Downtown Chicago puts on what is perhaps the finest
display of modern architecture in the world, from the
prototype skyscrapers of the 1890s to Mies van der Rohe's modernist
masterpieces, and the second tallest building in the world, the
quarter-mile-high Sears Tower . Just about all these
edifices are workplaces of one kind or another; the whole place is
bustling in the day and virtually empty later on.
The compact heart of Chicago is known as the Loop ,
because it's circled by the elevated tracks of the CTA "El" trains,
For a first impression of downtown, start your explorations by
seeing the energy, drive and unmasked greed exposed in the trading
pits of the various commodity marketplaces . Half the
world's wheat and corn (and pork belly futures) are bought and sold
amid the cacophonic roar of the Chicago Board of Trade ,
housed in a gorgeous Art Deco tower, appropriately topped by a 30ft
stainless steel statue of Ceres, Roman goddess of grain. From the
entrance at 141 W Jackson St, where it intersects with LaSalle
Street, take the elevator to the fifth-floor visitor gallery
(Mon-Fri 8am-1.15pm; free), where displays trace the evolution of
the various frantic shouts and signals by which trade is actually
carried out. A similarly energetic ballet goes on from the early
hours on Chicago's stock options exchange, the largest in the US.
At the Chicago Mercantile Exchange , three blocks away at 30
S Wacker Drive (Mon-Fri 7.30am-3.15pm; free), precious metals,
currencies and commodities are bought and sold to the tune of some
$50 billion a day. The best time to visit the exchanges is
just before the close of trade, when the pressure is at its peak
and tempers are most frayed.
A couple of other buildings in the immediate vicinity are worth
nosing around. Half a block from the Board of Trade, The
Rookery , 209 S LaSalle St, built in 1886 by Burnham and Root,
is one of the city's most celebrated and photographed edifices. Its
forbidding Moorish Gothic exterior gives way to a wonderfully airy
lobby, decked out in cool Italian marble and gold leaf in 1905
during a major remodeling by Frank Lloyd Wright and restored in
1992. The spiral cantilever staircase rising from the second floor
must be seen to be appreciated. A couple of doors toward the Board
of Trade, look in at the Continental Illinois Bank lobby,
with its 28 Ionic marble columns and intricate murals.
Looking up at the proud facade of the Reliance Building ,
32 N State St, you'd be forgiven for thinking it dated from the Art
Deco 1930s, but it was in fact completed way back in 1895 by Daniel
Burnham, who did much to shape the face of Chicago. His Fisher
Building , with its tongue-in-cheek, aquatic-inspired
ornamental terracotta, stands at 343 S Dearborn St. A block farther
south, the 1890 Manhattan Building was the world's first
tall all-steel-frame building, and is generally acknowledged as the
progenitor of the modern curtain-walled skyscraper, Now converted
into luxury apartments, it preserves some noteworthy exterior
ornament.
The Loop holds some of Chicago's grandest c.1900 department
stores . The best-looking of these, the 1899 Carson Pirie
Scott store at 1 S State St, boasts a magnificent ironwork
facade that blends botanic and geometric forms in an intuitive
version of Art Moderne. Its architect, Louis Sullivan, was also
responsible for the gorgeous spherical bronze clocks suspended from
the corners of the Marshall Field's department store, two
blocks north, at State and Washington streets. The comparatively
bland exterior of Marshall Field's oldest and grandest branch masks
one of the world's great stores, with seven floors of
merchandise.
A newly resurrected stretch of the riverfront walk follows the
west bank of the river, with open-air cafés and gardens. Farther
south, and back on the Loop side at South Wacker Drive and Adams
Street, is the 1468ft Sears Tower , the tallest building in
the world until 1997, when Malaysia's Petronas Towers nudged it
from the top by the length of an antenna. Various companies occupy
the tower (Sears has moved to the suburbs), and it's so huge that
it has more than one hundred elevators. Two ascend, in little more
than a minute, from the ground-level shopping mall to the
103rd-floor Skydeck Observatory (March-Sept daily 9am-11pm;
Oct-Feb daily 9am-10pm; $10), for breathtaking views that on a
clear day take in four states - Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and
Indiana. Look for the distinctive triangular Metropolitan
Detention Center , where prisoners exercise on the grassy roof,
beneath wire netting to ensure they don't get whisked away by
helicopter.