Spectacular Sights Within the City
The fabulous Wrigley Building in the 1920s when it was new and still a bit lonely.
By Megan McKinney
Of all the buildings in the city, maybe in the nation, this one is our pet—beginning as a favorite destination during visits to Chicago as a little girl—particularly at night, when the city fathers knew to bathe the structure in lights from the south and east.
However, it is scarcely alone in grandeur lining the River.
Across Michigan Avenue from the Wrigley Building but set back from the River is the glorious Tribune Tower, which is gaining a new life for many as an upscale residence.
The Art Deco Merchandise Mart—when it opened in 1930—was the world’s largest building, so large it occupied an entire zip code. Built by the Marshall Fields and owned for more than half century by the Kennedy clan, we at Classic Chicago think of it as the building of spectacular American families.
Nearby on the River is Trump Tower, the skyscraper condo-hotel, named for our President, its owner. The stunning building was designed by Skidmore, Owings and Merrill’s Adrian Smith.
Neighbors are the Marina City twins completed by Bertrand Goldberg in 1964. Actually the complex is a group of four buildings. Added to the two sixty-five story garage/apartment towers are an office building, and an auditorium, once a cinema. The two “corn cobs,” as they were originally nicknamed by the media, each consist of thirty-nine floors of apartments atop nineteen parking levels.
Located across the water at 35 East Wacker Drive is the Jewelers’ Building, completed in 1927, when it was the world’s tallest building outside New York City.
To the west of the Jewelers’ Building on a bend in the River and bordered by Wacker Drive and Franklin and Lake Streets is 333 West Wacker, developed in 1983, from a design by Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates.
Around the River’s bend and far south is the110 story black aluminum and bronze-tinted glass Willis Tower, built as Sears Tower in 1973. Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill’s Bruce Graham and Fazlur Kahn and set away from the River’s edge, it greatly resembles the city’s 875 North Michigan Avenue, for which the pair were also architects.
Further south and against the shore is Bertrand Goldberg’s River City.
But why not launch a personal tour? Your computer can provide you with complete information about the variety of companies that offer architectural boat tours of the stunning array of buildings lining the great River.
Author photo: Robert F. Carl
