Flying into Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, I always experience a
sense of excitement, a feeling of great expectations, as I land in
the City of the Big Shoulders.
Many travelers dread the prospect of getting in and out of this
great airport, but I say, “What’s the worst thing that can happen?”
You get to stay overnight in the greatest big city in America
perched on the world’s largest body of freshwater, the Great
Lakes.
Where else can you see an authentic U-boat from WWII; gaze at Beluga whales, up close and personal,
cavorting in a gigantic aquarium behind monstrous glass walls; meet
a girl named Sue, “the largest, most complete, and best preserved
Tyrannosaurus rex fossil yet discovered”; and view a
collection of French Impressionist paintings to rival anything outside Paris’s Musee
d’Orsay?
Chicago is to the Great Lakes what Denver is to the
intermountain West with a commanding position in a hydrologic
system that connects the interior of the continent to the Atlantic
via the St. Lawrence. Due to the artifice of man, it also connects
to the Gulf of Mexico.
Its stature as the premier city of the “sweetwater sea” (a term
used by French explorers to describe the Great Lakes) is reflected
in a towering, slightly out-of-the-way sculpture outside the south wing of the Art
Institute of Chicago: Lorado Taft’s Fountain of the Great
Lakes (1913).
Fountain of the Great Lakes is composed of five female
figures holding shells from which flows water statue to statue.
Starting with the highest figures representing Lake Superior and
Lake Michigan, the water streams into another shell held by Lake
Huron, and then onto to Lakes Erie and Ontario. The lovely lady
representing Ontario is looking off toward the ocean, her eyes
following the on-rushing flowage.
The Windy City is also the town in which its namesake river runs
backward since the late 19th century. As a state-of-the-art
sanitation measure to curb terrible cholera epidemics and typhoid
outbreaks caused by the municipal waste, the City reversed the flow of the Chicago River, causing
it to run away from Lake Michigan and back out the Des
Plaines River, then to the Illinois River and down the Mississippi
to New Orleans. Rather than treating the wastewater, Chicago just
moved it downstream.
This ingenious piece of engineering led to two big Supreme Court
decisions, one for and one against Illinois, brought by Missouri
and Wisconsin respectively. The Missouri suit over water quality
and health concerns, did not wash, so to speak, because St. Louis’s
sewage at the time was as uncontrolled as Chicago’s. The second,
challenging the quantity of water diverted from the Lake Michigan,
was a bit more successful. To this day the Illinois diversion of
water at Chicago is limited by court decree to 3,500 cubic feet per
second so as to avoid any further drop in water levels.
The visitor to the Hog Butcher for the World can catch the CTA’s
Blue Line in the airport, for a straight shot downtown. Once you
get into the City, say, around the Damen stop, you are impressed
with the endless blocks of restored homes, loft apartments, and
other signs of gentrification. Depending on the time of day, you
can see that the rush-hour traffic is as heavy outbound as it is
inbound, a testimony to the urban renaissance underway.
North of the Damen stop rises the massive dome of the
magnificently restored Saint Mary of the Angels Church, a house of
worship in the “Polish Cathedral Style.” The 17-story structure is
also visible from the Kennedy Expressway, and symbolizes the
rebirth of Chicago as a vital urban center. Pope John Paul II
visited the parish in 1979 and blessed the Holy Icon of the Black
Madonna of Czestochowa.
Mary Queen of the Angels opened in 1920. It came upon hard
times, was shuttered, and scheduled for destruction. Viewers of
Steven Seagal movies (you know who you are) may recall that Saint
Mary of the Angels was the scene of a big, ugly gunfight in
Above the Law (1988).
Providentially, the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin, Archbishop
of Chicago, persuaded the Prelature of Opus Dei to take over the
parish and sink an archbishop’s ransom into restoring it, including
its remarkable rooftop statuary and beautiful interior. The parish
is a diverse and polyglot mix of Poles, African-Americans,
Hispanics, and young hipsters among others. Confessions are heard
in many languages.
Jumping off the Blue Line and coming out of the ground into the
Loop, you are greeted by a forest of skyscrapers old and new. The
older are much finer architectural specimens than the newer.
Volumes have been written on Chicago’s architectural heritage, and
each visitor will have his or her favorites.
The Marquette Building at 140 S. Dearborn, is a
particular favorite of mine. Built in 1895, it was designed by
Holabird & Roche. A fine example of the Chicago School of
Architecture, it is named after Jacques Marquette, the French Jesuit Missionary who
explored territory all the way from the Straits of Mackinac down
the Mississippi River, and past St. Louis to the Arkansas River.
Pere Marquette wintered in what is now Chicago in 1674-75.
This building exemplifies the steel-framed skyscraper which was
a very new thing at the time of its construction. Horizontally
banded terra cotta and waves of molding, constitute the facade. The
open and well-lit lobby atrium is encircled by a hexagonal railing
decorated with a delightful mosaic frieze by the Tiffany studio
depicting the life of Marquette. It also contains bronze figures of
Native Americans, European explorers and animals. On the revolving
door panels are carvings of panthers’ heads. Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam.
As befitting Chicago’s role as a transportation hub (“Player
with Railroads and the Nation’s Freight Handler”) the Marquette
Building was the headquarters for over 30 railroad companies in the
1930s.
The truly fortunate traveler with a few dollars in hand will
find his way to the Magnificent Mile, the northern part of Michigan
Avenue, extending from the Chicago River on the south to Lake Shore
Drive to the north. Besides indulging in many opportunities for
power shopping, a visitor can also take in the John Hancock Center,
the Tribune Tower and the Old Water Tower.
At Christmas the whole stretch is festooned with white lights
which, especially when it snows, create an aura that is truly
otherworldly.
But for this writer, the poles of requited and unrequited love
are to be found at the far ends of this great city avenue. My wife
and I honeymooned at the Drake Hotel on Chicago’s Gold Coast at the north
end of the Magnificent Mile. It is a magnificent hotel in the grand
tradition.
At the south end, right at the Chicago River, one can visit the Joel
Oppenheimer Natural Art Gallery and contemplate purchasing a print
of the pink flamingo from the Bien Edition folios of Audubon’s
Birds of America 1858-1860 for, oh, tens of thousands of
dollars. This is, of course, the unrequited pole of the Magnificent
Mile. Oppenheimer, at both its Chicago and Charleston, S.C.
locations has bin after bin of authentic Audubon and antique
botanical prints. Note to Santa: think “loon” this Christmas.
“Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laugher of Youth,
half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker
of Wheat,/Player with Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.”
Carl Sandburg got it right. Yes, Chicago is my kind of town. Its
people are friendly, energetic, loyal (what else can a Cubs fan
be?), Midwestern to the core, rooted in their unique history and
geography. My daughter must agree with me since she married a guy
from there. So I cannot possibly be wrong about this.
