Interview: Anna Castellani on Loop’s Hottest New Food Hall
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: The Art of Conversation
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 […]
Review: Tall Towers as Tools of Profit and Racism, Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934–1986, by Thomas Leslie
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, […]
Review: The City in Your Pocket, AIA Guide to Chicago
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 […]
Interview: Tim Samuelson and the Intangible of History
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 […]
Review: The Seed-Germ King: Louis Sullivan’s Idea, by Tim Samuelson and Chris Ware
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. […]
Review: The Wright Place: Frank Lloyd Wright’s $10,000 Home
Frank Lloyd Wright’s $10,000 Home: History, Design, and Restoration of the Bach House Robert J. Hartnett Master Wings Publishing Despite any fame suggested by the hideous portmanteau starchitect, few architects […]
Review: It Is What It Is: Guide to Chicago’s Twenty-First-Century Architecture
Guide to Chicago’s Twenty-First-Century Architecture Chicago Architecture Center and John Hill University of Illinois Press As packed with tacky tourist traps as any city, Chicago has one irreproachable draw: its […]
Review: Modernist Homes in Midcentury Chicago, Modern in the Middle, by Susan Benjamin and Michelangelo Sabatino
Modern in the Middle: Chicago Houses 1929–75 By Susan Benjamin and Michelangelo Sabatino with a foreword by Pauline Saliga The Monacelli Press Pauline Saliga, executive director of the Society of […]
Rubbernecking Rich Living, Chicago Apartments: A Century and Beyond of Lakefront Luxury
Chicago Apartments: A Century and Beyond of Lakefront Luxury By Neil Harris with Teri J. Edelstein University of Chicago Press, 364 pages, $85 Reading Neil Harris’s Chicago Apartments: A Century […]
Review: Deep South Side, Lee Bey’s Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side
Southern Exposure: The Overlooked Architecture of Chicago’s South Side By Lee BeyNorthwestern University Press, 192 pages, $30 Reviewed by Patrick T. Reardon When Lee Bey writes about Pride Cleaners, he […]
The Story of Ravenswood Manor: A Look Into Its Past and Beyond
Over the last year, the neighborhood of Ravenswood Manor has made local headlines concerning proposals for the area to receive Chicago Landmark District status. Spearheaded by neighborhood activists and organizers, […]