« December 2007 | Main | February 2008 »
(photos by Lee Bey)
A friend of mine--who is a regular reader of Urban Observer--e-mailed me a few weeks back, chastising me for not posting enough photographs of men. "Are you ever going to photograph a man?" she said.
Indeed, I have.
(photos by Lee Bey)
The Urban Observer has previously discussed the above mural by William Walker. The news here is that the Chicago Public Art Group, led by Jon Pounds, has mounted an effort to save this fantastic work near Cabrini Green. Chicago Tribune columnist Mary Schmich writes about the effort in today's paper.
(photo by Lee Bey)
Chicago prides itself on being a city of neighborhoods. But when the architectural spoils are dealt, downtown and the central area get most of the good stuff. Neighborhoods get cheapie strip malls, pug ugly midrise buildings and townhouse developments where the units are as uniform as capped teeth. And who will end this insane war between Walgreen's and CVS? Every neighborhood commercial street corner in Chicago is a casualty...
All this is why the Gary Comer Youth Center at 72nd and South Chicago is worth heralding. Located in working-class Grand Crossing, the center is the home and practice space of the South Shore Drill Team & Performance Ensemble, while doubling as a youth center. The unexpectedly bold and colorful building was designed by Chicago architect John Ronan.
(photo by Lee Bey)
Promontory Point. How much of my youth was spent and misspent here? Still one of my favorite places in the city. Read more here.
Now how did I miss this movie?
The Architect, set in Chicago and released in 2006, starred Anthony LaPaglia as suburban Chicago architect Leo Waters whose work includes a public housing project that an activist wants demolished. According to a description of the movie, "as part of her ongoing campaign to have the projects torn down and decent housing built in its place, [actvist] Tonya [Neely] decides that the one signature she needs more than any other on her petition is that of the projects' original architect, Leo Waters."
This clip makes the movie look quite compelling.
(photos by Lee Bey)
Duty has called the Urban Observer away from the beat again. And you regulars know what that means: photos of good-looking women presented for no justifiable reason.
(photos by Lee Bey)
No street in Chicago tells the story of this city better than Halsted. The road begins at 3800 North and rambles south for 20 miles, passing through nearly every racial, economic and social class before reaching (and passing) the city limits at 130th. We'll stay south of Madison today, (the photo above is from 75th and Halsted) but I promise to explore the northern half as well in a later post.
^Madison & Halsted
^65th and Halsted
^ Uptick in the precious metals market at 63rd and Halsted
^Blue Line stop at Halsted
^Enterprise at 35th and Halsted
^Roosevelt and Halsted
^31st and Halsted
(photos by Lee Bey)
Chicago is such a segregated and balkanized city. Except when it comes to Devon Avenue, a major thoroughfare on the North Side. People from all walks of life stroll the sidewalks and patronize the stores. Wish that the whole city were that way.
(photos by Lee Bey)
I do miss the summertime street musicians, now that winter has set in. Oh well...at least I got pix.
(photos by Lee Bey)
One again, pressing issues are keeping the Urban Observer from his duly-appointed rounds. But I wanted to leave you with something today, so are random photos I've taken over the past two years of the city's public housing disappearing from the urban landscape.
(photo by Lee Bey)
A friend of mine, Chicago developer Cortez Carter, is a pilot. Last year, he took me up in a single-prop Diamond Star airplane. Naturally, I brought my camera. Just in case he wasn't as good a pilot as he claimed, I wanted the NTSB to have just that much more information. The photo above is of Altgeld Gardens public housing project on the far South Side.
This photo shows Michael Reese clustered to the left with the towers of Lake Meadows and Prairie Shores running up and down the middle of the page.
The Hilton at 95th and Cicero.
Most cool hangar at Midway. Didn't CF Murphy & Associates to this?
Cortez and the Urban Observer (left), high above the South Side of Chicago.
(photos by Lee Bey)
Sorry folks--no architecture and urbanism today, thanks to pressing issues beyond the Urban Observer's control. So in keeping with tradition, I'm once again--for no justifiable reason--posting portraits I've taken of women instead.
If this woman looks like Priscilla Presley--wife of The King--its because she is! I photographed her in 2003 at Soldier Field. We were in a skybox together (there were other people, too) and she let me take some photos of her. I was shooting film then and this was scanned in from the negative, which is why its a little scratchy.
(photos by Lee Bey)
I almost let the week slip by without remembering the Pilgrim Baptist Church fire of Jan 6, 2006. The first three photos in this entry were taken by me at daybreak the day after the fire. The rest were taken the night of this terrible blaze at 3301 S. Indiana that claimed everything but the four stone walls of this Adler & Sullivan designed masterpiece. I don't know if much has happened since Edward Lifson reported this a nearly a year ago. Also check out a WBBM TV news report from the morning after. You might recognize one of the people they interviewed.
(photos by Lee Bey)
Jansen's Furniture on Michigan Avenue in the Roseland neighborhood.
(photos by Lee Bey)
The Urban Observer brings another installment of Second City Comedy, an ode to wacky stuff I see around town when I'm photographing architecture and streetscapes.
With the photo above, we begin today's journey where we find a medical clinic called the Payne Center at 87th and Cregier. Gynecology and family planning (ouch!) are among its specialties. And look to the right of the photo. There's free delivery, too.
(Above) At 66th and Western. And thank goodness this place isn't on 69th.
(Above) Darn, is it Christmas again!?!? Oh, wait...never mind.
(Above) So this is the place that put Walled-Off and Obscured Chinese Kitchen #14 out of business for good.
(Above) Most Honest Signage by a Used Car Dealership, 1st place winner.
(photos by Lee Bey)
Three views of Alexander Calder's Flamingo, a 53-foot tall stabile built in 1974 at Chicago's Federal Plaza downtown.
(photos by Lee Bey)
A quick look at what might be the best boulevard in the city--certainly in the top three--Douglas Boulevard on the city's West Side. The thoroughfare runs east/west through the Lawndale community, just west of Douglas Park. The collection of high-style residential architecture and former synagogues (that have been African-American protestant congregations for decades now, such as the one above) and other landmarks from the area's pre-War decades as a center of Jewish life are worth checking out.
Too bad I was between stops on the West Side when I took these photos, but I promise to return and do a deeper exploration. Irving Cutler told me years ago that Golda Meir was a librarian at the Lawndale branch library, back in the day, a fact that I find pretty cool. So any area that can boast Golda and Dr. Martin Luther King as residents sure has some other stories to tell.
Meanwhile, until I get back, learn more about Lawndale's history here, here and here.
(Above) A park splits east and west traffic.
(above) Theodore Herrzl Elementary School, 3711 W. Douglas Blvd.
(photos by Lee Bey)
The North Avenue Beach House reminds me of the background of those old Popeye cartoons. Not the lame ones from the 1950s and 1960s, either. I'm talking about the zany, rotoscoped Max Fleischer ones from the 1930s where the scenery looks real and Popeye's muttering wisecracks just under his breath while delivering serious Sonny Corleone-has-just-found-Carlo-on-the-stoop beatings to Bluto and others.
Anyway, why go the beach in the winter? I don't know. I guess I needed a good show of faith that it will warm up one day. Besides the beachhouse is a friendly, whimsical building, sitting there at the lake looking for all the world like an oceanliner. We spend so much time in Chicago building monuments and remembering Daniel Burnham, we sometimes forget to kick up out heels and have a good time. Even as bitter winds worked me over as I took these photos, I couldn't help but smile a bit as I walked around.
The building, completed in 2000, was designed by Wheeler Kearns Architects and is a faithful reworking of the previous beachhouse that sat on the site. Built in 1939, the earlier beachhouse was designed by Emmanuel Valentine Buchsbaum, which has to be the coolest name in Chicago architecture.
(photos by Lee Bey)
The Urban Observer--trying to make good on a resolution to get around the city a little more this year--finds himself on the city's West Side today, pondering the greatness of the former Sears & Roebuck complex at Homan and Arthington.
The collection of buildings was Sears' headquarters from 1906 until it vacated for the Sears Tower in 1973. Besides being good architecture, the buildings hold a lot of history. The tower on the right in the photo above is a remnant of the massive Catalog House that filled millions of mail orders each year. The top of the 14 story original Sears Tower held the original studio for WLS radio. (Sears owned WLS; the initials meant "World's Largest Store.")
To the right of the photo above you can also see a bit of the collegiate-looking Administration Building, which is now used by a variety of businesses and non-profits. Behind it is a powerhouse that, last I remember, was going to be turned into a charter school and named after noted developer Charles Shaw who died two years ago. Shaw was instrumental in preserving the plant and bringing new development around it.
On with the tour...
(Above) The base of the old Sears Tower
(Above) The Sears testing laboratory. The concrete floors were nearly two feet thick, former Sears industrial designer Chuck Harrison once told me. That's because they tested the strength of heavy appliances by dropping them on the floor. This building is not in use.
(Above) A secondary entrance to the former Administration Building.
(Above) This Art Moderne building from about 1949 is a late addition to the Sears complex. This was the former headquarters of Allstate Insurance, which was founded by Sears. The name came from a brand of tire Sears once sold.
(Above) A stark view of a shuttered parking lot, shot from beneath a pedestrian overpass that led to the former Allstate Building.
(Above) A block-long park and gardens, built by Sears to provide respite for its workers, still exists and is well-manicured by the Homan Square Association, which has maintained the complex for years now.
Check out this site for more interesting Sears facts, including one I'd never heard: Sears President Julius Rosenwald was part of a group of civic folk who helped bring in Eliot Ness to take down Al Capone.
(photos by Lee Bey)
For years, I assumed this modern bridge over Lake Shore Drive at North Avenue was built in the 1960s--maybe the late 1950s at best.
But this is Chicago, where bridge design is an art form. The bridge wasn't designed in 1959, I found out when I worked for the city. Try 1939. Gone with the Wind was in the theaters when this bridge was being put together. The U.S. hadn't even entered World War II yet. All that put this bridge in an entirely different light for me.
The city sponsored a design competition back in 2003 to replace this bridge and bring a few new others to south and north Lake Shore Drive. PSA-Dewberry was picked to design a new bridge for this site. But there hasn't been any significant movement on the entire competition since then. Preservationists consider the bridge endangered. They figure--and rightly, I might add--once City Hall has its heart set on demolishing a structure, it almost never disappoints itself. Preservation Chicago has a nice historical essay on the bridge here.
