A "Chicago in Stone and Clay" Companion, Part 1: Everything Hums with Vital Energy
This new series complements my award-winning guidebook, Chicago in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Windy City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it CSC.
The CSC sections and page reference for the buildings featured here: 5.7, 5.8, 5.9; pp. 47-53.
Facing northeastward from Michigan Boulevard, a little south of Washington Street.
In CSC's introduction, I state that "to the person with the heart, soul, and understandings of a geologist, the city is not a denial of nature. It’s a vast affirmation of it." And this is true of Chicago more than any other urban center I know. This place stands proud and naked on its flat. low, and ancient lakebed, interfingered with the water, sky, and land around it. And everything in it hums with vital energy received from its surroundings.
In the photo above, advection fog formed from warm spring breezes blowing over Lake Michigan's cold surface drifts between the tops of skyscrapers of three architectural generations. In the left foreground there's the first Prudential Building ("One Pru," completed in 1954). In my childhood it was the Windy City's tallest building. Its exterior materials include Indiana's Salem Limestone, aluminum, and the rare Norwegian Støren Trondhjemite.
To its right, the Aon Center (once the Standard Oil Building, then the Amoco Building), dates to 1973. Its 83-story immensity was originally clad in Carrara Marble panels—lovely and gleaming in the light, but cut too thin. When they began to buckle and fall after prolonged exposure to the lakeshore's fearsome combination of wind, ample precipitation, and temperature extremes, they were replaced at very great cost with Mount Airy Granodiorite from North Carolina.
And poking up behind One Pru's antenna is the Postmodernist Two Pru (2 Prudential Plaza, 1990). It's primarily clad in Spanish Mondariz Granite.
All these structures, and I hope many more, will be grist for my mill in coming posts of this set. Then we'll delve deeper into this remarkable city's huge inventory of geologically derived materials.
For much more on the sites touched upon here, get and read Chicago in Stone and Clay, described at its Cornell University Press webpage.
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Chicago in Stone and Clay" Companion album. In addition, you'll find other relevant images and descriptions in my Architectural Geology: Chicago album.
A "Chicago in Stone and Clay" Companion, Part 1: Everything Hums with Vital Energy
This new series complements my award-winning guidebook, Chicago in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Windy City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it CSC.
The CSC sections and page reference for the buildings featured here: 5.7, 5.8, 5.9; pp. 47-53.
Facing northeastward from Michigan Boulevard, a little south of Washington Street.
In CSC's introduction, I state that "to the person with the heart, soul, and understandings of a geologist, the city is not a denial of nature. It’s a vast affirmation of it." And this is true of Chicago more than any other urban center I know. This place stands proud and naked on its flat. low, and ancient lakebed, interfingered with the water, sky, and land around it. And everything in it hums with vital energy received from its surroundings.
In the photo above, advection fog formed from warm spring breezes blowing over Lake Michigan's cold surface drifts between the tops of skyscrapers of three architectural generations. In the left foreground there's the first Prudential Building ("One Pru," completed in 1954). In my childhood it was the Windy City's tallest building. Its exterior materials include Indiana's Salem Limestone, aluminum, and the rare Norwegian Støren Trondhjemite.
To its right, the Aon Center (once the Standard Oil Building, then the Amoco Building), dates to 1973. Its 83-story immensity was originally clad in Carrara Marble panels—lovely and gleaming in the light, but cut too thin. When they began to buckle and fall after prolonged exposure to the lakeshore's fearsome combination of wind, ample precipitation, and temperature extremes, they were replaced at very great cost with Mount Airy Granodiorite from North Carolina.
And poking up behind One Pru's antenna is the Postmodernist Two Pru (2 Prudential Plaza, 1990). It's primarily clad in Spanish Mondariz Granite.
All these structures, and I hope many more, will be grist for my mill in coming posts of this set. Then we'll delve deeper into this remarkable city's huge inventory of geologically derived materials.
For much more on the sites touched upon here, get and read Chicago in Stone and Clay, described at its Cornell University Press webpage.
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Chicago in Stone and Clay" Companion album. In addition, you'll find other relevant images and descriptions in my Architectural Geology: Chicago album.