^ You don't like Michael's North? My God, they make the best omelettes!

Re: the "Standard Oil Bldg"...

Notice the original Italian marble cladding. Much whiter!

:haha: , I do quite like their Hobo Skillet and they brown a perfect corned beef hash. I'm just saying the building is a shitbox - I'd rather see them reopen in the ground-floor retail space of a midrise with a 5.0 floor area ratio as allowed by the underlying zoning but disallowed by aldermanic perogative.

People do some stupid shit sometimes:

Ski jump at Soldier Filed Circa 1954:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3640/...dcb39873_o.jpg

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3387/...73540c59_o.jpg
deputy-dog.com

Yikes...

Has anyone downloaded and achieved all these photos? Someone should do that heaven forbid we lose this thread!

^That, I'd like to see.^


http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/7760/wabash.jpg

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/8776/stockx.jpg

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/1047/statest.jpg

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/772...aterst1910.jpg

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/8708/lasallesta.jpg

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/6662/lasallehotel.jpg

http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/437...storestate.jpg

"Chicago, At the Turn of the Century Photographs" by Larry Viskochil, CHS

The Turtle Wax building at Madison and Ashland. I thought it was really cool when I was a kid. Gone now.


http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...ampoint109.jpg

^There's some more talk about this building here: http://forum.skyscraperpage.com/show...urtle+building

Starting with Post #6576

such a cool thread

chicago is truly a world class city

It's interesting how dirty the city looked in the 1940s because of all the soot from the railroads and manufactures close to Downtown. It's immaculately clean now compared to those shots.

That was the proposed Post Office. It would've been between Union Station and Chicago & Northwestern Terminal.

It later got built over Congress Pkwy/Eisenhower Expwy. Now it just sits there abandoned. The opening scene (bank robbery) of "The Dark Knight" was filmed there.

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...s/CRW_0001.jpg

Is the Union Station tower officially dead? It does seem like it resurfaces every few years. Wasn't it first proposed in the mid-90's or so?

I heard about that too. It probably wouldn't be built to match the rest of the structure as was imagined in those postcards.

Personally, I think the Union Station main building should be left alone. It already suffered the indignity of demolition of its beautiful train concourse. Ugly buildings stand there now. The least they could do is build the proposed new concourse as part of the high-speed rail corridor plan, and knock down the uglies.

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...scan192hu4.jpg

http://i538.photobucket.com/albums/f...n_2020_01c.jpg

Chicago the Beautiful, 1948 Traveltalks.
 

Here's a fun look at Chicago in 1948 through the lens of an MGM travelogue. Ah, look at all those streetcars! I wish we could bring 'em back.

• Video Link

So awesome! Thanks for posting that.

Traveltalks - 1948 Chicago the Beautiful
 

Isn't that a spectacular video!!!

I think this is 1964. Obviously the focus is on the UIC campus under construction, and this shot gives a very detailed view of the original Netsch vision that included the elevated pedestrian 'expressways' between buildings (with a direct connection to the UIC L stop at the north end), with an obvious focus towards the Forum in the heart of campus.

Other things I see:
1. Check out the 'streetwall' of midrise industrial loft buildings lining the east side of the Expressway through downtown. Also just the sheer uninterupted midrise density of the industrial district (with skid row along Madison) between the river and the expressway.
2. Check out the US Gypsum building at the far right, a modernist gem that only lived for about 25-30 years (now the site of 111 S. Wacker).
3. I believe that is the elevator core for Marina City, just right of center in the upper half.
4. Just left of center, upper half, you can see the bright new construction of the Sandburg Village urban renewal highrises along Clark Street between Division and North.

In the context of how dark and dingy everything looks, the near luminescence of the mid-century modernist planning and architecture that is maligned today starts to make a bit more sense.
Click thumbnail size to see full size.
http://www.uic.edu/depts/oaa/walking...h%20spineA.jpg

I bet this is 1962-63 as Marina City was done in 1964. They should have cleaned them rather than tear all the great old buildings down! Steam engines were almost gone at this point, so one good cleaning would have been good for 25 years.

That MGM travelogue is very cool!