Louis Sullivan and Daniel Burnham lived parallel lives. Both were born in the East and came to Chicago in their youth. Both were poor students and relatively aimless until they […]
One of the many joys of reading Carla Bruni and Phil Thompson’s Chicago Homes: A Portrait of the City’s Everyday Architecture is the way the book dazzles the reader with […]
How does an old Chicago building survive? Public outcry and organized protest have saved a few, yes, but it usually comes down to owners and occupants continuing to give a […]
Sometimes the biggest things go unnoticed. The Uptown Theatre, for example. For a full century it’s stood at 4816 North Broadway, always there but overlooked by passersby since it closed […]
The 1902 plan to revamp and expand the National Mall in Washington, DC, was the product of a commission of prominent Americans. Three of them worked closely together to produce […]
Can something be both overexposed and unseen? After years of black and white images of Louis Sullivan’s buildings being demolished or in the midst of eradication, we tend to think […]
Anna Castellani, founder of Local Culture Management, is known for seeing what a city has to offer, seeing what the city needs, and creating spaces that enhance and reflect the […]
Dear Cinnamon is our monthly column based on the idea that all of life’s questions can be answered by art, because, after all, art is the spice of life. To […]
Thomas Leslie’s Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986 is an impressive and important book that ranks with other works providing the deepest insights into what makes Chicago, Chicago: Nature’s Metropolis by William Cronon, […]
Chicago is so much more than its buildings…still they’re hard to miss. Ever since Jean Baptiste Point Du Sable built his home on the Chicago River’s banks, structures have risen […]
When Timothy Samuelson stood in the center of his windowless, crowded studio, surrounded by gorgeous artifacts of the past, I thought he might break into song. “Nothing in here doesn’t […]
Louis Sullivan’s Idea, a biography of the 19th century Chicago architect, by Chicago’s first cultural historian Timothy Samuelson, is, in the most literal sense of the word, a beautiful book. […]