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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]