The Architecture of Chicago

Editor's Pick Award

Our Editors awarded this travel blog entry for providing relevant information that may be useful and inspiring for other travelers.

Driving is a challenge, it's fun figuring out where to go next and what to see next and how to get there. But traffic on the four-lane highways of Ontario and the Interstates of America is verging on the unimaginable. Sometimes we will look at the road ahead and swear that what we see are not huge lines of tractor trailers but one long, never-ending railroad train. That's why a bus tour on the crowded roads in and around Chicago made a lot of sense.

Great Canadian Holidays, a charter line owned by Trailways, operates a number of tours every week to many destinations in both Canada and the United States. On every bus there is a tour director and, of course a driver. Our particular team, Linda and Vic Robinson, were excellent. Vic had been working with the same company for over twenty years, but one day he came home and announced: "I can't take this any more, nothing changes, I want something with more variety and challenge." He joined Great Canadian Tours and, a little later, Linda followed suit. They have traveled all over North America, sometimes on one day trips, sometimes for weeks at a stretch.

We were worried about the weather. Chicago had experienced a series of violent storms recently and they were still going on. One of the people my wife, Angela, plays bridge with, had been to the city the week before and told her that it had rained constantly. But we had made our reservations and you never know about the weather, it might be good, it might not be. So Thursday morning we met the bus for the all-day drive to Chicago.

What we had heard was only too true. As we came along Interstate 94 where it swings south of Lake Michigan, the sky was dark to our right, but ahead there was light and clearing, and to the south I could see some patches of blue sky. Linda was making an announcement to the passengers and walking back towards the rear of the bus and Vic was cruising the passing lane by a couple of big tractor trailers. Suddenly the trees to the north of the road started whirling around and around and a branch flew across the road whap against the windshield and  the road ahead disappeared in a violent downpour. Linda grabbed onto a luggage rack overhead to steady herself and rushed back to her seat. She assured us, as she sat down, that Vic was an excellent driver, but all I could think was -- Vic, pull off the road, stop. The rain was so violent that it flung water straight across the road and as we drove by a huge tractor trailer the box of the truck served as a windscreen and I could feel the bus settling down, and then rocking as we pulled out of the truck's protection. But Vic was calm, steady, he kept going, the guy knew what he was doing. When we were through the storm and the skies cleared and there was even some sun up ahead, everyone on the bus applauded our driver. Later we found out that we had driven through a mini tornado.

So what chance did we have for a calm, sun-filled holiday in Chicago? Excellent, as it turned out.

Our first stop on Friday morning was Oak Park.        

Oak Park is a suburb of Chicago and officially, it is still listed as a village. It has an elevated train station and is on the Chicago transit system. At the turn of the 20th century, it was also home base for America's most remarkable architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.  Before he was born, his mother decided he would be an architect and hung engravings of the great cathedrals of Europe around his crib. He quit university after two semesters and arrived in Chicago in 1887 with, he said later, seven dollars in his pocket. But he had influential connections and convinced a firm of fashionable architects to take him on. In 1890, he designed and built the home that would become his first studio, in Oak Park. Scattered around Oak Park and nearby are many of his homes, done in a form that would be called the "Prairie Style." The pictures give you an idea of  the varieties of this style, as built by Frank Lloyd Wright, and also some sense of what a radical departure they were from homes being built during that era, for they are often side by side with houses more typical of the times. Wright was not typical of his time, in either his architecture or his home life. In 1909 he abandoned his wife, their six children and his growing architectural practice and began an affair with the wife of one of his clients. It was a front page scandal in the Chicago Tribune of November 7, 1909.

Tragically, the woman Wright eloped with was murdered in 1914 by servants in Wright's new house in Wisconsin. The architect was shattered, but did not give up. When commissions dried up, he began a school for architects and his career was revitalized in 1937 when he designed Fallingwater, a house cantilevered over a waterfall. He was still active in 1959 at 91 years of age, creating new and radical designs. One of his most notable achievements, the Guggenheim Museum, was opened on Fifth Avenue in  New York city the year he died.

Chicago is remarkable both for its energy, and its architecture. Side by side with remarkable modern structures are buildings a century older and they all seem to meld together. Frank Lloyd Wright was not the only talented architect to come to Chicago, and it continues to this day. Some of the greatest names in modern architecture have built here from Louis Sullivan to Mies van der Rohe to Frank Gehry.

After touring Oak Park we drove into Chicago and a tour guide joined us to give us a run down of the city. As we drove around the lakefront, what was most striking were the parks all along the water. When the railroads came into the city, the builders wanted to use the waterfront to get as close to downtown as possible. The city refused and the result has been a clear waterfront available to everyone, unlike Toronto where the railroad took up the shoreline and cut the city off, permanently, from the lake that it borders. In the parks we saw weddings, fountains, ball games, picnics, flowers, trees and, moving along a sidewalk a sort of motorcycle meet of Segues complete with crash helmets on all the "drivers" (but no black leather jackets), all of it set against the blue of  Lake Michigan or outlined by the skyline of the city. There were also a couple of full grown trees, flat on the grass with their roots turned skywards, the result of the windstorm we had come through the day before.

Millennium Park is a remarkable public space in downtown Chicago surrounded by startling modern buildings. It has a pavilion designed by Frank Gehry, one of the most celebrated of present-day architects, especially after his astonishing museum building in Bilboa, Spain. Anish Kapoor, a British artist, has installed a 110 ton outdoor sculpture, Cloud Gate, that reflects the sky and all its surroundings. Locals call it "The Big Bean" and it's a favorite for wedding photos. There was a party there when we went through.

It rained that night and we were afraid Saturday would be washed out. We were to return to Canada on Sunday, so prospects didn't look good. Even as we drove to the city for our boat tour, the sky looked threatening. "Think positive thoughts," Linda advised us. By the time we reached downtown Chicago, the clouds had moved off and the sun was shining on the river.

When the glaciers retreated after the last Ice Age, meltwater filled the Great Lakes basin. The lakes were much larger than they are now and what was later Lake Michigan flowed into the Mississippi River through the river at Chicago.  As the waters went down over the centuries and the remnants of the glaciers were gone, this connection was broken. But when Joliet and Marquette and other French explorers came through here in birchbark canoes, they were able to portage very easily from the Lake Michigan basin to the upper waters of the Mississippi. In more recent years, a canal has been built re-connecting the two waters. In the last year, environmentalists have become worried about the migration in the other direction of Chinese Carp, coming up the Mississippi and into the Great Lakes, where these fish will wreak destruction on local species.

The river we toured, then, is an important transportation and environmental resource. Chicago has built all around it and the buildings set it off and complement it. Weddings are celebrated along its banks, Donald Trump is constructing a new highrise beside it that will eventually rise to second place in the skyscrapers of the city, kayakers paddle the waters, elevated trains cross the river, and tour boats like ours pass out into the lake by the canal to take in the city skyline.

At noon we ate lunch on Navy Pier, an old dock that has been transformed into a sort of mini Disneyland with a reproduction of the world's first Ferris Wheel, built for the Chicago World Fair in the 1890s and designed by an engineer named Ferris. In the afternoon, we went to the Shedd Aquarium (not recommended) and drove by fans who had come to what used to be Soldier Field for the first Chicago Bears game of the season. People had their trunks open in the parking lot and barbeques revved up and beer bottles opened, enjoying the season's first tailgate party. Fans had collected on the lawn in front of the stadium throwing footballs and participating in various competitions. We did a bit of shopping and returned happily to our motel, though we knew there is more to this city than can be seen in two days

We'd recommend the Great Canadian Holidays bus excursion to Chicago, it saves money and the stress of driving and organizing. The greatest asset was avoiding the hassle of crossing the border, especially now that security is so much tighter. Buses are still stopped and passengers and baggage are searched, but even with that we cruised by long lines of traffic and saved at least two hours of a very short holiday -- and all the stress we could see on the faces of the drivers we passed.

Here are some tips:

1. If you visit Oak Park, be sure to see Frank Lloyd Wright's early architectural masterpieces, including Unity Temple. There is an entrance fee of $8.00 at the temple, which does not open until 10:30 a.m. You can use the time until then to visit his other works. In the Frank Lloyd Wright Studio you can buy an architectural guide map showing you the location and other details of 35 Wright buildings. There are washrooms in the Studio. You don't have to go on the tour (though it is worth it), the washrooms are right beside the door.

2. If your motel or hotel is east of Chicago, you may be able to use the commuter train. It goes right into the heart of Chicago at Millennium Park. It is cheap, though more expensive on weekends.

3. If shopping is your thing, get a weekend paper with all the sales flyers. Do not miss Macy's, which is near the only major structure left from the Chicago Fire. The store has interesting women's fashions, some reasonably priced.

4. Some other places to see, or avoid:

a. The aquarium is traffic clogged, unorganized, and crowded.

b. Navy Pier is really just a carnival strip, though you can get boat tours of the harbor and along the lakeshore from here. If you do go, don't miss "Buba's Shrimp" restaurant right inside the gate.

c. Millennium Park is an excellent place to take pictures, look at the sculpture (especially the "Big Bean" and the fountain with the faces) and the architecture that surrounds it .

d. Take in all of Chicago's architecture by bus, car, and boat. The boat tour is especially good. You can get on underneath the bridge near the headquarters of the Chicago Tribune. If you do that, sit at the front, the best place to see everything and take your pictures.