June 2014
There are several river cruises available to take in Chicago, and I highly recommend that you take at least one. While it is a touristy thing to do, it is also a great way to see the city, and can be a great place to cool off if your day gets too hot and muggy.
We chose to take the Chicago Architecture Foundation river cruise aboard “Chicago’s First Lady”. The tour is 90 minutes long and at this point – June 2014 – it cost $37.85/person plus tax, WHICH is 9.75% in Chicago.
We took the last tour of the day, which in June was 7:30 pm. This gave us the opportunity to leave in the day light and travel through the sunset arriving back at dark. It was a great time enjoy the sun setting on the city.
The boat takes off from the Southeast corner of Michigan and Wacker, so you are able to sit and enjoy the Wrigley building while waiting to take off.
When ground was broken for the Wrigley Building in 1920, there were no major office buildings north of the Chicago River and the Michigan Avenue Bridge, which spans the river just south of the building was still under construction. The land was selected by William Wrigley Jr. to headquarter his gum company. The building was designed by the architectural firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst & White using the shape of the Giralda tower of Seville’s Cathedral combined with French Renaissance details. The south tower was completed in April 1921 and the north tower in May 1924.
The building is clad in glazed terra-cotta. On occasion, the entire building is hand washed to preserve the terra cotta. The Wrigley Building was Chicago’s first air-conditioned office building.
This is 333 Wacker Drive. Designed by Kohn Pederson Fox, it sits on an awkward triangular site where the chicago river makes a sharp turn.
An interesting smaller structure on the river is the Union Station power plant building, which stands today at 301 S. Taylor Street. Built in 1931 and designed by architects Graham, Anderson, Probst and White, its construction was urged along, because its predecessor occupied the future site of the new Post Office. Construction on the Post Office could not be started until the old power plant was replaced and demolished.
You will pass the Old Main Post Office on the tour. It has been abandoned for now and is awaiting someone to grab it up for rehabilitation/reuse. There have been proposals, but it is a whopping 2.7 Million square feet, a project that could take decades if it gets under way.
This is the Spirit of Progress. She sits atop a tower, which is a part of the Montgomery Ward complex. Montgomery Ward was a large part of Chicago history, and now it is a large part of the adaptive re-use program along the river. You will see the buildings and learn a lot about the role of Mr Ward and historic preservation.
Speaking of progress…In earlier times the Chicago River was used to dump sewage, factory, and other wastes that badly polluted the river. The river was connected to Lake Michigan, the source of water for Chicago residents. When the Chicago River watershed became too big because of rain storms, the river overflowed into the lake. A particularly heavy rainstorm in 1885 caused sewage to be flushed into the lake beyond the clean water intakes. The resulting typhoid, cholera, and dysentery epidemics killed an estimated 12 percent of Chicago’s 750,000 residents, and raised a public outcry to find a permanent solution to the city’s water supply and sewage disposal crisis.
The city’s solution? Make the river run backwards via the Sanitary and Ship Canal, constructed in the 1920’s and 30’s at an estimated cost of over $70,000,000.
The reversal of the Chicago River was the largest municipal earth-moving project ever completed. Significant new excavation technology and techniques developed and perfected on the project contributed to the construction of the Panama Canal.
One of the turn around spots is Navy Pier. Navy Pier was planned and built to serve as a mixed-purpose piece of public infrastructure. Its primary purpose was as a cargo facility for lake freighters, and warehouses were built up and down the Pier. However, the Pier was also designed to provide docking space for passenger excursion steamers, and in the pre–air conditioning era parts of the Pier, especially its outermost tip, were designed to serve as cool places for public gathering and entertainment. I was surprised to learn that today, Navy Pier is Chicago’s number one tourist attraction
The Navy Pier Ferris Wheel opened on July 1, 1995. It operates year-round, weather permitting, and has 40 gondolas, each seating up to 6 passengers. Its 40 spokes, span a diameter of 140 feet.
Did you know there are 18 yep Eighteen, movable bridges on the loop? If you love bridges, or just want to learn a little bit more about the Chicago Loop Bridges check out this site.
Some of my favorite buildings in Chicago make up Marina City. Marina City is a complex of two 60-story towers built in 1964 by Bertrand Goldberg, a student of Mies van der Rohe. It consists of apartments, recreation facilities, offices, restaurants, banks, a theater and 18 stories of parking space.
The experimental complex was financed by unions who feared that the outflow of people from the cities in the early sixties would lead to a decrease in jobs.
The cylindrical shape was used to cut down on wind pressure. The architect chose reinforced concrete instead of steel as this was the only material in which he could create the petal shapes of the apartments. When finished, the two towers were both the tallest residential buildings and the tallest reinforced concrete structures in the world. It was also the first building in the United States to be erected with tower cranes.
Further down on the tour you will see River City II, also designed by Bertrand Goldberg. River City II represents the last of Goldbergs buildings in this style.
River City II was the one part of the larger River City plan that was constructed. It was a portion of the “snake” that was ultimately completed as River City II.
River City II was a mid-rise housing complex, containing 446 residences. Unlike Marina City, the units did not feature balconies, but did have clerestories on their “inner side” to gain light from the interior atrium. The curvilinear structure, eight to fifteen stories in height, featured a private interior passageway called “the River Road,” . The project was cast in place concrete, unusual for the time and the very large and long sklyight over River Road was made of glass block held in thin concrete ribbing. Originally designed as rental housing, the owners of the project later converted it to condominiums.
Trump Tower, designed by Skidmore Owens and Merrill includes, from the ground up, retail space, a parking garage, a 366 room hotel, and condominiums. The sign had just gone up the day before our tour, and is very controversial. I find it offensive, way out of scale with its surroundings, but Trump thinks it is d-i-v-i-n-e, and insists the world loves it. How he would know that, since it had only been installed a few days of this writing when the controversy began, is interesting.
Near Navy Pier is Lake Point Tower. The building was designed by John Heinrich and George Schipporeit, who were both students of Mies van der Rohe. The design was partially derived from a sketch Mies van der Rohe made in 1921. The original proposal made by the architects consisted of a building with 4 wings, but was ultimately replaced by a design which included only 3 wings due to cost. The advantages of the latter were a shorter construction time and a 120 degree angle between the wings, so that the apartments would not face each other.
235 West Van Buren by Perkins and Will
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You will pass so many, many more beautiful sites along the cruise and learn about the architecture that formed and is still transforming Chicago. Enjoy!