially black women, have played an under-appreciated role in building this cityscape. Georgia Louise Harris Brown and Beverly Loraine Greene were pioneering black female architects in Chicago’s modernist era who achieved more success outside of Chicago.

As Zach Mortice recently mapped out, Georgia Louise Harris Brown made enormous contributions to the Modernist style which became known as the Second Chicago School of Architecture. She studied under Mies van der Rohe at IIT, then later worked for Frank J. Kornacker Associates, the engineering firm Mies employed. Notably, she helped calculate the structural engineering of the landmark 860–880 Lake Shore Drive. Those famous residential towers made Mies into an absolutely towering figure in American architecture, though little credit went to the black female architect who’d contributed. Such difficulties prompted Brown to restart her career in Brazil, where she designed enormous government and corporate commissions.

The roadblocks of sexism and racism affected Greene even more. A native-born Chicagoan, she studied at the University of Illinois and obtained an IL architecture license in 1942. She got a job at the Chicago Housing Authority, but found her work stymied by prejudice. Greene relocated to New York, where she found success designing projects from Arkansas to Paris. Sadly, she died in New York in 1957, only 41 years old.

Carol Ross Barney

It felt appropriate to end our tribute to female architects in Chicago with a woman whose designs shape the urban experience every day. Carol Ross Barney is another native Chicagoan who studied at Urbana-Champaign. Unlike Greene, though, Barney has had a career of low-key triumphs. Barney worked on the restoration of the beloved Cultural Center when she was employed by Holabird and Root in the ’70s. Her independent firm, founded in the ’80s, is most famous for designing the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Her design replaced the one destroyed by white supremacist terrorists in 1995. She also made a mark as a leader for other women in the profession, as one of the seven founders of the organization Chicago Women in Architecture in 1974.

Locally, though, Ross Barney Associates have made a spectacular impact on Chicago’s cityscape. Zach Mortice called her “Chicago’s new Daniel Burnham,” which is a hell of a compliment. Barney’s firm designed notable new ‘L’ stations, like the Morgan stop in Fulton Market and Cermak-McCormick Place in the South Loop. Her most tangible and, presumably, long-lasting design is the Chicago Riverwalk. Already a classic feature of the 21st century city, this grand public space, divided into distinct “rooms,” has brought countless people right to the river–the historical origin point of the city itself. She will likely never have the fame of Jeanne Gang–skyscrapers still get outsize love and attention. Yet I’d wager that Barney’s work will affect more people’s experience of the city in the end.

Badass Female Architects of Chicago History

The women I highlighted here are not the full story of women working in Chicago architecture, of course. They’re just a slice, but even that is rare. The big names you tend to hear in this city’s architectural history are giants, but they’re also almost all men. We have always tended to see men as the only history-makers, when that’s never actually been the case. One of our missions is giving space to such stories, especially during our “Badass Women of Chicago History” virtual events. Reach out to us to learn more about booking that or any of our other private tours or custom content creations.

– Alex Bean, Content Manager and Tour Guide

ABOUT CHICAGO DETOURS

Chicago Detours is a boutique tour company passionate about connecting people to places and each other through the power of storytelling. We bring curious people to explore, learn and interact with Chicago’s history, architecture and culture through in-person private group tours, content production, and virtual tours.

We research stories from Chicago history, architecture and culture like this while developing our live virtual tours, in-person private tours, and custom content for corporate events. You can join us to experience Chicago’s stories in-person or online. We can also create custom tours and original content about this Chicago topic and countless others.

L.A. Burdick Handmade Chocolates

The fine folks at L.A. Burdick Handmade Chocolates “expertly blend shavings of single-source chocolate into steaming milk for a truly rich cup.” Which sound delightful and I may just stop writing this post right now to go grab a cup.

Okay, now that I’m back, it was also lovely getting to visit the Tree Studio Building while sipping my hot chocolate. The Queen Anne-style building, which fronts North State, dates back to 1894. Judge Lambert Tree’s eponymous studio was a working and living space for European artists in Chicago. It still serves that purpose today, with artists living upstairs. Which is why you can sip delicious hot chocolate in this historic spot on the ground floor. You can also swing by for a stronger drink at Watershed after a custom private tour.

Revival Food Hall

You can grab a mug of the good stuff at Mindy’s Hot Chocolate in Revival Food Hall before starting a Downtown Bucket List private tour, which begins next door in the Marquette seven days a week. Revival is one of the trendiest dining spots in the Loop, filled with hip restaurants and vendors. The name itself, pleasingly, is a nod to historic architecture.

Revival is in the old Commercial National Bank Building, designed by Daniel Burnham and Co. in 1907. It was their first skyscraper bank building, employing the signature tripartite design of Burnham’s Classical Revival look. (Hence, Revival Food Hall–get it?) Notably, the attached Corinthian columns along the second floor marked the banking floor’s location. This set the template for many other grand bank buildings along LaSalle Street.

Intelligentsia at the Monadnock

The Intelligentsia in the Monadnock Building is the closest spot for hot chocolate in Chicago to our office. It’s also the spot closest to our hearts! (xoxo – please give us a discount now?) As with all their drinks, the hot chocolate at the Intelligentsia downstairs is a rich and complex delight.

Their space on the Jackson Boulevard frontage of our historic skyscraper is a wonderful throwback. Intelligentsia renovated the space in 2017 and made use of its historic location and details. They retained the original marble flooring and oak window frames, matching the Victorian vibe from the other ground-floor tenants. Look for other vintage touches like historic photos while sipping hot chocolate in this historic spot.

Xoco

My favorite hot chocolate in a historic spot in Chicago is the Aztec “bean-to-cup” chocolate at Xoco. The chile and allspice give it a warm, spicy zing that is absolute perfection when there’s a chill in the air. Of course, one should expect any and everything at Xoco to be divine. Like its neighbors, Topolobampo and Frontera Grill, it’s one of famed chef Rick Bayless’s signature River North restaurants.

Sipping hot chocolate outside Xoco presents a priceless opportunity to drink in some historic architecture as well. Located at 449 North Clark, it’s right in the midst of one my favorite blocks in downtown Chicago. The area around Clark and Hubbard seems to have downtown’s largest collection of post-fire buildings. 449 itself was built in 1872 right after the fire, making it a glorious example of what the city looked like before the skyscraper age. Its bracketed cornices and rounded windows with incised hoods are textbook examples of the Victorian rage for architecture referencing Renaissance-era Italy.

Go Architecture Hunting!

In all honesty, this quest for hot chocolate in historic spots is just an excuse. We’re always trying to justify the impulse to wander around the city and admire its wonderful architecture. No matter the season or the reason, there’s always beautiful buildings to admire. If they happen to contain delicious drinks, well, all the better.

– Alex Bean, Content Manager and Tour Guide

ABOUT CHICAGO DETOURS

Chicago Detours is a boutique tour company passionate about connecting people to places and each other through the power of storytelling. We bring curious people to explore, learn and interact with Chicago’s history, architecture and culture through in-person private group tours, content production, and virtual tours.

We research stories from Chicago history, architecture and culture like this while developing our live virtual tours, in-person private tours, and custom content for corporate events. You can join us to experience Chicago’s stories in-person or online. We can also create custom tours and original content about this Chicago topic and countless others.We research history and architecture like this while developing our live virtual events. Join us for fun events, like our regular general admission virtual events or an exclusive event for your private group.

Southern Exposure by Lee Bey

I’ll start my recommendations by saying that it’s tough to surprise me when it comes to Chicago history and architecture. I often feel like I’ve learned all the big bits. So bear that in mind when I say that Lee Bey’s new book Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of the South Side included both new historical insights and photos of some gorgeous architecture I’d never seen before. Some of it, I guarantee, will come up the next time I lead one of our South Side bus tours.

Bey, the former architecture critic for the Sun-Times, is a South Side native. He sets out to document the enormously eclectic styles and sizes of the Sacred Ground‘s turf. My personal favorite is the fetching futurism of Pride Cleaners on 79th Street. Its image is now etched into my brain and I don’t know if I ever would have seen it without reading Southern Exposure.

A Shopper’s Paradise by Emily Remus

Emily Remus, a University of Notre Dame History Professor, delves into a topic we explored on our Loop Interior Architecture Walking Tour with A Shopper’s Paradise. The book’s subtitle, “How the Ladies of Chicago Claimed Power and Pleasure in the New Downtown,” is the angle both her book and our tour take. The grand emporiums of State Street were not at all welcoming to female shoppers in their early days. Yet shopping in a department store would come to be seen as so feminine that Marshall Field’s constructed a separate building for the Men’s Departments in 1914. That social revolution, which still reverberates down to the present, is what Remus explores in her new book. It’s the sort of story that rarely winds up in textbooks, but has an enormous influence on our everyday thoughts and customs.

Midwest Architecture Journeys from Belt Publishing

Our friends at Belt Publishing have no quit in them. Mere months after publishing their excellent Chicago Neighborhood Guidebook, they’re back with Midwest Architecture Journeys. Edited by Chicago’s own Zach Mortice, the handsomely appointed hardcover goes off the beaten path. The book’s many writers find the glorious in the mundane and the unexpected in the everyday. They go well beyond Chicago, of course, but our city’s famed architecture serves as the focal point. I was particularly taken with the journeys which deepened my appreciation for the iconic grain silos, Sullivan’s breathtaking jewel-box banks, an examination of ruin porn, and the tallest thing in the Midwest–a transmission antenna.

1919 by Eve L. Ewing

Eve L. Ewing has been the rising star of Chicago’s literary scene for a few years now. Her two previous books, Electric Arches and Ghosts in the Schoolyard, both won year-end awards from the Chicago Review of Books. Plus, she’s a great person to follow on Twitter.

1919, a collection of poetry which reflects on the deadly violence of that year’s race riot in Chicago, should cement her reputation. Ewing uses a 1922 report, The Negro in Chicago: A Study on Race Relations and a Race Riot, as the leaping-off point. Mixing poetry, explanatory non-fiction prose, and Jun Fujita’s photos, she creates a sobering and absorbing distillation of that awful summer. It illuminates how blood spilled a century ago still cries out in the present.

Chicago by the Book from the Caxton Club

Still finding it hard to settle on a smart Chicago book despite the prior recommendations You sound like me in Unabridged Books’ sale section. Also, Chicago by the Book: 101 Publications That Shaped the City and its Image is probably the best bet for you. Published by the Caxton Club, a Chicago-based bibliophilic society (!), the book catalogues the writings which have defined the city. It includes the stuff you expect, like The Jungle, Division Street: America, and The Devil in the White City. To my delight, the bevy of writers who wrote up these entries included myriad other forms of writing. Everything from Juliette Kinzie’s Narrative of the Massacre at Chicago to Montgomery Ward and Sears Roebuck catalogs to Poetry Magazine get their turn. It’s encyclopedic in the very best sense of the word.

Buy the Best Chicago Books at an Indie Bookstore

As a thriving small local business we always love giving a shoutout to similar crews. Plus, indie bookstores are absolute gems and deserve all your love and support. One of the most famous indie bookstores in the whole world is down in Hyde Park. The Seminary Co-Op and its sister institution, 57th Street Books, are world famous booksellers. Founded way back in 1961, The Seminary Co-Op sells the world’s largest collection of academic tomes. 57th Street Books followed 22 years later and caters to the literary tastes of Hyde Park. Both are lovely spaces to lose yourself amidst the stacks. Though I do miss the old labyrinthine basement location of the Co-Op.

Don’t let this list of the best Chicago books be your only resource for gift buying, of course. We published our annual Holiday Gift Guide a few weeks back. You can also check out our other book recommendations.

Happy Holidays!

– Alex Bean, Content Manager and Tour Guide

ABOUT CHICAGO DETOURS

Chicago Detours is a boutique tour company passionate about connecting people to places and each other through the power of storytelling. We bring curious people to explore, learn and interact with Chicago’s history, architecture and culture through in-person private group tours, content production, and virtual tours.

We research Chicago history and architecture like this while developing our live virtual events and custom corporate events. Join us for our public virtual events or book an exclusive team-building event for your private group. We can also create custom tours and original content creation about this Chicago topic and countless others.

The Lost Statues from the Old Board of Trade Building

One of the most curious artworks in Chicago sits in a plaza just east of the Board of Trade. A pair of 12-foot-tall granite statues stare out at Jackson Boulevard. As we related several years ago, these statues–representing agriculture and industry–originally stood on the facade of the original Board of Trade Building, which was constructed in 1883 and torn down in 1929

After that, the statues disappeared from the Loop. They were assumed lost forever, until the 1970s when they were found in an overgrown corner of the Forest Preserve of DuPage County. The full mysterious tale of the statues’ disappearance and eventual re-discovery can be recounted on our Downtown Bucket List tour for private groups.

Art Deco Architecture of the Chicago Board of Trade Building

Any visit to the Chicago Board of Trade has to include a healthy appreciation for its architecture. The 1930 design by Holabird and Root is a masterpiece of Art Deco design. Indeed, it takes up a sizable chunk of Art Deco Chicago. The pamphlet from the tower’s dedication perfectly captures the spirit of the building:

“Here it stands, completed, the Board of Trade Building, monarch of LaSalle Street, towering head and shoulder above its mighty neighbors, commanding focal point of Chicago’s financial heart.”

Visitors can fully appreciate the architecture from a block or two down LaSalle, let’s say at the intersection with Adams. From there one can fully grasp the overwhelming vertical nature of the design. The Board of Trade inevitably draws the eye upward, tracing a path into the endless Midwestern sky. Some of this is simply a reflection of the Art Deco ethos. The vertical piers, sudden setbacks, and dramatic nighttime lighting are all perfectly in tune with contemporary towers like New York’s Chrysler Building.

Ceres, Roman Goddess of Wheat and Queen of Chicago’s Skyline

One of the most famous elements of the Chicago skyline sits atop the Board of Trade. Up there, 605 feet above the street, Ceres, the Roman goddess of wheat, looks down upon the city. The statue’s sculptor, John Storrs, chose Ceres as a reference to the commodities trade in grain, which is what the Board of Trade grew rich and powerful on. Appropriately, Ceres holds a sheaf of wheat and a bag of corn.

To visit the Chicago Board of Trade’s most famous decorative element, you don’t need to scale the building though. A miniature version of Ceres is on display in the Art Institute of Chicago. Storrs helped support himself through the Great Depression by selling many of these small replicas to private art collectors.

Interestingly, Ceres also loomed above the original trading room on the fourth floor. The artist John W. Norton, who had studied at the Art Institute, painted a three-story mural of Ceres. Depicted bare-breasted, she holds another sheaf of wheat and sprinkles seeds. She now looks down upon the lobby of the Board of Trade’s rear addition.

Visit the Chicago Board of Trade Lobby

Any trip to the Financial District should include a visit to the Chicago Board of Trade lobby. Few other spaces can match its stunning streamlined luster. Gleaming marble piers, gilded bronze detail work, and an enormous wraparound light fixture transport you right back to 1930. Such glamour makes one want to wear a fedora and a snappy suit upon entering.

The symbolism hidden in the lobby is one of the highlights of our custom tours that visit the building , so I don’t want to spoil too much. I simply love that the food court in the basement is named Cellar’s Market. As a connoisseur of dad humor, that name is a  masterpiece.

No More Tours of the Trading Floor

Sadly, one can no longer visit the Trading Floor. The beating heart of Chicago’s commodities trade and financial markets now sits mostly silent. The ‘open outcry‘ method of trading, which once dominated the Trading Room on the fourth floor, has been almost entirely eclipsed by computer trading. While some trading at the CBOT still relies upon open outcry, the trading floor itself moved into an addition constructed in the 1990s. The old trading floor, whose massive 3-floor windows dominate the building’s base, is now quiet office space. Even the famous trading pits have been filled with concrete. You can delve into this vanished history by visiting the neighboring Money Museum.

The Heart of Nature’s Metropolis

The Board of Trade Building is a stunning testament to the businesses which built Chicago. The trade in grains, which evolved into the futures market and commodities trading, placed Chicago in the center of Midwestern commerce. No building better expresses this history.

– Alex Bean, Content Manager and Tour Guide

About Chicago Detours

In business since 2010, Chicago Detours is a passionate team of educators, historians and storytellers. We applied a decade of experience as one of Chicago’s top-rated tour companies to become a virtual event company in 2020. We bring curious people to explore, learn and interact about Chicago’s history, architecture and culture through custom tours, content production, and virtual events.

As the inventor of the skyscraper, Jenney trained talented young minds who also made their mark on Chicago. He mentored famous architects like Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, William Holabird, and Martin Roche. William LeBaron Jenney’s innovations and influences are vast, yet his work is somewhat overlooked these days. Even yours truly, a proud Chicago history and architecture geek, didn’t realize just how many Jenney buildings are still standing in Chicago. So I created a list of William LeBaron Jenney’s contributions to Chicago architecture that you can tour on your own. This quick walk is designed to give you a glimpse of Jenney’s genius and his lasting influence.

The Home Insurance Building

Our walking tour of William LeBaron Jenney’s work must begin, sadly, at the site of a landmark which is no longer standing. The Home Insurance Building, built in 1885 at Adams and LaSalle, was the world’s first skyscraper. Instead of relying on massive exterior walls, Jenney designed a spindly frame of fireproof steel and iron beams which bore much of this office tower’s weight. This engineering breakthrough allowed the building to rise higher, created more interior space and light, while weighing 1/3rd as much as a traditional tower and even adding extra fireproofing. It was truly a quantum leap breakthrough in architectural history.

Supposedly, Jenney’s inspiration came from seeing his wife set a book on a birdcage. The thin metallic bars could support the dense bookbinding, which inspired the idea that a skeleton frame of steel beams could support an office tower. Not everyone trusted Jenney’s work, though. The city actually shut down construction out of concern that the tower would inevitably collapse.

Th Home Insurance Building stood the test, of course, and everything from The Rookery to the Burj Khalifa is descended from the experimental design of William LeBaron Jenney. All of that said, sadly, the Home Insurance Building is no longer standing. A demolition crew knocked down the world’s first skyscraper in 1931. The site was cleared and the Field Building, a block-length Art Deco tower, was constructed in its place. Its beautiful lobby is worth a visit on its own, and you can pay a pilgrimage to a plaque in the lobby that marks the location of Jenney’s world-changing innovation.

The New York Life Insurance Building

Our William LeBaron Jenney walking tour continues a block north up LaSalle. Today’s Kimpton Gray Hotel occupies the New York Life Insurance Building, which William LeBaron Jenney designed back in 1894. Constructed less than a decade after the Home Insurance Building, it originally rose 12 stories above the LaSalle Street canyon, with two more stories added later. As its original name implies, the tower housed offices for Gotham-based insurance company. Like the Home Insurance Building a block away, Jenney’s tower helped consolidate LaSalle Street’s reputation as the heart of Chicago’s financial district. Jenney’s architecture conveyed wealth and power for the insurance company, which is why so many Downtown Bucket List private tours visit here.

The tower is one of the best extant examples of the Chicago School of architecture. Delicate Classical ornamentation in terra cotta adorns the facade, which is broken up into a tripartite design. Monumental gray limestone covers the base, lending the gravitas one expects from a financial institution. The bold vertical piers and horizontal bands express the steel frame which supports the structure. Unlike the Home Insurance, the New York Life Insurance Building narrowly avoided demolition. Indeed, the Kimpton poured millions into a restoration effort when they opened the Gray a few years back. It is as close as we can come to seeing Jenney’s original marvel.

The Manhattan Building

Heading down Dearborn from Monroe on this William LeBaron Jenney walking tour is a walk through skyscraper history which takes you to a pair of Jenney landmarks right on the southern rim of the Loop. The most immediately eye-catching is the magnificent Manhattan Building. Completed in 1891, this skyscraper was on the cutting edge of that era’s architectural and aesthetic revolution.

The building’s 16 floors are entirely supported by a skeleton frame of iron beams. At the time, the Manhattan soared several floors above any of its neighbors. Only Adler and Sullivan’s then-new Auditorium Building (which we visit on the 1893 World’s Fair Tour) leapt to such great heights.

Worth noting how breathtaking and anxiety-inducing a height like 16 stories felt like to people in the Gilded Age. Most homes back then were only 1 or 2 stories high and big commercial buildings of the Loop, like the Washington Block, were only 4 stories. For an architect like Jenney to triple a building’s height and do so with mere metal beams felt like the height of folly. One imagines that the Manhattan Building recalled the Tower of Babel for many a visitor to Chicago.

Jenney’s design incorporated multiple decorative materials (brick, granite, terra cotta) and ornate elements (projecting bays, classical decor, hidden faces) to break up the vertical facade. Even more importantly, Jenney’s exterior decor is arranged in horizontal, rather than vertical bands. This aesthetic choice distracted 19-century Chicagoans from the building’s gravity-defying height. That said, even these days the Manhattan dominates its corner, looming like a colossus above Printer’s Row.

Second Leiter Building

Our William LeBaron Jenney walking tour continues just two blocks east of the Manhattan with another of Jenney’s bold experiments in architectural form. The Leiter II Building, now the home of Robert Morris University, is an enormous steel-frame structure from 1891. Levi Leiter, Marshall Field’s original retail partner, commissioned the enormous building after a previous successful collaboration on the First Leiter Building.

Having a second shot at the unique challenges of a State Street department store, Leiter did not hesitate to pursue his vision. A cage of steel beams, rising eight floors, runs the entire 402-foot-long block. The exterior ornamentation is remarkably minimalistic for its time. Small capitals adorn the top of the piers, which separate its nine window bays, and colonnettes, which separate the window frames. Beyond that, a minimalistic cornice is the only other decoration breaking up the exterior’s pink granite cladding. The resulting structure is a boldly austere statement and a stark contrast with other department stores of that era.

Ludington Building

The last stop on our Jenney walking tour is a building I only learned of while researching this post. His Ludington Building, on Columbia College’s campus along Wabash in the South Loop, is a jaw-dropping masterpiece. The Ludington, built in 1889, is a two-fer of local architectural firsts. It’s both the oldest purely steel frame building and the earliest to be clad solely in terra cotta. The loft-style structure appears to float, angelic, in this formerly industrial neighborhood.

Jenney constructed the Ludington for the American Book Company, one of the old Printer’s Row mainstays. The loft-style construction suited their needs, namely printing presses and shipping spaces. That openness attracted later industrial tenants, like the auto supply company which used the Ludington as a warehouse until the 1990s. Columbia bought the newly-landmarked building in ’99, converting it into a chic post-industrial loft style that remains all the rage.

One can clearly see Jenney’s evolving aesthetics just by taking a glance at the Ludington. Perhaps because it didn’t soar as high, only 8 stories, the decor seems less tied to traditional elements. The creamy terra cotta uses classical forms, like candelabras, vines, and dentils. Yet those details are not emphasized on a Jenney walking tour. Instead, one’s eyes focuses upon the delicate interplay between wide-open windows and the bold framing of steel piers. I find it impossible not to see future landmarks like the Sullivan Center and Mies’ Federal Center lurking in Jenney’s experimental style.

A William LeBaron Jenney Walking Tour Through the Past

In writing this, I have found a deeper appreciation for Jenney’s role in Chicago’s architectural history. I’d long known his name and the significance of the Home Insurance Building, but it seemed like a one-off. I thought he’d overseen a world-changing breakthrough purely by chance and then shuffled away. Later names and thoughtless demolitions obscure his work. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Jenney’s aesthetics are perhaps not as fully developed or flashy as his successors, but they also had an advantage. Burnham, Sullivan and the rest stood on the shoulders of a giant named William LeBaron Jenney.

– Alex Bean, Content Manager and Tour Guide

We research stories from Chicago history, architecture and culture like this while developing our live virtual tours, in-person private tours, and custom content for corporate events. You can join us to experience Chicago’s stories in-person or online. We can also create custom tours and original content about this Chicago topic and countless others.

Aries (March 21 – April 19) – Chicago’s Federal Center

Represented by the ram, people born under the sign Aries tend to be bold and ambitious, with no time for frivolous detail. Famous Aries Chicagoans typify their leadership skills, like Harold Washington, or their take-no-prisoners confidence, like Hugh Hefner. So it’s only fitting that the bold, striking Federal Center designed by another famous Chicago Aries, Mies van der Rohe, represents the ram in the Chicago architecture zodiac. The architecture of the Federal Center is straightforward, honest, and strong.

Taurus (April 20 – May 20) – Chicago Board of Trade

Tauruses are ambitious and focused on the future. They’re not afraid to roll up their sleeves and work hard to get what they want. It makes sense that one of Chicago’s most famous Tauruses is hizzoner Mayor Richard J. Daley, who dubbed Chicago “the city that works.”

The Chicago Board of Trade is a classic Taurus. Our biggest market is an appropriate setting for those bulls, eh And let us not forget Chicago’s cow town past with the Stock Yards and the meatpacking industry. The architecture of the Board of Trade Building represents the city’s relentless striving toward its lofty goals, just like a hard-working Taurus. While wheat and other crops pepper the architectural details of this skyscraper, the bulls of Taurus also fit in, since cattle and pigs were also on the commodities list of this iconic building.

Gemini (May 21 – June 20) – Marina City

Geminis are represented in the traditional zodiac by the twins, so it only makes sense for Chicago’s most iconic twins to be their emblem in the Chicago architecture zodiac. Marina City represents the Gemini in many ways though. These air signs are known to be pioneers, innovators and fearless thinkers. Famous Chicago Geminis include trailblazing women like Gwendolynn Brooks and Jane Addams.

Some of Downtown’s first residential skyscrapers, Bertrand Goldberg’s Marina City twin towers paved the way for future developments, and shook up the architecture world with their iconoclastic organic forms, just like pioneering, free-thinking Geminis. On top of being a wild shape, these buildings were revolutionary for their use of reinforced concrete.

Cancer (June 21 – July 22)  – Harold Washington Library

Like the crab that represents them, Cancers may seem hard on the outside but are soft on the inside, harboring a nurturing and caring nature. On the Chicago architecture zodiac, the Cancer’s architectural counterpart has an imposing exterior, but many find the interior to be a personal sanctuary.

Like famous Chicago Cancer Ida B. Wells, the Harold Washington Library Center works for the uplift of all Chicagoans. It’s bright, white interiors and sweeping open architecture of the Winter Garden create a welcome place for learning. The architecture of the Harold Washington Library makes it a place to find community, compassion and empathy, qualities that define Cancers.

Leo (July 23 – August 22) – The Chicago Theatre

Leos are creative, passionate, and gifted leaders. One of the most famous Leos to call Chicago home is President Barack Obama. The fiery lion also has a theatrical side, and loves to be the center attention, so how could the Leo be anything but the iconic Chicago Theatre on our Chicago architecture zodiac?

With its splashy marquee capturing attention on State Street, the Chicago Theatre perfectly represents the Leo’s commanding stage presence and love of spectacle. This former cinema house is also adorned with lavish architectural details both inside and out, lending more to its Leo traits.

Virgo (August 23 – September 22) – The Rookery

Earthy Virgos are grounded, meticulous and practical. They are detail-oriented, and may also be prone to a bit of perfectionism. That matches up very nearly with the architecture of the Rookery, which melds the heavy, precisely-engineered early skyscraper aesthetics of Burnham and Root with Frank Lloyd Wright’s delicate, artistic lobby. Lead architect for this architectural landmark, Daniel Burnham, was himself a Virgo. Frank Lloyd Wright’s modern lines and the rational balance of this architectural space just screams “Virgo.” Amanda, the founder of Chicago Detours, is a Virgo, and perhaps her grounded nature has contributed to building this tour company, in business since 2010.

Libra (September 23 – October 22) – The Hancock Center

An air sign, Libras are the intellectuals of the zodiac, with a keen eye for aesthetics. Represented by the scales, they seek balance and equilibrium in their work and life. Famous Chicago Libra William Le Baron Jenney put his intellect to work creating the world’s first skyscrapers, creating architectural marvels of balance, simplicity and harmony.

The larger-than-life architecture of the Hancock Center perfectly captures Jenney’s legacy and represents the Libra on the Chicago architecture zodiac. Its soaring height reflects Libra’s airy intellectualism, and its iconic X-shaped steel frame creates a perfect symmetry. Additionally, instead of getting bogged down in the details, Libra likes to view the world from above, and of course you can consider all the little architecture of Chicago from the vantage point of the 360 Chicago Observation Deck.

Scorpio (October 23 – November 21) – Aqua

Scorpios are a water sign, tapped into the psychic and emotional sides of our natures. Famous Chicago Scorpio Mahalia Jackson was known for her powerful voice, and Scorpios are known for being passionate and strong. They’re also the most enigmatic and seductive members of the zodiac.

There’s no better architectural fit on the Chicago architecture zodiac for Scorpio than the Aqua Tower – our most sensual of skyscrapers. The rippling curves of Jeanne Gang‘s famous tower fascinate and beguile us, just like the mysterious charms of the Scorpio. Gang meticulously engineered these curves for a functional reason, and you’ll have to come on a custom tour of downtown to find out how! On a purely aesthetic level though, the architecture of this famous skyscraper is clearly the spirit of a water sign like Scorpio.

Sagittarius (November 22 – December 21) – Tribune Tower

Sagittarians are well-traveled, full of interesting anecdotes from their journeys, and always on the hunt for more stories. Like Sagittarian Rahm Emanuel, they’re gifted speakers who can definitely spin a yarn. They’re interesting and adventurous, and can also be prone to showing off a bit, as we all know he does.

If that’s not the spirit of the architecture of the Tribune Tower, then I don’t even know why we’re playing this game! Studded with stones from Tribune reporters’ journeys, it encapsulates the Sagittarian’s quest for knowledge and love of a good story. The facade of this 1920s skyscraper is an architectural relic museum of the world. And its ornate Neo-Gothic exterior hints at a tendency to embellish as well.

Capricorn (December 22 – January 19) – Sears Tower

Capricorns are driven, focused, and have a committed passion for reaching their goals. Their relentless pursuit can come across as cold and make them seem conservative, but they do have a playful side too.
That sounds an awful lot like the Sears Tower.

Its simple steel-and-glass construction and record-breaking height reflect practical, business-minded concerns. The asymmetrical bundled-tube design, like an uneven stack of boxes, shows off just a hint of humor behind this most business-like of modern skyscrapers though. The tower’s engineer tried shaking some cigarettes out of a pack and, EUREKA, that’s now the shape of the Sears Tower.

Aquarius (January 20 – February 18) – Thompson Center

Aquarians are big thinkers and tend to go against the grain. A famous Chicago Aquarian is Oprah, who forged her own path in typical Aquarius style. Aquarians are also eccentric, offbeat and nonconformist. Hence the whole Age of Aquarius thing in the late ’60s.

Aha! The gloriously idealistic and sadly incompetent Thompson Center sounds like the right fit for the architectural equivalent of Aquarius. The Thompson Center’s colorful design, awe-inspiring atrium and  round glass exterior all mark it as a totally distinct Postmodern creation. Quite distinct from its nearby governmental neighbors, to put it mildly. It is truly the weird, rebellious Aquarius of the Chicago architecture zodiac.

Pisces (February 19 – March 20) – Union Station

Symbolized by two fish swimming away from each other, Pisces always has a foot in two worlds. They always need to be reminded to come back down to earth, since they’re some of the most dreamy members of the zodiac.  The City of Chicago is itself a Pisces, “born” March 4, and in many ways it represents that hopeless dreamer.

Ya know what We think that also describes the architecture of Chicago Union Station. The architecture here is a glorious dream of what an intercity rail station could be. Its soaring, Classical grand hall contrasts harshly with the gritty, diesel fume-filled platforms below. One level represents the romantic fantasy of a historic train station, the other, the grounded reality, capturing the duality at the heart of Pisces’ nature. For some, the train station is whisking you off to a new adventure. And for others, walking through this grand architecture is a mundane task of commuting to and from downtown Chicago.

Hope you had some fun discovering your Chicago architecture zodiac!

– Marie Rowley, Amanda Scotese, and Alex Bean

ABOUT CHICAGO DETOURS

Chicago Detours is a boutique tour company passionate about connecting people to places and each other through the power of storytelling. We bring curious people to explore, learn and interact with Chicago’s history, architecture and culture through in-person private group tours, content production, and virtual tours.

We research stories from Chicago history, architecture and culture like this while developing our live virtual tours, in-person private tours, and custom content for corporate events. You can join us to experience Chicago’s stories in-person or online. We can also create custom tours and original content about this Chicago topic and countless others.

Make No Little Plans

The origins of the Chicago mega-development stretch back to the late 1800s. As Chicago rebuilt from the Great Fire young hotshot architects flocked to the city. Within just a few years, William LeBaron Jenney, Dankmar Adler, Louis Sullivan, John Wellborn Root, and, of course, Daniel Burnham set up shop in the boomtown of the prairie. These architects reimagined the possibilities of architectural form with the skyscraper, which only whetted their appetite. Burnham especially saw the opportunity to remake what an industrial American city could look and feel like.

He oversaw the design and construction of the famous White City in 1893, which heralded Chicago’s arrival as a major world city. Burnham parlayed this success into a secondary career as a city planner. He exported his “City Beautiful” aesthetics into the new city plans for Manila, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C. Eventually, he turned his eye for grand Beaux Arts urban planning back on his hometown.

The famous Burnham Plan of Chicago reimagined the dusky, brawling industrial boomtown as a Paris on the prairies. Iconic elements of the cityscape like Grant Park, Museum Campus, Navy Pier, Wacker Drive and the Mag Mile are the legacy of Burnham’s plan. His sweeping vision, made famous by the (non!) apocryphal adage “make no little plans,” encouraged later developers to similarly monumental ambitions, perhaps seeding the idea for the instant neighborhoods of mega-developments like Lincoln Yards.

Bringing Residents Back to Downtown

The second Mayor Daley’s 21 years in office provides a more direct historical antecedent to today’s massive mega-developments. By the 1960s, suburbanization and the rise of TV culture meant that the Loop emptied out by 6pm. So the Daley Administration orchestrated residential redevelopments of old industrial spaces in and around the Loop.

The first neighborhood that City Hall redeveloped was the South Loop. Long a warren of factories, warehouses, and train depots, the South Loop offered a wealth of real estate which was suddenly available when the train lines went belly up. Station closures left hundreds of acres of empty train yards in the South Loop. The first mega-development to swoop in on this territory was Dearborn Park. The residential development stretches for a mile south of the rehabbed station, plopping an enormous amount of housing stock into an area which hadn’t seen it in over a century. We can visit the area on our private tours of downtown.

Similar residential or mixed-use redevelopments of old train yards soon sprang into action around downtown. Sale of air rights turned the old Illinois Central depot just east of Michigan Avenue into the Illinois Center and Lakeshore East. The Grand Central and Van Buren train yards had patchwork developments, most notably River City and the Roosevelt Collection. River North’s old harbor district, east of Michigan Avenue on the north bank, became Cityfront Center. The ground of Central Station, just west of Museum Campus and south of Grant Park, into a new neighborhood of highrises and lofts named Central Station. Mayor Daley even moved into a condo there in the early 90s. Our guests see almost all of these developments on our private tours of downtown or Chicago neighborhoods.

Rebuilding in the Heart of the Loop

Mega-projects are not just limited to old industrial districts, of course. Enchanted by Modernism’s glittering glass towers and seduced by the dreams of urban planners who rather hated urban spaces, City Hall decided that the historic heart of the Loop had to go. Historic structures like Louis Sullivan’s Stock Exchange and the enormous Sherman and Morrison Hotels met the wrecking ball in the ’60s and ’70s.

Apparently unsatisfied going one building at a time, the city sometimes demolished entire blocks of buildings in those years. Today’s Daley Center plaza used to be a dense collection of old buildings, including the beloved restaurant Henrici’s. City planners condemned and cleared them all to build Mayor Daley’s new Civic Center, which eventually bore his name. Across Dearborn Street, the city spent over a decade buying up every structure on Block 37, including the landmarked McCarthy Building. They all came down in 1989, leaving a gaping hole on the site for 20 years.

Bad as that sounds, it was nearly worse. City Hall created a North Loop Redevelopment District in 1973. In essence, they declared everything north of Washington and east of Clark to be a slum. Developers floated plans to demolish virtually everything and replace it with a set of interlocking towers, sky bridges, and pedways ala the Illinois Center. Thank goodness it never came to pass. Imagine no Marshall Field’s on State Street or no glittering Tiffany dome at the Chicago Cultural Center.

The Debate Over Mega-Development Today

Big as these past projects were, the current building boom may outpace them all. Virtually all real estate along the North and South Branches of the Chicago River is being converted. The biggest break with the past is how privatized this phase of construction is. Under the Daleys, the city usually took the lead in clearing old structures and guiding redevelopment. These days such work is done by private developers like Sterling Bay and Related Midwest. All they need is occasional green lights from City Hall to remake Chicago as they see fit.

Mega-projects like Lincoln Yards and The 78 almost always create opposition, but the privatization of the process changes that dynamic. Sterling Bay and Related Midwest are not responsible to the people of Chicago, but to their shareholders. Thus, they have less incentive to listen to the communities being disrupted or hew to the extant cityscape. Despite this, they’re getting hundreds of millions in taxpayer money to fund construction. So far, that’s meant these big plans are meeting unprecedentedly big opposition.

– Alex Bean, Content Manager and Tour Guide

ABOUT CHICAGO DETOURS

Chicago Detours is a boutique tour company passionate about connecting people to places and each other through the power of storytelling. We bring curious people to explore, learn and interact with Chicago’s history, architecture and culture through in-person private group tours, content production, and virtual tours.

She invited me on a tour of the magnificent space to reconfirm the Auditorium Theater’s standing as one of Chicago’s most spectacular structures. I happily accepted, as a tour always promises tons of information and stories one cannot glean from readings.

Friends, the Auditorium Theater tour did not disappoint. In fact, it convinced me that Adler and Sullivan’s masterpiece should be front and center in any and all discussions of Chicago architectural history.

We research stories from Chicago history, architecture and culture like this while developing our live virtual tours, in-person private tours, and custom content for corporate events. You can join us to experience Chicago’s stories in-person or online. We can also create custom tours and original content about this Chicago topic and countless others.

A Noble Impulse Led to the Auditorium Theater

Gilded Age Chicago saw numerous calamities and social upheavals. The Great Fire of 1871 incinerated the nascent metropolis. As it rebuilt amidst the rubble, Chicago’s already-enormous commercial and industrial interests grew ever-larger. Immigrants and migrants crowded into a city divided between soaring wealth and bitter poverty. Crippling strikes gripped the city in 1877 and 1886. The latter year saw tens of thousands of workers engage in a series of strikes that culminated with the infamous Haymarket Affair.

Amidst this turmoil, real estate tycoon Ferdinand Peck decided to heal the city’s wounds with a grand new structure bringing fine arts to the all classes. Peck lined up funds from bigwigs like Field and Pullman then hired the budding architecture firm of Adler and Sullivan. The duo designed the largest theater in the world and placed it within the world’s largest multi-purpose building. The theater itself seats over 3,900 and takes up about 40% of the building’s volume. Peck subsidized construction and maintenance of this enormous space with a 400-room luxury hotel on Michigan Boulevard and a 136-suite office building on Wabash. The unprecedented, audacious size of the structure inspired awe. The Auditorium Building was often touted as the largest, tallest and heaviest building since the Great Pyramids.

Adler Engineers a Monumental Structure

I have led many private tour guests into the old hotel lobby of the Auditorium. They delight to hear about Dankmar Adler‘s structural innovations. The outer walls are masonry construction, not the lighter and stronger steel. They bear the weight of all that theatrical, office, and hotel space. Normally, the walls distribute such a heavy load on a bedrock foundation. Unfortunately the Auditorium’s site didn’t have accessible bedrock. 120 feet of soft blue clay undergirds the Auditorium.

So Adler ingeniously engineered a gargantuan floating raft foundation. The building’s weight floats above the clay on criss-crossed railroad ties layered beneath a double-stack of steel beams, all coated in pitch to make the foundation watertight. Incredibly, my tour guide at the Auditorium Theater, Nick, told me of rumors that one can see running water below the theater’s lowest levels. Despite these precautions, the structure still sank at an alarming rate. The outer stone walls are much heavier than the interior, causing the floors to sink up to 36 inches. Yikes!

Adler also crafted the famously perfect acoustics of the theater. Every noise on stage can be heard perfectly even at the upper-most level. The Auditorium Theater is shaped like a bullhorn, funneling sound waves through a series of arches and angled panels. Nick told me that members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra still complain about how much worse the acoustics are in their Symphony Center.

The Auditorium Theater is Sullivan’s Masterwork

For all of Adler’s engineering prowess, his partner really stole the show at the Auditorium Theater. Louis Sullivan, one of our greatest architects, could have designed only this space and his fame and reputation would be secure. Sullivan was an iconoclastic architect. He rejected the Beaux Arts classicism that his peers brought back from Paris. Instead of looking to the old world for stylistic inspiration, Sullivan blazed a new decorative trail that set the stage for American architecture in the 20th century.

Sullivan’s most famous adage “form follows function” stressed that the design of a structure must reflect its intended usage. Thus the Auditorium Theater’s bullhorn shape centers on the stage and the astounding ornament all radiates from that centrifugal space.

That intricate ornamentation is certainly the most remarkable and memorable aspect of the Auditorium Theater’s architecture. 3,500 Edison lightbulbs cast a luminous golden glow across the cavernous hall. Sullivanesque detailing in metal, gold leaf, terra cotta and stencil adorns a multitude of surfaces. This precise, rich work is somehow incredibly elaborate without ever being ostentatious. It harmonizes with Adler’s grand structure, making the entire theater brim with aesthetic grandeur.

Go Take a Tour

I could go on and on about the Auditorium Theater. It brought the Columbian Exposition to Chicago. It played a pivotal role in American political history. The whole structure was shuttered, nearly demolished, and then almost converted into a parking garage! Countless musicians from the Gilded Age to the Age of Aquarius have harnessed its acoustic powers. Yet nothing I write can match the full majestic experience of entering the Auditorium Theater and experiencing Adler and Sullivan’s timeless creation. Go take a tour and then we can rave together.

– Alex Bean, Content Manager and Tour Guide

ABOUT CHICAGO DETOURS

Chicago Detours is a boutique tour company passionate about connecting people to places and each other through the power of storytelling. We bring curious people to explore, learn and interact with Chicago’s history, architecture and culture through in-person private group tours, content production, and virtual tours.

We research stories from Chicago history, architecture and culture like this while developing our live virtual tours, in-person private tours, and custom content for corporate events. You can join us to experience Chicago’s stories in-person or online. We can also create custom tours and original content about this Chicago topic and countless others.

Sears, Roebuck, and Co. Was the Retail Giant

Chicago has no shortage of famous retailers. To wit, we delve into the glamorous emporium of the old Marshall Field’s on our private tours of downtown. Our Virtual Holiday Stories Happy Hour describes how Montgomery Ward’s accidentally created a beloved cultural icon as a holiday season promo. Yet Sears towered above them all when it came to reach and revenue.

Sears got a late start in the retail trade, when Richard W. Sears founded his Chicago-based mail order business in 1895. He and his successor, Julian Rosenwald, quickly turned Sears into the country’s largest retailer. They recorded $230 million (more than $3 billion today) in mail-order sales in 1920.

As mail-order sales waned, the company adapted. Sears opened its first retail store in 1924. Five years later their stores numbered over 300. Sears also founded many side businesses: Allstate Insurance, Discover Credit Cards, Coldwell Banker Real Estate, WLS (World’s Largest Store) radio. With these myriad revenue streams, Sears dominated America’s retail industry for decades thereafter.

The First Sears Tower

Sears’ explosive growth in the early 20th century also put them in quite a bind. The mail-order business requires a huge amount of warehouse and shipping space. During its first decade, Sears company buildings in Chicago were too small and scattered to keep up with their growth. So the company built a “city within a city” on the West Side.

Completed in 1905, the Sears, Roebuck and Co. Complex in North Lawndale was one of the largest commercial facilities in the world. The 3-million square foot mail-order plant and office facility was the Amazon HQ2 of its day. Sadly, most has been demolished, but the complex’s tower still stands however. You could call it the first Sears Tower. Now known as Nichols Tower, the 14-story Neo-Classical structure looks east across Chicago towards its more famous younger sibling.

The Sears Tower

This is undoubtedly the most famous of the Sears company buildings in Chicago, regardless of its official name. The Sears Tower, the tallest building on the planet for nearly 25 years after its 1973 completion, was the result of Sears’ continuous success. The company outgrew their West Side digs and expected to grow bigger. So up into the sky they went.

The 108 stories of Bruce Graham and Fazlur Rahman Khan‘s famous bundled tube design are a testament to the retail might of Sears. Its looming silhouette in the Chicago skyline is a tangible reminder that no other company so successfully capitalized on the golden ages of mail order and suburban mall retail.

It is no wonder that the Sears Tower is one of Chicago’s most popular landmarks. Guests delight to learn about it on our Bucket List of downtown highlights for private groups.

Neighborhood Department Stores

Sears’ transition to brick-and-mortar retail in the 1920s left an indelible impact on Chicago’s cityscape. The flagship Sears store in Chicago was their State Street location. They occupied the historic Second Leiter Building from 1930-1986.

Less individually famous, but perhaps more significant, were the neighborhood stores. As Preservation Chicago notes, these stores showed Sears at the peak of its local power. An estimated 100,000 people visited the Six Corners location on the day it opened. The commercial life of neighborhoods like Englewood centered on these new Sears company buildings in Chicago. Sadly, the last of them closed in 2018. Demolition may soon follow.

Sears Catalog Homes

Sears Catalog Homes may be among the least-remembered Sears company buildings in Chicago. In its mail-order days Sears offered almost every product imaginable, including, yep, entire houses. Customers, mainly in rural areas, would mail an order for a house to Chicago, and Sears would deliver materials and instructions by rail car.

About 70,000 Sears Catalog Houses were sold between 1900-1942, though exact records of where they ended up have been lost. History enthusiasts have filled that gap, devoting countless hours to documenting surviving catalog homes. The Chicago suburbs alone have hundreds. Driving around to see them sounds like an awesome day-trip idea.

Julius Rosenwald’s Legacy

I’d be remiss to describe Sears company buildings in Chicago without highlighting Julius Rosenwald‘s impact. Rosenwald served as co-owner, President, and Chairman of Sears for nearly 40 years. He became one of the most generous philanthropists in Chicago’s history. Among other things, Rosenwald funded the Museum of Science and Industry, a non-governmental subsidized housing complex in Bronzeville, and the Wabash Avenue YMCA. The prejudice he faced for being Jewish inspired in him a remarkable commitment to social justice.

Rosenwald had two residences in the Chicago area. The first was his Kenwood mansion, built in 1902. Turn-of-the-century Kenwood was among the richest neighborhoods in the city, with ostentatiously over-the-top architecture to match. Rosenwald’s Prairie School home is subdued by comparison. He later built a summer estate in Ravinia, with landscape work by Jens Jensen(!). Today the grounds are open to the public as Rosewood Park and Beach in Highland Park.

The Lasting Impact of Sears Company Buildings in Chicago

Frankly, I was astounded to discover just how vast Sears’ influence is in Chicago’s history and architecture. From the Gilded Age to the Information Age they supplied us with consumer goods and built lasting parts of our shared cityscape. It will be a damn shame when mismanagement and changing times shuffle them off this mortal corporate coil.

The topic of Sears’ wide-ranging influence on Chicago is rich for more exploration. Reach out if you’d like to work with us on creating original content about it, like a documentary.

– Alex Bean, Content Manager and Tour Guide

ABOUT CHICAGO DETOURS

Chicago Detours is a boutique tour company passionate about connecting people to places and each other through the power of storytelling. We bring curious people to explore, learn and interact with Chicago’s history, architecture and culture through in-person private group tours, content production, and virtual tours.

(Please note that our list of overlooked beautiful buildings in Chicago is alphabetical. It was the only way to keep the peace in the office.)

We research Chicago history and architecture like this while developing our live virtual events and custom corporate events. Join us for our public virtual events or book an exclusive team-building event for your private group. We can also create custom tours and original content creation about this Chicago topic and countless others.

#1. The Ashland ‘L’ Station

It seems appropriate to start with a form of architecture that’s often undervalued: transit stations. The Ashland Station, which serves the Green and Pink Lines near Union Park, is one of our few tangible connections to the Gilded Age. The twin station houses look like Queen Anne-style cottages plopped onto the Lake Street ‘L’ tracks.

This style provides a fascinating insight into the mentality of the time. Middle and upper class Chicagoans expected even their transit stops to be elegant and ornate. When the station was constructed in 1895, all the stations above Lake Street looked like this. Sadly, only the Ashland and Conservatory — Central Park Drive station houses survive, which makes me treasure their quirky architecture all the more.

#2. Beer Baron Row

You may call us cheaters for including two whole blocks of mansions in one entry, but we do what we gotta do. Beer Baron Row is a strip of ostentatiously grand residences from the late-19th century heyday of brewing in Chicago.

The Rapp house, at 1407 N. Hoyne, is the best representation of this elite district. The building’s elaborately-decorated mansard roof and bulbous turret shout the original owner’s desire to project his wealth and importance. Last year it became the priciest single-family house in Wicker Park history. 

#3. Chicago Motor Club

Our city’s first Art Deco skyscraper is oft-forgotten, but always gorgeous. Indeed, the 1927 skyscraper sat empty and little-seen until just a few years ago. Hampton Inn poured millions into a meticulous restoration and relaunched this historic building as a hotel in 2015.

The piece de resistance of this streamlined beauty is the eye-popping two-story map of American highways which dominates the lobby, designed by Chicago artist John Warner Norton. Modernist touches abound, turning the early highways of the US into an abstracted invitation to geographical adventure.

#4. Columbus Park Refectory

Columbus Park, on the far western edge of Chicago, is entirely the design of Jens Jensen. His Prairie School landscape architecture makes the beauty and bounty of the natural environment tangible for city-dwellers.

The Mediterranean-style Columbus Refectory, completed in 1923, reflects his spirit with gorgeous simplicity. Graceful arches flood the interior space with sunlight, adding golden luster to the warm yellow brickwork. A loggia, often used for weddings, looks out onto Jensen’s lagoon. Simply divine.

#5. Cook County Hospital Building

Built in 1914, the old Cook County Hospital Building is a monument to the city’s best impulses. The hospital ensured that even the poorest people in Chicago had access to life-saving medical attention. A modern structure took on this role 15 years ago, leaving the historic building empty and neglected.

The moldering ruin of the facade only enhances its appeal, earning it a spot on our list of the most overlooked beautiful buildings in Chicago. Walking around the site, I marveled at its gargantuan size and elaborate Classical decoration. The facade’s faded beauty brought to mind ancient ruins like the Athenian Acropolis. I hope the planned redevelopment of the structure will retain that same beautiful mystery.

#6. Fulton Street Wholesale Market

Fulton Market is famous for its meatpacking and manufacturing history. Gorgeous and soulful architecture Less so. Yet there’s one stretch of West Fulton Market Street that has two of the most overlooked beautiful buildings in Chicago.

The Fulton Street Wholesale Market buildings date back to 1887. The Romanesque Revival structures, built of blood-red brick, evoke the power and economy which drove Chicago’s incredible growth across the 19th century. I feel transported back to the rough and tumble West Side of the Gilded Age when I walked between them during our Factories to Calories Fulton Market Food Tour.

#7. Roosevelt University’s Vertical Campus

Long known as a downtown commuter school, Roosevelt University needed something bold to change their reputation. The result Roosevelt’s vertical campus is one of the most beautiful university buildings in Chicago.

A soaring, shimmering slice of contemporary architecture, the vertical campus burns a bold blue regardless of the weather. The tower also has a distinctive zig-zag design, standing in sharp contrast to the rectilinear profiles of its neighbors in the Loop. Completed in 2012, Roosevelt’s innovative campus is the newest building on our list of overlooked beautiful buildings in Chicago.

#8 Terra Cotta Row

Lake View, like many North Side neighborhoods, is a mishmash of historic and contemporary housing stock. Yet one intersection stands out amidst the sea of handsome three flats, greystones, 4+1’s, and new townhomes. Terra Cotta Row is a patch of historic homes on Oakdale and Seminary that are swamped with ornate terra cotta decoration.

The houses were built in the late 1800s, when Lake View was still outside city limits. Executives at the Northwestern Terra Cotta Company used their homes as a permanent demonstration of the company’s products. The Rokham House, on the northeast corner, is both a fascinating mess architecturally and has the most complete extant terra cotta display.

#9. The Thompson Center

The Thompson Center, which may yet be destined for the rubbish heap of architectural history, is an infamous pickle of a building. The colorful post-modern exterior inspires decidedly mixed reactions. Almost every state official wants to sell and demolish it. Even its architect Helmut Jahn admits it needs a complete overhaul a mere 25 years after construction.

Stepping inside, though, reveals one of the most overlooked beautiful buildings in Chicago. Jahn’s atrium soars dozens of stories overhead, creating a yawning arcade of negative space for your eye and heart to run wild in. No other interior in Chicago can match the Thompson Center’s playful expanse. Check it out now, or else you may be too late.

#10. Yale Building

The Yale Building is a stunning example of turn-of-the-century high-rise residential architecture. The robust Romanesque Revival building in Englewood was built in 1892 for World’s Fair visitors. Today, it has been meticulously restored and serves as senior housing. The bright yellow bricks and hearty massing alone are enough to make it one of the most overlooked beautiful buildings in Chicago.

The central atrium inside the building is where the Yale reveals its hidden beauty. Skylights flood the space with natural sunlight, trickling through the wrought-iron balconies and hanging vines. It gives the space a floral, languid atmosphere akin to the architecture of the Gulf Coast. Gorgeous stuff.

There’s No Shortage of Beautiful Buildings in Chicago

We hope you enjoyed this look at some of the gorgeous architecture in Chicago. We’d love to share it with you on a custom private tour of Chicago’s magnificent neighborhoods. Give us a call!

 – Alex Bean, Content Manager and Tour Guide

ABOUT CHICAGO DETOURS

In business since 2010, Chicago Detours is a passionate team of educators, historians and storytellers. We applied a decade of experience as one of Chicago’s top-rated tour companies to become a virtual event company in 2020. We bring curious people to explore, learn and interact about Chicago’s history, architecture and culture through custom tours, content production, and virtual events.