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We had never visited
Chicago before, but
we felt a certain familiarity the moment we saw the city's skyline
taking shape across the darkening spring sky. The towering skyscrapers
against the moonlight gave an indelible impression that we were driving
towards Gotham
City.
Well, we didn't see Batman this time around, but the Windy City will
indeed double as the caped crusader's home in the upcoming movie
depicting his first year of crime fighting.
Movies, indeed, were the source of our awareness with the
place: The Untouchables, The Fugitive, Road to Perdition, and, of
course,
Chicago. Those and countless other films were shot here for a
reason—the place makes for an exciting setting, with its breathtaking
scenery and even more dramatic history.
Chicago (Native American for “smelly onion patch”) began as
an outpost in the prairie river area. The pioneer settler of Chicago,
Jean Baptiste Point du Sable, an African American from Sainte-Domingue (Haiti),
built the first permanent settlement in 1779. After a great increase in
population and trade, much of the city was burned down in the Great
Chicago Fire of 1871. Legend has it that a cow owned by a certain Mrs.
O'Leary's kicked over a lantern and that began the whole blaze. As the
city had been built mainly of wood, 17,000 houses were gutted by the
fire in one night. The following day, instead of seeing only utter
destruction, the city officials envisioned a blank canvass on which the
best architects in the world could paint their ambitious designs.
Indeed, the builders of the new city would soon give rise to a modern
architecture that would influence the entire world.
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The best way to take in the city is the Architectural Tour,
conducted on a boat cruising the Chicago River—this is the river
that is dyed green every St. Patrick's Day. Not too long ago, it
was nearly glowing green on its own thanks to all the pollutants
that drained into the river. That was quite alarming since it
drained into
Lake Michigan.
The solution was typical Chicago: reverse the direction of the
river itself. An engineering project more massive than the
digging of the
Panama Canal
was begun in 1900. After that, instead of letting its sewage and
industrial waste flow east into the lake, Chicago began sending
its sewage south into the Corn Belt.
More superlatives were also taking shape. The modern
skyscraper was born here, as the conventional construction
technique using load-bearing walls gave way to the load-carrying
structural frame.
Chicago’s John
Root invented the caisson system of foundations, which made
possible the modern skyscraper. The first one to be built was the
Home Insurance Building, erected in 1885. |
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After this, the sky was truly the limit where construction
was concerned. Higher buildings allowed large numbers of people
to live and work in a limited area. Daniel Burnham’s
Reliance
Building of 1895 is one of the masterpieces of the
Chicago
School, and it was converted in 1999 into the hip new Hotel
Burnham. Mr. Burnham was the co-author of the Chicago Plan, which
laid out plans for the future of the city in 1909. He also drew
up plans for the then colonial cities of Baguio and Manila.
Many prominent
Chicago
buildings are built right on the riverbank, including the massive
Merchandise Mart, the world’s largest building when it opened in
1931. Shrewd business tycoon Joseph P. Kennedy snapped up the
structure after the war just by paying its back taxes. The
elegant Beaux Arts Jewelers Building stands on the south bank,
capped by a domed rotunda that once housed Al Capone’s favorite
speakeasy. Across that is the masterpiece of Ludwig Mies van der
Rohe, the shimmering IBM Building. Mr. Mies van der Rohe favored
restraint in design, famously saying that “Less is more” and “God
is in the details.” |
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