Bertrand Goldberg in Tower Town is a three-part set of articles, and Postwar Development of Michigan & Pearson is the second in a series of several Forgotten Chicago features highlighting this Chicago-based architect’s one-time residence in the 1930s, and lesser-known built and proposed projects in the Chicago area. This article looks at the demolition in the 1940s of Goldberg’s former 1930s “commune” for retail and housing and changes to the site since that time. Read More »

Bertrand Goldberg in Tower Town is a three-part set of articles, and the first in a series of several Forgotten Chicago features highlighting the Chicago-based architect’s one-time residence in the 1930s, and lesser-known built and proposed projects in the Chicago area. This article examines Goldberg’s former residence on the site of the former Senator Charles Farwell home Read More »

Chicago is, as one writer put it, a “city of travelers.”¹ The city’s sheer sprawl made that moniker inevitable. It also led to the creation of a transportation system that, at its apogee, consisted of a web of streetcars, diesel buses, electrified trolleybuses and elevated railways and subways. But not every mode of public transportation that once served Chicago is extant today. Read More »

When Thomas J. Harper, president of the West Town State Bank, opened for business on the morning of May 24th, 1930, he could not have known it would be the last such opening for some time. That day, after spending seventeen years in a two story building on West Madison Street Read More »

Born out of an elitist North Shore sensibility, the tumultuous transformation of the Edgewater Golf Club into the egalitarian Warren Park reveals much about the complicated process of real estate development in Chicago. Read More »

Chicago historian Dominic Pacyga characterizes Chicago as a snake that transforms itself every generation, shedding its old skin to emerge a new and different creature. Read More »

Looking at fiction films shot on location in Chicago as documents of a real place, three prevalent themes emerge. Read More »

In Chicago, a disused or demolished crossing of every type can be found. Here we are focusing on vehicular bridges over water where a connection no longer remains. Read More »

The simplest definition of a four plus one is a five story apartment building where the first floor consists of the lobby and a parking lot. Read More »

In true Chicago fashion, a plan has been announced and set in stone before anyone has had a chance to comment on it. Read More »