 Our sister paper, Chicago’s Reader, has just published its annual Best of Chicago issue. In it are excellent pieces that echo topics recently taken up in this space.
“The Thompson Center is Chicago’s endangered, postmodern Pantheon” by Deanna Isaacs outdoes my lament of April 9 for the old State of Illinois Building, which our current governor wishes to sell to cover his light bill.Â
What governor, in a city that’s all about that kind of “big Building boasting,” tears down the Pantheon?
In “The Grid helps Chicago navigate the city’s streets—and its history,” Bill Savage anticipates my column this week in explaining how Chicago’s system of street naming and numbering makes the city’s present and past comprehensible.
Daniel Burnham aspired to make the City Beautiful; Brennan made the City Logical. Some aesthetes decry the purported monotony of the Grid, but it’s full of interruptions that provide texts we can read to learn our history.
 And as a bonus, I suggest J.R. Jones’ paean to life on the Blue Line, “Life lessons learned in the middle of the Kennedy Expressway.” Â
No city intersection, no matter how big, can deliver the people-watching opportunities of a ten-lane expressway.Â
This article appears in Jun 23-29, 2016.
