Latest news with #DanielBurnham
CBS News
8 hours ago
- Business
- CBS News
Amtrak celebrates Chicago Union Station 100th anniversary
Amtrak and Illinois officials are celebrating the 100th anniversary of Chicago's Union Station Tuesday. The transit hub was dubbed "America's finest railroad terminal" back in 1925 and Monday afternoon Amtrak will unveil a new art exhibition to mark its centennial. They will also look ahead to the station's future. In the past few years, Union Station has seen $70 million in renovations and upgrades. Union Station was designed by famed architect Daniel Burnham. It took 10 years to build and cost $75 million at the time, which is equivalent to about $1 billion in today's dollars. It is the third-busiest station in the entire country, the fourth-busiest owned by Amtrak. The station moves more than 3 million Amtrak passengers and 35 million Metra riders each year.
Chicago Tribune
24-06-2025
- General
- Chicago Tribune
Column: From Promontory Point to the lily pool in Lincoln Park, have you visited the creations of Alfred Caldwell?
We've had a lot of architects in this town, some of them — Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, Jeanne Gang and on and on — rising in notoriety and star-status equal in the civic celestial realm to ballplayers and politicians and mobsters. But one who does not consistently reach such heights is Alfred Caldwell. Though he worked closely with famous collaborators and mentors — Frank Lloyd Wright, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Jens Jensen — he was something of a cantankerous sort, and landscape architects, which he was, were then rarely accorded the stature of their contemporaries, those who designed buildings, and often exercised their self-promotional skills. Still, he created here and elsewhere some of the most stunning and life-affirming spaces in this land. He lived what the late architecture critic and newspaperman M.W. 'Bill' Newman called a 'thundering life,' and my friend, the Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for this paper Blair Kamin, now retired, wrote, 'Anyone who expected him to always be a nice man talking sweetly about flowers was in for a rude awakening.' But he made masterpieces. I have long been an admirer of Caldwell, growing up within easy walking distance of one of his creations. It is at the northern end of the Lincoln Park Zoo, a three-acre oasis of trees, limestone paths and a meandering pool, what Caldwell called 'a cool, refreshing, clear place of trees and stone and running water.' Created in 1936, with Caldwell using some of the money from cashing in his own $250 life insurance policy, it was a bird sanctuary and first known as the Zoorockery. It had fallen on hard times by the 1990s, until a beautiful renovation. In the wake of Caldwell's death on July 3, 1998, it was renamed, fittingly, the Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool. Now, many others, especially South Siders, might prefer his Promontory Point. That's the man-made peninsula constructed of landfill in the late 1930s and jutting into Lake Michigan at 55th Street. It has thick groves of trees and shrubs surrounding a central meadow and a seawall made of limestone blocks arranged in a series of steps leading to a promenade. It is just what Caldwell wanted: 'A place you go to and you're thrilled — a beautiful experience, a joy and delight.' Few people know as much about Caldwell, or admire him more, than Julia Bachrach. She is a historian and parks expert, an author (including 2001's terrific 'The City in a Garden: A Photographic History of Chicago's Parks') and consultant in private practice. She is busier than ever since retiring from the Chicago Park District after nearly three decades in 2017. She is also the author of the National Historic Landmark listing for Caldwell's Lily Pool, as well as the recent National Register nomination for Promontory Point. She lives in Chicago, but will soon be on her way to Dubuque, that delightful Iowa river city where, Friday and Saturday, she will be part of a symposium organized by Heritage Works Dubuque. Titled 'The Prairie School Legacy in Iowa' it will also feature John Waters from the Frank Lloyd Wright Building Conservancy and Paul Kruty of the University of Illinois. 'People who know and follow Wright know that he designed a number of Prairie School houses in Iowa,' Bachrach told me. 'But they are kind of spread out. A person can come to Chicago and in one day see an awful lot of Wright homes. That's not true in Iowa, where you have to move around.' We talked a bit about the very well known Wright and she then began to explain how it was that Caldwell, with his wife Virginia and their baby Carol, came to move from Chicago to Dubuque, and how he worked day and night with some untrained locals during the Depression to build Eagle Point Park, dotted by what Bill Newman called 'enchanted park buildings.' Caldwell's whole life was lived on the edge. He once said, 'The Depression made me belligerent and I have been belligerent ever since.' That's just some of what Bachrach will be talking about later this week, as well as explaining some newly-discovered details about the history and design of Eagle Point Park and the city's plans to preserve it. 'It is just magnificent, sitting on a bluff overlooking the Mississippi,' she said. There will be guided tours of the park and Wright's Walter House in Quasqueton, Iowa. If you are staying close to Chicago, know that the Lily Pool is closed these days, as it undergoes another renovation. Bachrach's best guess is that it will be open on July 11, meaning there will be a lot of summer left in which to see it. Promontory Point is there for the strolling.
Chicago Tribune
18-06-2025
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
Jim Nowlan: With Illinois struggling, the Edgar Fellows could draft a vision for a positive future
Illinois doesn't know where it is going. Situation: After considering thousands of bills, the Illinois legislature paused its brief, frenetic spring session, putting off until the fall action on the really sticky issues, such as how to address a $770 million 'fiscal cliff' shortfall in funding for metro Chicago's critical mass transit. Legislative bodies exist to resolve conflict, which is time-consuming, challenging, even painful. Politics are largely a game of 'who gets what.' Granting additional money, say, to school kids, requires either, one, taking an equivalent amount from some other spending program; two, taking more in taxes out of the hides of voters; or three, transforming the equivalent expenditure into debt for future generations to pay off. (This assumes no or slow real economic growth in Illinois, as is the case.) Each of the 177 Illinois state legislators has his or her own bills to shepherd through the two houses of the legislature, and any bill that does anything has its pesky opponents. Members must feel as if they are running around like chickens with their heads cut off — scores of committees, floor sessions, meetings with constituents and lobbyists. Long-term thinking in Illinois is: 'How do we paper over next year's budget deficit?' There is never time for the big picture, 'the vision thing.' Where do we want the state to be in 10 to 20 years? How should we respond to climate change (which could be bad and good for Illinois)? What about our jerry-built revenue system, which is rather unresponsive in a services-driven economy? And an education system in which achievement for those on the lower half of the economic ladder is being devalued? (For example, achievement in our rural schools is abysmal, yet few seem to know or care.) How do we reverse state population decline and tepid job growth, which for decades has been slower than for the rest of the Midwest and nation? The singular piece of really forward thinking in Illinois history came with the Burnham Plan for Chicago of the early 1900s, led by architect Daniel Burnham and commissioned by the Commercial Club of Chicago. The effort followed on the heels of the stupendous Chicago World's Fair of 1893, visited by 27 million folks from around the world. So, the 'city of the big shoulders,' as poet Carl Sandburg described it, knew it could do big things. After much work, the plan was presented to the City Council, which also labored over the plan, ultimately adopting about half the recommendations. But what marvelous results: Thirty unbroken miles of lakefront open to the public; wide boulevards and spectacular parks, and more. Chicagoans and visitors have benefited every day since its adoption in 1909. Other states take the long look. With Texas 2036 (the state's 200th anniversary of nationhood), that state's civic and business leaders are shaping a stronger state for the long haul. I propose an idea for tapping into an incredible but underutilized resource for future thinking. Former Gov. Jim Edgar's greatest legacy may be his Edgar Fellows Program. Each summer for more than a decade, Jim gathers 40 of the state's young leaders, many of whom are now lawmakers, from all walks of life, political persuasions and geography. For a week, the fellows are sequestered near the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where they learn about our state and its government from experts and national leaders. Over bourbon and branch water in the evenings, they bond and come to appreciate one another. But then they leave town and fail to build on their relationships and any aspirations for a state they will lead in the years to come. I propose that the 500 Edgar Fellows, rather than simply feel good about themselves, take on the task of creating a vision for Illinois, as with the Burnham Plan. This needs be done outside the hurly-burly of politics, after which they would take their vision into the political arena, where it would be wrestled with, and adopted, if only in part. The fellows have both the smarts to create a vision and the growing clout to see it enacted. Illinois needs to know where it should be going, for a change.
Chicago Tribune
11-05-2025
- Business
- Chicago Tribune
100 years ago, the first trains pulled into Union Station
Chicago's Union Station has borne witness to the gamut of emotions, its cavernous waiting room echoing with everything from raucous laughter to profound despair ever since the first train arrived there 100 years ago this month. The imposing station that sprawls along Canal Street west of the Loop was artistically inspired by the massive ruins of Rome's Baths of Caracalla. On a more practical level, its blueprints addressed a problem identified earlier by architect Daniel Burnham in his 1909 'Plan of Chicago.' With 22 railroad lines converging on Chicago, the city's center was covered by a spider's web of tracks. If one switch failed, a massive traffic jam ensued. In 1881, three lines made a dent in the problem. The Chicago & Alton, the Pittsburgh & Fort Wayne, and the Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad jointly established a Union Depot between Madison and Clinton streets and just west of the Chicago River. When trains pulled into a terminal, the final station on their route, it meant another train couldn't use that track until its predecessor backed out. When Burnham got the contract to design the new Union Station, he placed it between two sets of multiple tracks. That 'permitted trains from the east and west to enter and leave simultaneously,' the Tribune reported on the station's July 23, 1925, opening day. Burnham died in 1912 and while the station was built with his vision, it was completed by the firm later known as Graham, Anderson, Probst and White. The station's cost was estimated at $75 million and picked up by a consortium of railroads. Burnham justified going big on a train station by forecasting in his 1909 plan that 'within a few years the waking hours of a million Americans will be spent in the business center of Chicago, where unpleasant sights and sounds should be abolished.' Burnham took a similarly hyper-rational allotment of space to his design of the eight-story Union Station building. Its predecessor had 'an energetic man in blue uniform and cap' who steered immigrants to quarters across Adams Street from the station. The separation of newcomers continued in the Union Station, which had an immigrants' waiting room. Conductors telegraphed the names of immigrants aboard incoming trains. The Woman's Waiting Room had stairs leading down to a nursery. A doctor, a nurse, and a matron were present at all times. There were formal and casual dining facilities, staffed by the famed Harvey Girls, who waited on tables in what's considered the nation's first restaurant chain at train stations across the country. There were two jail cells for offenders being taken to prison, a morgue for travelers who died on a train, and a chapel for those feeling spiritually needy. One hospital handled customers' medical emergencies. Another cared for railroad employees. The entrances from Clinton Street were quite modest. The Pennsylvania Railroad's manager insisted on that. He wanted to send a message that folks using those entrances weren't welcome. On that side, the station was bordered by an intimidating motley of saloons, furniture-making workshops, and Chicago's garment district. The station's cavernous space was emphasized by architects' age-old gambit of bringing people through a cramped space into a towering one, thus psychologically underlying the latter, noted Fred Ash in his book 'Chicago Union Station.' 'Patrons entering from the east had their visual field first constricted then expanded, causing them to instinctively lift their eyes,' Ash wrote. 'Columns of Italian travertine soared over a belt course of warm gray marble ten feet high.' At one end, a pair of niches were occupied by hulking, plaster figures. Day was accompanied by a rooster, Night by an owl. The scene was diffusely lit by skylights and shadows cast by the coffered barrel-vaults through which they ran, 125 feet above the floor. At its formal opening, Mayor William Dever pronounced the Union Station the finest thing Chicago had accomplished in a long time. But his eloquence was outdone by a chemical analysis made by the R.W. Hunt & Co. It revealed that the station's heritage was far older than the 1888 establishment of a predecessor station, the Union Depot. The lengthier chronology was formulated after an examination of what appeared to be a 'bleeding pillar.' 'Sure enough, there were long streaks like old blood or iron rust, running from a point about ten feet up,' assistant station manager F.J. Burton told the Tribune in February 1925, before the station opened. 'Travertine marble is extremely porous, with crumbly holes in it that make it look like gorgonzola cheese.' Coroner Oscar Wolff 'was called from a game of chess at the Hamilton Club' to examine the pillar, the Tribune story said. He gave orders that no one touch the column, one of four at the south end of the Waiting Room, while he investigated. Samples of whatever was causing the 'bleeding' were sent to the R.W. Hunt laboratory, which determined the substance to be 'rotted vegetable matter and iron oxide.' 'It was probably caught in a cavity about 7,000,000 years ago when the marble was forming,' the lab concluded.
