Welcome to Living Landmarks of Chicago
Learn the stories of Chicago, with crazy tales of this great American city.
What is Living Landmarks?
History lines Chicago’s sidewalks.Stroll down LaSalle or Dearborn or State and you’ll see skyscrapers that have been there for a century or more. It’s easy to scurry by, to dismiss the building itself, but a hunt for placards turns up landmarks every few feet, it seems. Here’s a Chicago landmark; there’s a National Historic landmark. They’re everywhere.
Ironically, these skyscrapers keep the city grounded; they illustrate a past where visionaries took fanciful, impossible ideas and made them reality. Buildings sinking? Raise them. River polluting the lake and its precious drinking water? Reverse it. Overpopulation and urban sprawl making it challenging to get to work? Build up. From the bare to the ornate, from exposed beams to ornamented facades, the city’s architecture is unabashedly various yet provides a cohesive, beautiful skyline that illustrates the creativity of necessity, and the necessity of creativity.
Chicago is the physical manifestation of dreamers, malcontents, philanthropists, and grifters. In 1985, Pat Colander said in the New York Times: “It’s a city of contradictions, of private visions haphazardly overlaid and linked together.” And it is. Some people love it. Some hate it. Sometimes it’s the same people, and sometimes in the same day.
I’m one of the lovers who believes the city is vibrant and willful and beautiful, and while other urban areas have fostered their own breed of characters, Chicago’s seem so very…Chicago. It’s hard to explain. I’m not going to try.
What I am going to do is tell some of her stories. Not all of them – neither one of us has time for that. Instead, I’ll share the past behind the landmarks as well as occasional places to go and things to do today.
What to expect
Each post is a vignette, a short story, if you will, that introduces you to the landmark and brings it to life. After digging into the history, there’s brief information on the landmark as it is today.
The posts are organized chronologically. The years associated with the landmarks are when construction was completed, even though the story may have begun many years earlier. The parks are the exception, because while their ultimate size and shape changed over the years, their beginning locations are the same.
Each week another story is revealed. Don’t want to wait? You can buy the book, or become a Founding Member and I’ll send you the hardback, e-book, and audiobook.
We begin with a sound-bite history of the city’s origins, and then you’ll meet the oldest house in Chicago—or is it? Kinda. Sorta. Depends on who you ask.
That’s Chicago. Nothing’s simple, and nothing can be taken for granted. The reason we have a gorgeous skyline and a vibrant culture and a notorious reputation for graft is because of those who built it, envisioned it, manipulated it.
That skyline is also the result of a renewed determination after a devastating loss. One thing you might notice is that few of the landmarks are dated before 1871. That’s because the Great Chicago Fire obliterated what had been downtown. The conflagration began October 8, 1871, consumed more than three square miles and killed three hundred people. More than 100,000 were suddenly homeless. The destruction was a defining moment, if not the defining moment, in the history of Chicago, and its impact, seared into the city’s consciousness, is referenced several times throughout this book.
These stories aren’t about buildings, per se; they’re about the people who built Chicago. It’s about rich, complex, convoluted passions that shaped a metropolis. Living Landmarks is a bit of humor, a touch of sass, and a whole lot of love for this great American city.
Let’s meet Chicago, shall we?
