Chicago Skyline

The buildings in the foreground of this photograph stand along Michigan Ave, which did indeed once run beside Lake Michigan. Despite many efforts by commercial interests to cut it up, Grant Park now stands along the lakeshore, protected by the protests of the people of Chicago under the leadership of public figures like department store magnate Montgomery Ward. Just as Central Park in New York acts as the lungs of that city, so does Grant Park provide a welcome green carpet next to the blue lake. Nevertheless, the skyline with its tall buildings is magnificent, quite appropriate for a place which is often considered the birthplace of the skyscraper, epitomized by the large black Sears Tower, tallest building in the United States.

Chicago Skyline
Chicago Skyline
Chicago Skyline
Chicago SkylineLeaving the artificiality of the city's concrete canyons, we head across Michigan Avenue to Grant Park, a very welcome antidote to the glass, steel and tarmac. The centerpiece of this large park, which is just a small part of the lakeside green strip which runs for many miles north and south of downtown, is Buckingham fountain, named after the brother of its donor, Kate Buckingham. Built in 1927, it's twice the size of its model, the Bassin de Latone at Versailles, and shoots a stream of water worthy of Chicago 150 feet into the air. It performs its display throughout the warmer months, both by day and illuminated at night.
Buckingham fountain (click here to open a new window with this photo in computer wallpaper format)
Chicago Skyline
Chicago Skyline
Chicago SkylineIt's good to have photographs like this around to remind me why I left Chicago, twice. At times it seemed like Chicago was a giant black hole relentlessly sucking me in, even before I was living in America. I well remember the awful "Noo Joisey" accent of a recruiter calling me at two thirty in the morning as I and my family in New Zealand were trying to sleep; whether she did this out of ignorance or lack of respect I'll never know, but even then I knew enough about Chicago's climate not to want to live there. Nevertheless, after nine months in the country, and the first death of a high-tech company that I was working at, I landed work with Motorola in Chicagoland, that great expanse stretching from Gary in Indiana, all the way up to the Wisconsin border, and perhaps beyond. After 12 months I quit and headed to the gentler climes of New Jersey, only to land up in Chicago yet again, after the death of another company. Eighteen more months and another commercial entity's near-death experience, and I moved down to a new job in Evanston, which is where this photo of downtown Chicago was taken from. On the far right of the photo is the Sears Tower, in the center the John Hancock center, which I always thought was more attractive than the Sears Tower, and on the extreme left you can just make out one of Indiana's few remaining steel mills belching out steam and smoke.