Private Lines and the World’s Fair

The first section of what would eventually become the ‘L’ opened in 1892. It ran above alleyways from Congress Street downtown to 39th Street on the South Side. Some of this original elevated track is still in use by the Green Line today. By the next year, the system was extended all the way down to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park. This route became one of the most popular methods for reaching the fairground.

Like the massive transcontinental railroads of the 1800’s, the Southside ‘L’ was a private enterprise. In fact, most of the ‘L’ system was built by private companies. As our guests on the Loop Interior Architecture Walking Tour have learned, constructing the ‘L’ was a very corrupt business. A shady tycoon named Charles Yerkes used graft and bribery to pave the way for his company to construct downtown’s Loop in the 1890’s.

Centralization and Public Takeover

By the 1920’s, the ‘L’ was a staple of the city’s infrastructure. A Tribune article from 1997 describes the early days of the ‘L’ as a system “…in which discounted fares are not grudgingly offered but enthusiastically marketed, conductors are positioned in each car to assist passengers and service is so frequent that stations are empty for only 15 seconds between rush-hour trains.” Customer service was such a priority that funeral trains could be commissioned. Some stations even had lifts for caskets.

The handful of companies that operated the ‘L’ were under financial strain, and ended up being consolidated in 1924. Samuel Insull, an electricity tycoon, bought out the four separate ‘L’ companies. Their lines and operations became part of a centralized corporation called the Chicago Rapid Transit Company. This cut out the cost of competition. It also made transfers and fare purchases easier for customers.

The arrangement limped along until 1947. The city of Chicago and state of Illinois combined the city’s transit systems into a new public agency: the Chicago Transit Authority. That agency remains the operator the ‘L’ to this day. Many route closures, expansions, and realignments have happened since, but the core of the system has remained largely the same since it was built over a century ago.

-Alex Bean, Office Manager and Tour Guide

Marshall Field’s (111 N. State)

The recent book A Shopper’s Paradise by Emily Remus has shined a light on Chicago women’s history at the end of the Gilded Age. The theaters and sidewalks of the Loop and the department stores of State Street, especially Marshall Field’s, were an active battleground over changing social customs. Women were not an active public presence in pre-fire Chicago. Social custom of the time dictated that genteel American ladies were domestic–the home was their castle. As such, it was incredibly rare for women to be in public without a male escort.

Field’s changed all that. Their famous motto–“Give the lady what she wants!”–obviously catered directly to the female shoppers who began flocking to the Loop. The sudden presence of women in the public sphere unleashed a tempest of controversy. We delve into an interesting story on this topic when we visit Field’s on the Loop Interior Architecture Walking Tour. Remus’s book spells out much more, especially the repeated attempts to ban female fashions like hoop skirts and feathered hats.

Art Institute of Chicago (111 S. Michigan Ave.)

A lot of Chicago women’s history revolves around the Art Institute. Even from its founding, it was an institution that contained strong female voices. That said, many women artists, from the White Rabbits to the Monster Roster, did not find mainstream success because of the AIC’s traditional nature. That didn’t stop one of our favorite women artists, Lee Godie, because she quite literally worked outside the walls of the academy. Godie was most often found outside the Art Institute, selling her artwork on the steps.

Godie rarely talked about her personal life, but her life spirit was unmissable. She unmistakably ruled the roost outside the Art Institute for roughly 30 years. Godie was often dressed in huge swatches of fabric or fur coats and bright orange circles painted on her cheeks. She sold her original paintings (which were inspired by Cezanne) on the steps. She often slept outside merely steps away. Multiple sources state that she was the most collected artist in Chicago in the ’80s. Indeed, Mayor Daley II proclaimed September 1991 to be “Lee Godie Exhibition Month” because her fame and acclaim were so great.

Rush More Mural (78 E. Washington)

The backside of the Chicago Cultural Center is a monument to Chicago’s women. “Rush More” is a gigantic mural which honors 20 of the most influential women in Chicago history. The Detours staff have been huge fans from the drop, since we’re very into badass Chicago women as evidenced from our event for Women’s History Month. A non-profit called Murals of Acceptance commissioned the work from South Side artist Kerry James Marshall.

According to a DNAInfo story, the artist “aim[ed] to brighten up the narrow, alley-like street by adding a ‘parklike view’ with a bright sun and trees.” Visitors will definitely spot recognizable faces like Oprah Winfrey and Maggie Daley. I love that women a little further from the spotlight, like Sandra Cisneros, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Harriet Monroe, also made it onto our Rushmore.

Chess Records (2120 S. Michigan)

At 2120 S. Michigan Avenue is a landmark of Chicago blues history. People often highlight blues greats like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Willie Dixon. Let’s remember that the queen of Chicago blues, Koko Taylor, recorded there, too! Her performance of “Wang Dang Doodle” took fun to another level. Read more about her in “Three Chicago Musicians of Maxwell Street.”

Fine Arts Building (410 S. Michigan)

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.

This year’s event will be at 7:30pm on Friday, March 20th, 2020 at Sleeping Village, 3734 W. Belmont Ave. This event will benefit Chicago Women’s Health Center which has been a force for good in Chicago for decades.

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.

Rev. Willie Barrow

Presenter Kyle Ann Sebastian shared the story of Rev. Willie Barrow at our 2018 event. A co-founder of Operation PUSH, Barrow was a tireless advocate for anyone and everyone in need. Nicknamed the Little Warrior, she was a fierce fighter for justice and community organizer. Barrow mentored enormously influential figures like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and President Barack Obama and established the Barrow Fund for Black Women’s Leadership. Barrow was named the city’s Woman of the Year in 1969–a very nice accolade for one of the great women in Chicago’s history.

Bessie Coleman

Storyteller Velma Gladney brought the house down when she took on the persona of early Black female aviatrix Bessie Colman at the 2019 Badass Women event. Coleman was the first woman of African American and Native American descent to earn a pilot’s license. As one might surmise from such a description, she was the very definition of a badass woman. Gladney roared “…I didn’t take hell from nobody!” when men told [Coleman] she couldn’t make it as a pilot. Coleman used her prominence for good, advocating for the desegregation of the flight shows she performed in. Truly one of the most audacious black women in Chicago history.

Mary Jane Richardson Jones

Badass women have been affecting the course of black history since Chicago’s earliest days. Mary Jane Richardson Jones is a fantastic example of this–a free Black woman who bravely advocated emancipation and suffrage. Jones was born free in Tennessee in 1820 and moved to Chicago when she was 25 years old. Illinois, at that time, had one of the strictest Black Codes in the Union. Living in Chicago as a free Black woman in the 1840s was a courageous act, but Jones went even further. She and her husband, a freed slave himself, turned their home into a stop on the Underground Railroad. It is hard to imagine a more courageous action or a more badass political figure.

Vivian Harsh

Badass women can often change the course of history through quiet advocacy and actions. Vivian Harsh, the first African-American to head a branch of the Chicago Public Library, personifies this truism. Harsh led the effort in the 1920s to bring a full service library branch to Bronzeville, then (as now) the beating heart of Chicago’s black community. Julius Rosenwald, of Sears fame, donated the money to start the branch and funded Harsh’s scholarly work. She, in turn, nurtured the growing literary scene in the Black Metropolis and collected material about African-American history decades before it became a widely-studied field. Without women like Harsh our sense of Black history would be vastly diminished.

Hear More Black History at Badass Women 2020!

We’ve got an exciting slate of presenters and stories on tap for this year’s Badass Women of Chicago History. Two presenters will share stories from Chicago’s Black history. Tracy Baim, the Executive Editor and Publisher of the Windy City Times will tell us about trailblazing black lesbian icon Vernita Gray. Lolly Bowean, whose work at the Chicago Tribune we adore, will tell the crowd about Ethel Payne, “the First Lady of the Black Press.”

See you at Sleeping Village on March 20th!

– 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.

Outline of Fort Dearborn

Military history in Chicago goes back to the city’s very start. Fort Dearborn stood at what is now the intersection of Michigan and Wacker. Potawatomi warriors destroyed the original fort after the Battle of Fort Dearborn during the War of 1812. A rebuilt fort in the same location fell into disrepair soon after the Black Hawk War in the 1830s. Its moldering remains went up in smoke during the Great Fire of 1871. Bronze plaques in the sidewalk on Michigan Avenue mark Fort Dearborn’s original location.

Oak Woods Cemetery Confederates’ Grave

During the Civil War Camp Douglas was constructed around 31st and Cottage Grove. Camp Douglas became one of the largest, and deadliest, prison camps for Confederate POWs throughout the war. Around 4,000 Confederate soldiers from the camp are buried in Oak Woods Cemetery. That mass grave, the largest in the Western hemisphere, is another of the forgotten sites of military history in Chicago.

The Soldiers’ Home

Just south of Camp Douglas, at 35th and Lake Shore Drive, is the Soldiers’ Home. This grand structure is the oldest extant site of military history with a direct tie to the Civil War. The Soldiers’ Home, built in 1864, served as a convalescence center during the war. Crippled veterans lived there in the years after the war. Built in the Italianate style, it survives to the present day as a facility for the Archdiocese of Chicago.

GAR Memorial Hall and Rotunda

After the Civil War, veterans of the Union Army founded a fraternal organization, the Grand Army of the Republic, to advocate for surviving veterans and memorializing their fallen comrades. The Chicago chapters constructed a Memorial Hall in what is today the Chicago Cultural Center. The room served as a meeting space for the GAR and once housed Civil War artifacts. The room is capped by a 40-foot-diameter stained glass dome.

Soldier Field and Navy Pier

Two of the Chicago lakefront’s biggest landmarks, Soldier Field and Navy Pier, are tributes to World War I military history in Chicago. The city built much of the Burnham Plan in the 1910s and ’20s, just as millions of American doughboys returned from the Great War. Honoring the war dead and valorous veterans became de riegeur for American politicians. So city leaders redubbed Municipal Grant Park Stadium as Solider Field and Municipal Pier became Navy Pier in 1927.

Navy Pier continued to live up to its name during WWII. The U.S. Navy turned the pier into a training facility in 1941, hosting 10,000 sailors and pilots in the safe bosom of the Great Lakes for the duration of the war. Supposedly, wrecked navy planes from failed training exercises litter the bottom of Lake Michigan.

The Eighth Regiment Armory and Bronzeville Victory Monument

There is no neighborhood in Chicago where our military history is more prominent than Bronzeville. The onetime home of Camp Douglas would become the home of the “Fighting Eighth,” the first all-black military regiment in American history. Formed in 1870, just after the Civil War, the Eighth Infantry Regiment of the Illinois National Guard cemented the place of free blacks in Chicago society. Their armory, the first for a black regiment in the United States, was built in the heart of the Black Metropolis in 1914. Lots of firsts among the Fighting Eighth!

A memorial to the soldiers of the Eighth Regiment stands just a few blocks away, at King Drive and 35th. The Victory Monument commemorates the black soldiers from Chicago who fought on the fields of France during WWI. The black doughboy atop the white granite shaft is one of my favorite traces of military history in Chicago.

World War II Factories

Chicago played a key role during WWII not just as a training center for the Navy. The Windy City also switched over its enormous industrial capacity to wartime production during the war.

Among the most significant were the factories which assembled American air superiority. According to Jerome O’Connor’s “The Hidden Places of World War II”, manufacturing facilities near today’s Midway and O’Hare Airports were essential to the Allied victory. An enormous facility at Orchard Field (today’s O’Hare) produced Douglas C-54 Skymasters, while the Dodge-Chicago factory on the Southwest Side produced the engines for the B-29 bomber. Perhaps it’s unsurprising that both airports now pay tribute to WWII. Midway is named for the Battle of Midway, while O’Hare is named after a Navy flying ace.

Military Museums in Chicago

Two small-scale museums honor the country’s military history. The National Veterans Art Museum, which I wrote about a few years back, features artwork and exhibitions by American vets. Their stunning “Above and Beyond” installation, now at the Harold Washington Library, suspends 58,000 dog tags, each representing a fallen American soldier in Vietnam, above the library’s main escalators.

The Pritzker Military Museum and Library, in the Loop’s Monroe Building, was founded by retired Col. Jennifer Pritzker to commemorate the role of citizen-soldiers in the preservation of American democracy. Their permanent collection, rotating exhibits, archive, and events all aim to further understanding of military history in Chicago and beyond.

Finding Military History in Chicago

Despite Chicago’s only battle taking place over two centuries ago, we have many ties to American military history. Of course, this doesn’t even account for the countless Chicagoans who have served their country. Their service is worth remembrance and the sites associated with it deserve preservation.

– Alex Bean and Marie Rowley

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.

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