On a recent weekend in Chicago we took a tour of the city from the Chicago River. It was a late summer day, not too hot and not too humid--so it was a beautiful day to sit in the sun on the river for an hour and a half to learn more about the architectural history of the city. The Chicago Architecture Foundation has tours that occur quite regularly throughout the day on a comfortable boat at an affordable price.
The tour begins under what used to be known as the Michigan Ave Bridge, but what was recently renamed the DuSable bridge, after the Haitian Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable who is credited with being Chicago's first resident. He settled on the north bank of the Chicago river near where it opened into Lake Michigan sometime in the 1780's. He is surely not the first man to live there, but he is first that we know about, so he gets the credit. Then the river ran into Lake Michigan, but in the 19th century the flow was reversed--too much pollution locally for. It was not noted how those who now lived downstream of Chicago felt about being on the receiving end of their waste, bt one presumes they were not altogether pleased.
We learned about four styles of architecture that are prominent on the river--beaux artes, art deco, modernism, and post modernism. The style that I like the best is the art deco and the style I like the least is the modernist style--which is essentially a rectangular box in the skyline--the less it sticks out the better. Mies van der Rohe is the man who brought this uninteresting style to Chicago and perpetuated it--the buildings he designed are not quite Soviet era dreary, but they come very close to that. My very favorite art deco building on the tour was the Carbide and Carbon Building--it was far from simple--it has a green tiled exterior with gold highlights around the top, but it was a graceful and memorable building.
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