Architecture & History
The Loop, Read Vertically
Three hours reading Chicago's skyline as one continuous argument about how tall a city should be.
- City
- Chicago, USA
- Total time
- 3 hr
- Distance
- 4.4 km
- Stops
- 6
- 1
The Rookery lobby
The Loop · stay 20 min
Burnham and Root's 1888 shell wrapped around a light court Frank Lloyd Wright remodelled in 1905. Free to walk in. Look up before you look anywhere else.
- 2
6 min walk
Marquette Building
The Loop · stay 15 min
The Chicago window in its purest form, and a mosaic frieze in the lobby telling the Marquette expedition story in Tiffany glass.
- 3
5 min walk
Monadnock Building
The Loop · stay 15 min
The last great load-bearing masonry tower — walls six feet thick at the base. Stand at the corner and watch it flare outward at the bottom.
- 4
8 min walk
Chicago Board of Trade
LaSalle Street canyon · stay 20 min
Art deco slab capping the canyon, aluminium Ceres on the roof with no face because nobody was ever meant to see it up close.
- 5
14 min walk
Riverwalk at LaSalle
Chicago River · stay 30 min
Drop to water level. From here the towers you just stood under become a single wall, which is the only way to understand the scale of the thing.
- 6
12 min walk
Wrigley Building at dusk
Michigan Avenue · stay 25 min
Terracotta so white it was designed to glow under floodlight. Wait for them to come on. They still do, every night.
- ✦
End of the walk — 3 hr, about 4.4 km on foot.