Spreading confusion over the internet since 1994
From the NYT, April 18, 1905
High Masons At Chicago
Members of the Masonic Order assembled here today to celebrate the golden jubilee of the Oriental Consistory. The new home of the Oriental Consistory, at Dearborn Avenue and Walton Place, is to be dedicated.Members are here from England, Turkey, France, Hawaii, and Cuba. The one hundredth convention of the Ancient Accepted Scottish Rite of the Valley of Chicago is also being held.
This is Marble Arch
Marble Arch is a white Carrara-marble monument at the junction of Oxford Street, Park Lane, and Edgware Road, almost directly opposite Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park in London, England. The arch is on a large traffic island, which also includes a very small park, in the midst of swirling traffic. The traffic island is directly across from the Marble Arch tube station.
The name “Marble Arch” also refers to the locality in west London where the arch is situated, particularly, the southern portion of Edgware Road. Historically, only members of the royal family and the King’s Troop, Royal Horse Artillery, have been allowed to pass through the arch in ceremonial procession.
Lightbox version
A little while of Terra Paradise
I dreamed, of autumn rivers, silvas green,
Of sanctimonious mountains high in snow,
But in that dream a heavy difference
Kept waking and a mournful sense sought out,
In vain, life’s season or death’s element.
—Wallace Stevens, 1879-1955
Montrachet-Le-Jardin
Photo of downtown buildings, Chicago Loop, cross-processed in Photoshop.
Strangely enough, we just linked to the history of these Schlitz sponsored buildings a few days ago.
City officials want to assign landmark status to eight former Schlitz taverns that opened more than 100 years ago, a group of buildings that includes the popular Lakeview nightspot Schuba’s Tavern. Adorned with distinctive Schlitz globes, the structures are reminders of an era when beer makers like Joseph Schlitz Brewing Co. owned and operated their own saloons, a foreign concept to barhoppers today.
Built in the late 19th and early 20th century in Queen Anne or Baroque style, so-called brewery-tied houses “convey important aspects of the ethnic, social and commercial life of the city’s neighborhoods,” a spokesman for the Chicago Department of Zoning & Land Use Planning writes in an e-mail. The city Commission on Chicago Landmarks will consider a preliminary recommendation to designate the properties as landmarks at a Thursday meeting. It’s the beginning of a process that could take a year, ending with a City Council vote on the proposal.
(click to continue reading Landmark status on tap for former Schlitz taverns | News | Crain’s Chicago Business.)
Good, I hope the city officials follow through with this initiative. I realize the past is not sacrosanct, but personally am of the opinion that some history of a city, especially a city as architecturally aware as Chicago, should be retained against the onslaught of developers seeking to raze all in their path.
for sale a few years ago, if I’m not mistaken
Embiggening is just a click away
Wicker Park / Bucktown area
Detail of the Chicago Landmark, Reebie Storage Warehouse, Clark Street.
view bigger:
decluttr
some history:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reebie_Storage_Warehouse
www.cityofchicago.org/Landmarks/R/ReebieStorage.html
I think this place finally closed down recently
Skybridge, West Loop. Applied the new 3D filter in Photoshop CS5, can you tell? Pretty subtle, at least on this particular photo.
[Click to embiggen, natch]
My AlienSkin filters1 no longer work – they claim a new version of Exposure is to be released in June, taking advantage of the 64 bit architecture of Photoshop CS5. Haven’t attempted to run CS5 in 32-bit mode. Also haven’t tried my scanner to see if it will work, or if Epson has released new drivers yet.2
Footnotes:The Lens blog of The New York Times invited all photographers, of all levels of skill, to submit a photo taken at 15:00 UTC, which translated into 10 AM C.S.T. for me.
May 2nd. Activists lingering at the Haymarket Riot Memorial Statue, with guitars and so forth.
Uploaded to the New York Times “A Moment in Time” global mosaic.
Where will you be on Sunday, May 2, at 15:00 hours (U.T.C.)?
Wherever you are, we hope you’ll have a camera — or a camera phone — in hand. And we hope you’ll be taking a picture to send to Lens that will capture this singular instant in whatever way you think would add to a marvelous global mosaic; a Web-built image of one moment in time across the world.
We extend the invitation to everyone, everywhere. Amateurs. Students. Pros. People who’ve been photographing for a lifetime or who just started yesterday.
What matters more than technique is the thought behind the picture, because you’ll only be sending us one. So please do think beforehand about where you will want to be and what you will want to focus on. Here are the general topics:
Religion
Play
Nature and the Environment
Family
Work
Arts and Entertainment
Money and the Economy
Community
Social Issues[Click to continue reading A Timely Global Mosaic, Created by All of Us – Lens Blog – NYTimes.com]
I was reading my Sunday papers (including, coincidentally, The New York Times), drinking my first coffee of the day, and almost forgot about the project. However, I remembered in time to put on a clean shirt and strap on my camera for a brief walk up and down my street. I took about a dozen photos, a few of which I’ve uploaded to Flickr. The photo above, of the Haymarket Riot Memorial Statue is the one I submitted, even though I’m not that happy with it, truth be told.
Here are a few others I took this morning. Click a photo to enlarge it…
Everlasting broken windows
Sunday morning Parking Lot
Constrained Urban Living – Polapan Blue
Rooftops
Green Roof-esque
Chicago Ice Age
West Loop
from last fall
A new way to take a tour of Chicago’s architectural marvels using a 2-D barcode and smart phones. Sounds very cool, I’ll let you know how it works.
A new walking tour will let you download the history of great Chicago buildings on a web-enabled cell phone.
The tour promises to give you a quick and easy way to access loads of information about ten early Chicago skyscrapers, among them Louis Sullivan’s former Carson Pirie Scott & Co. store (now the Sullivan Center) at the corner of State and Madison Streets, Holabird & Roche’s Marquette Building at 141 S. Dearborn St., and D.H. Burnham & Co.’s Railway Exchange Building (now the Santa Fe Building) at 80 E. Jackson Blvd.
The tour has been put together by the Chicago-based Society for Architectural Historians and it’s expected to be up and running by Saturday, April 17.
“We don’t get a penny. It’s a public service,” said Pauline Saliga, executive director of the society, which is holding its annual convention in Chicago from April 21 to 25.
The tour uses a barcode technology called the Microsoft tag. Each tag is a small icon. The SAH is posting tags on signs in the lobbies of ten early Loop skyscrapers. (An example, from the former Carson Pirie Scott store, is above.)
To get the tour info, which is free, you download the free Microsoft application for your web-enabled cell phone (say, an iPhone or a BlackBerry) at: http://gettag.mobi. Then, open the application on your phone and, with the application still open, use your phone to photograph the tag on one of the lobby signs. Presto! A photo of the building and its history is supposed to appear.
“The Sky’s the Limit: A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers” (Rizzoli International Publications)The text comes from the authoritative 1990 book, “The Sky’s The Limit: A Century of Chicago Skyscrapers.” Saliga was its editor.
[Click to continue reading Cityscapes: Point, shoot and learn–new system lets you download tour information about great Chicago skyscrapers ]
Other than using the proprietary Microsoft tag instead of the open-source QR code, this is an awesome idea, and hope it spreads to more areas, and even other cities
Mayor Daley’s budget is in deficit, municipal projects don’t get funded, schools don’t get funded, yet developers can get as much TIF money1 as they need, no matter what. No consequences, no strings. Just plain ole corporate welfare.
A city panel approved another major increase in financial assistance for planned Loop apartment development that has struggled to get off the ground because of rising costs and the tough lending climate.
The Community Development Commission signed off Tuesday on a $34-million tax-increment financing subsidy to help pay for the conversion of a vintage Loop office tower at 188 W. Randolph St. into a 310-unit apartment building.
That’s more than four times the $8 million in TIF funds the city initially approved for the development back in 2006, when its total cost was estimated at $79 million.
But the projected cost had soared to $139 million in 2008, and the project’s developer, Village Green Cos., went back for more. The city complied by hiking the subsidy to $20 million.
[Click to continue reading Loop project poised to get another big TIF boost – Chicago Real Estate Daily]
Via Lynn Becker, who adds:
When, in 2006, a developer announced plans to rehab Vitzhum & Burns Steuben Club Building at 188 W. Randolph, an $8 million dollars contribution from the massive Central Loop TIF was going to kick in about 10% of the $79 million cost.
…
But wait – there’s more! The project is also getting $40 million dollars in tax-exempt bonds from the state, plus $37 million in tax credits. You, lucky taxpayer, kick in almost half of the project cost and the private developer gets the building. Socialism, Chicago style.
When Draconian cutbacks are effecting everything in Chicago from the CTA, to the schools, to 4th of July Fireworks, the city is diverting another $26 million in tax revenues to an economically unsustainable development.
[Click to continue reading ArchitectureChicago PLUS: Welfare Queen]
Really disgusting. The Vitzthum & Burns Steuben Club Building is not a cookie-cutter square box, but it isn’t in the upper echelon of Chicago architecture either.
from a CBS Chicago report (presumedly based on the press release from Village Green Companies)
The Community Development Commission approved a plan to redevelop the vacant and historic Randolph Tower at 188 W. Randolph St. into 310 apartments, retail and commercial space, according to a release from the CDC.
The action recommends the designation of Village Green Companies as the developer for the proposed $145 million renovation.
Plans call for the mixed-use building, formerly known as the Steuben Club Building, to be converted into 168 studios, 98 one-bedroom and 44 two-bedroom units, the release said. Sixty-two of the residential units will be made affordable to households at or below 50 percent of median area income.
Village Green bought the 45-story office building out of bankruptcy in 2005 and will convert the 80-year-old structure into apartments. Plans also include 9,500 square feet of ground floor restaurant and retail space. Village Green will occupy 11,400 square feet on the second floor as its Chicago regional office.
Amenities will include a fitness center, swimming pool and spa. A social club will be located on the 38th and 39th floors, offering 360-degree views of the skyline and Lake Michigan, the release said.
The Gothic-style building will have extensive work done to preserve its historic terra cotta façade and other ornamental details and a gut rehabilitation of the interior.
The CDC also approved a redevelopment plan for the proposed Randolph/Wells tax increment financing district. Creation of the district will support the renovation of Randolph Tower and help redevelop other underutilized and vacant buildings in the area.
[Click to continue reading
City OK’s Rehab Of Loop Tower, Home For Teen Mothers On West Side – cbs2chicago.com
]
Hey, build for the future, right? Demand for new condos might be low now, but in twenty years…
Via EveryBlock’s hyperlocal news
Footnotes:Michigan Central Station ought to be preserved, don’t you think? Maybe like some sort of urban decay museum. Clean it up a little bit, charge a small admission fee, allow photographers and tourists to explore it. I’d pay.
The last train pulled away more than 20 years ago from Michigan Central Station, one of thousands of “see-through” buildings here, empty shells from more auspicious times.
MultimediaMany of the blighted buildings stay up simply because they are too expensive to tear down. Yet Michigan Central is in a class of its own. Some city officials consider it among the ugliest behemoths to pockmark Detroit and have ordered its demolition, but others see it as the industrial age’s most gracious relic, a Beaux Arts gem turned gothic from neglect but steeped in haunting beauty.
Now Detroit has become embroiled in an urgent debate over how to save what is perhaps its most iconic ruin — and in the process, some insist, give the demoralized city a much needed boost.
“People compare it to Roman ruins,” said Karen Nagher, the executive director of Preservation Wayne, an organization that seeks to protect architecture and neighborhoods around Detroit. “Some people just want it left alone. But I’d love to see that building with windows in and lights on again.”
[Click to continue reading Detroit Journal – Seeking a Future for a Symbol of a Grander Past – NYTimes.com]
I found over 800 photos of the Michigan Central Station on Flickr1 but have not taken any myself, unfortunately.
Footnotes:“It’s the quintessential example of urban decay in Detroit,” said John Mohyi, a Wayne State University student and founder of the Michigan Central Station Preservation Society, a nonprofit group formed to save the building. “To see redevelopment of that station would have a major impact on morale.”
Having lost nearly a million people in the last 60 years, Detroit has a backlog of thousands of empty office buildings, theaters, houses and hotels. Downtown alone, more than 200 abandoned buildings are on the National Register of Historic Places. Most are examples of the Art Deco and neo-Classical styles that were popular before World War II, when Detroit was booming.
But with 500,000 square feet of space on 14 acres of land, Michigan Central Station is “different from your standard vacant building,” said Mickey Blashfield, a government relations official with the station’s owner, CenTra Inc., a trucking and transportation company that acquired it by default through a property transfer in 1995 and has struggled to find a use for it since.
“Architecturally and historically,” Mr. Blashfield said, “it has more of an emotional connection with people than virtually any building in the city.”
