There is no perfect Chicago walk because there is no perfectChicago. But we have some terrific imperfect walks: the lavishspaces of Michigan Avenue north and south; a mile and a half ofskyscrapers and plazas on downtown Dearborn Street; the leafyneighborhoods of Lincoln Park and Hyde Park, Evanston and Oak Park,and many more.
And what can match a stroll alongside Lake Michigan when yoursis the first footprint in the sands after a rainfall?
For day-in-and-day-out chest-swelling, though, it would be hardto beat a canyon hike that thousands of working people make as amatter of course along the north edges of the Loop.
The canyon is the city itself, and the street names may seemeveryday: Madison, Wacker, Washington, Franklin, La Salle. But thewalk is an ego kick, no matter how often you take it. Downtown isthe backdrop, and what stage set can top that?
Chicago lays out everything on this trek: Muscle, mix, heft.Drama that ranges from mellow to melo. Messes, holy and unholy.Restless changes, windy blasts. Yesterday, today and tomorrow -tangled, just as they are in the people tramping the sidewalks.
The starting point is 1980s blue glitz, where today glides into2001: the new North Western commuter station at Canal and Madison.Along the way you're rarely out of sight of the L or river, timelesslandmarks that go with the territory.
The finish line offers a stellar mix: North Michigan Avenuearound the Wrigley Building. Water and sky, bridges, boulevards andtall 1920s buildings fall into each other's arms there. EarlyChicago rooted in at the river banks a couple of centuries ago andthe city keeps a bargain with history.
The route itself can vary, depending on your choice of streets,and so can the walking time. Figure on a mile and a quarter or amile and a half. For added flavor, double into downtown's urbanecollection of walk-through lobbies.
And there are charms you never may have noticed amid the civiccliffs: a shirtmaker cutting fabric in a shop at 175 N. Franklin, anArt Deco currency exchange in the Civic Opera Building, the sunlighting the spire of the high-rising Chicago Temple on Washington.
What's more, the walk is just as potent in reverse. It bogsdown only along the few streets where civic valor runs thin or,conversely, where the skyline gets too big for its bridges.
North Western terminal, unveiled last year, makes an extravagantentry point. Admittedly, this is no brawny pile like the originalone. But its steel-truss corseting, glitter glass and 110-foot-highlight court add up to techno-love styled by architect Helmut Jahn.It's show biz. What a contrast to the squalid commuter spaces ofneighboring Union Station.
For the rush-rush way out of North Western Station, everyonetakes the high road together: the second-level bridge over CanalStreet. It's a ritual as well as a shortcut and a mob scene. Thebridge links with the lobby of 2 N. Riverside Plaza, anotherwall-to-wall people funnel specializing in city density made bysuburban commuters.
There was a time when 2 N. Riverside Plaza was known as theChicago Daily News Building. The lobby still soars, although it lostmystique when the side aisles were butchered for expanded stores.Fortunately, the newspaper's ceiling mural is still there. Look up,if the commuter trampling permits, for a reminder that here lived anewspaper now 10 years dead. R.I.P.
And then you're outdoors and onto the Madison Street bridge, aworld-class monument to the wind-chill index. Only a few years ago,Skid Row lay all over the street - literally. Now in all directionsyou see the new downtown, bulging with glassy skyscrapers worth a fewbillion last year and a few billion more today. They also swallowriver banks and cough people while tourists gape.
For oddballs who prefer trees, benches and openness, there's aconsolation prize in the reworked promenade of Gateway Center alongthe river's west bank. There are no prizes, though, for the homelessfolk who still hang around, wondering which bridge to sleep under.If Chicago looks like Jaws Junction to them, it isn't merely becauseof a spectacular sight - the yawning maw of the Washington Streetbridge under repair a block away.
At Madison, turn north along Wacker Drive for a lordly passagethat adds patina with each passing year. It could be a burly arcadein Paris, perhaps, but happens to be Deco Chicago - the coveredsidewalk of Sam Insull's Civic Opera Building of the late 1920s.
Insull ran a Midwestern utilities empire until he went bust for$3 billion in 1932. His mammoth building resembles a limestonearmchair with its back turned to Wall Street, 800-odd miles away.Now it also exudes the contented feeling of old money, with flags,bronze ornament, opera, ballet, two theaters. If only the rest oftown wore a white tie and tails as nattily.
From there, the route leads east on Washington - but, oh that eyesore billboard on the L structure.Rather than get close, you can slip into the travertine marble lobbyof 300 W. Washington, the old Mercantile Exchange.
Here the 1920s are well preserved, with a polite exit ontoFranklin Street, Chicago's hot new gulch. Franklin's slumber isover, and it's rising up hungry with skyscrapers. The spread runsbetween the Merchandise Mart at the north end, where the river runswest, to the sensuous curves of River City where the river ramblessouth past Polk Street. At each end, a wet embrace.
You trudge north wondering how long the four- and five-storybuildings near Wacker will last. And here's the L, painted white inMayor Jane Byrne's day in a vain try to make a duchess of thedragtail CTA. This is the Loop's potent northwest corner, where theriver bends, and it is accented by 333 Wacker, a curvy, green-glasshigh-rise that shouts, "Hi, Chicago."
Right there on Franklin, 333 bravely one-ups the Lake Street Lwith marble columns and circling outdoor stairs. Michelangelodoubtless would have done it better, but this much zest beside the Lis a spin into Chicago pleasure-seeking.
The river is on the other side of the building, and as you comethrough the lobby, Chicago wallops you. There's the open cut of thewater, as green as 333 Wacker, with bridges on every block. The Lrattles overhead. Across the river, a commuter train slides by.Massive buildings shoulder each other under a giant sky. A few aredumbos, but others are as vivid as Marina City and the WrigleyBuilding. Here's where Chicago parades vein and sinew.
But this also is the place for a northwest passage across thebridge to the Merchandise Mart, a building that is so big it thinkslike a city. The bronze busts of eight eminent merchants stand onpylons in the plaza, looking like heads on pikes, and who would skipsuch Chicagoana?
Inside, the lobby runs for two blocks. It's busier than mostcity streets, with hundreds of people rushing around, and twinmailboxes each eight feet high. The facilities include a postoffice, stores, bars, an L stop and a sunlit grand entry with JulesGuerin murals, now faded enough to be misty and haunting.
From there, the route doubles back south, over the twin-deckbridge on Wells with the L grumbling overhead and reflecting into thewater, where it looks fresh and friendly.
Nature also takes over at the southeast corner of Wells andWacker, with nine ash trees rising where none rose before. Andthere's a waterfall (manmade) in the Wells entrance of 222 N. LaSalle. An old and a new building have been hitched together there,and the go-through lobby is cool and smooth and empty - the oppositeof the Merchandise Mart. Seems like yesterday that the Board ofEducation was at 222, with pickets marching.
We're on La Salle now, and into the polished walk-through at 203N. La Salle: marble and metal on the double-decked road to ClarkStreet. But where is the promised CTA link ("31 minutes to O'Hare")and why does it seem to be taking 31 months to get the job done?
From here we cross water again to the new Riverfront Park:terraces, promenades, gardens, Quaker Tower, Hotel Nikko - all plush.Quaker's green marble lobby boasts giant cereal boxes, video displaysand Mies van der Rohe furniture to sit on.
A vestibule links with the Nikko, a Japanese hotel where sixhours of parking costs $17. East meets West on the other side of thebuilding in an eyesore landscape dominated by Chicago-style parkinglots.
And now: live recklessly and cross Dearborn Street traffic intoMarina City, its auto-strewn plaza and its stunning towers. To thesouth, at the Loop's edge, two other Chi-town monuments also hold theeye and win the heart: the Chicago Theatre sign on State Street andthe gilded roofline of the Carbide and Carbon Building on MichiganAvenue. While they're there, Chicago is.
You're on the last lap now. It starts in the chaste spaces ofOne IBM Plaza, where a small sculpted head of architect Ludwig Miesvan der Rohe gazes upon a world he made. Across Wabash Avenue, theChicago Sun-Times lobby offers closeup views of presses spinning outnewspapers behind glass. And then you're into two people-friendlysmall plazas, winding up on the sidewalks of Boul Mich - and feelingvery good. How about a walk back?
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