While visiting Chicago last month, the forecasts had periods of intermittent rain in store for us...fortunately on the morning of Monday the 12th the skies were just pleasantly overcast as Melissa, Will, and I set out to experience one of the city's many Architecture Tours by boat. This one we boarded...within easy walking distance of our hotel...on the north side of the Chicago River just east of Michigan Avenue, using the company Shoreline Sightseeing. The tour guide was very personable and informative on this nearly two hour voyage through history up and down the Chicago River as he explained the significance to the city's future of its disastrous 1871 firestorm, which burned to the ground its wood-constructed buildings. Architects from around the world in subsequent years were invited to design and construct new buildings and, by the time of the World's Fair held in Chicago in 1893 the city's image changed drastically worldwide...and it never looked back. Over the ensuing 120+ years up to the present, different styles of architecture were used as skyscrapers and office buildings filled in the downtown area...but not as completely as New York, for unlike in extremely cramped Manhattan there is space between Chicago's buildings, one notable exception being the four-building curiosity shown in the last photo above. My most memorable buildings from the tour were the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower (next to last photo) and the beautiful Trump International Tower (first photo)...they rank first and second in height for Chicago skyscrapers, respectively. In a later article I'll show the spectacular view of the Windy City from the top of Willis Tower, which we visited the following evening. There are several different companies that conduct Architecture Tours of Chicago, and you can tour the city by bus as well as by boat...I recommend the boat tour, though. It's a good investment of your time if, like us, you had never been there before...
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