It finally happened, the Mullanphy Emigrant Home, which I last looked at back in June of this year, caught on fire and burned to the ground on the night of September 14th. There is certainly no grand conspiracy, but simply the fact that overnight lows reached 50 degrees, and a squatter’s fire probably spread out…
Tag: Chicago School
The Penobscot Block, Detroit
Time to move to downtown Detroit, and start with one of the most interesting square blocks in the United States, the Penobscot Block. Like all good things, it was the result of the accretion of decades of history and multiple building campaigns by disparate developers. This first building of the ensemble is the 1905 Penobscot…
From the Vault: Gary, Indiana
Update: I went back in the summer of 2023. This is Gary, Indiana. A city only founded in 1906, which peaked at a population of 178,320 in 1960, an increase of 33% from the 1950 federal census. In the most recent census of 2020, it has dropped to 69,093, a drop of 61%. These photos…
The Chicago River and Civic Identity
I would argue that the approximate one mile from the Lake Shore Drive Bridge to Wolf Point, where the Chicago River splits into its North and South branches, is easily one of the most famous vistas in the world. Along it you will see the Wrigley Building, the Tribune Tower and many others you’d recognize…
Civic and Retail Monuments, Chicago
I was always intrigued how for decades, the Cook County Building/Chicago City Hall stared at the Marshall Fields Department Store across the Daley Plaza and Block 37. Then, several years ago, Block 37 was redeveloped, Marshall Field’s became a Macy’s, and that grand urban vista was blocked and altered, most likely forever. While it looks…
Main Street, Galesburg, Illinois
We’ll be looking at Galesburg, Illinois for the next six days, as part of my continued examination of the cities and towns within the sphere of St. Louis’s economy. Located along the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, there is still a giant railyard going through the town in a northeast-southwest orientation southeast of downtown. Main…
Downtown Springfield
Downtown Springfield is dominated by a public square at the intersection of two major cross streets. While for much of its history during the Twentieth Century it was a morass of open pavement, in what looks to be the 1970s it was converted into a park and traffic was routed into a single lane that…
End of the Skybridge
This might be considered sappy, but in all seriousness one of my first memories of downtown St. Louis is walking across the skybridge from the parking garage into the old Famous Barr in the Railway Exchange Building during our first visit to St. Louis Centre. Fast forward almost forty years and St. Louis Centre has…
North Union Street and Environs, Lincoln, Illinois
Union Street forms the boundary between the two major street grids of Lincoln; to the east is the diagonal street grid which is oriented to the major train line that stretches between St. Louis and Chicago, and to the west is a street grid which is oriented to the cardinal directions. Union Street is oriented…
Mill Creek Valley, Cincinnati, Ohio
Lick Run, which we looked at yesterday, empties into Mill Creek, the industrial spine of Cincinnati. Not surprisingly, it has been heavily modified, altered and polluted by humans over the last two hundred years. There is something sublime about the giant swath of hundreds of miles of railroad tracks that you can see fleetingly while…