#chicago architecture

[toyastales]

The Art Deco golden top of the Carbon Building, Chicago

[copperbadge]

Daaaa Vatican

@afraid-of-woodpeckers posted that the Pope should move the Vatican to Chicago a while back and like an asshole I put a poll on their post instead of making my own, but it was such a fun post and I saw so many people curious about some of the options that I decided I'd do another one. I'm removing a few of the previous options -- Trump Tower because the seething hatred of it gave it an unfair advantage, the Bean because it's so well known, and Soldier Field as the least-high-scoring from last time. I'm adding in a few I saw in comments, BUT ALSO.

I thought I'd offer context! So if you're not familiar with Chicago, before you vote, scroll down to below the poll and peep under the readmore, where I have provided photos and semi-humorous descriptions of the various Chicago landmarks. Come to Chicago! We have Architecture! And a Pope! Kind of.

Where should the Pope move the Vatican to in Chicago?

Merchandise Mart

Goth Target

University of Chicago

Navy Pier

Oak Park But Keeps Claiming It's In Chicago

Union Station

The Old Post Office

Harold Washington Library

Let's Rename It The Holy See-Ars Tower

Museum Campus

Marina City

Nuance / Ken Griffin will just put his name on it eventually

Voting ended onJun 19, 2025

Look down here for more information!

Merchandise Mart: The world's largest building when it was built in 1930, it holds so many offices it has its own zip code. A lot of it is wholesale, so there's not much reason for most people to go into it, but it's so highly visible that you definitely know it's there. Also known for the Creepy Row Of Heads.

Goth Target: A decorative former department store built in the early 20th century; after standing empty for several years in the early 2000s, Target moved in and created one of the greatest brand visuals ever. Inside it is a regular-degular Target; before the boycott I shopped there for groceries a couple of times a month. I've bought shoes there.

University of Chicago: known as the school where Fun Goes To Die, University of Chicago used to be compared to Hogwarts before JK Rowling ruined everything. They have produced numerous Nobel prize winners and several war criminals, so the church should feel right at home.

Navy Pier: A tourist attraction built on an old military pier jutting into the lake, impossible to tolerate in the summer when it's brimming with people. It houses tall ships, two theatres, a large food court, retail shops, a convention center, a children's museum, an IMAX cinema, and a ferris wheel. It's got a lot going on.

Oak Park but keeps claiming it's in Chicago: Oak Park is a suburb of Chicago, known for many Frank Lloyd Wright designed buildings and for people who live there claiming to be from Chicago, which can be extremely irritating to those of us who actually are.

Union Station: A grand old train station which is also at this point such a fucking labyrinth that it has at least one escalator which, at certain times of the day, reverses directions. If you've seen The Untouchables, the baby carriage scene was filmed there.

The Old Post Office: A truly imposing edifice built over a major downtown roadway; it's known mostly for having stood empty with numerous broken windows for a decade due to some kind of ownership/zoning issue. It is now an office building with retail after Rahm Emanuel threatened to take possession of it using Eminent Domain.

Harold Washington Library: The main downtown library, adorned with owls on the corners and full of joy. You aren't allowed to vote for this one because it's my library and I don't want to fistfight the pope for it but I will. I'm not afraid to hit a priest.

Let's Rename It The Holy See-ars Tower: Fomerly the Sears Tower and then the Willis Tower, it looks kinda like a robot. When built it was the tallest building in the world; it is now the sixteenth-tallest. I just really liked that pun.

Museum Campus: A jut of land on the lake, housing the Shedd Aquarium, Adler Planetarium, and Field Museum, just north of Soldier Field. It's also apparently impossible to photograph well. (I got suggestions for all three museums but I was running out of poll options.)

Marina City: Known locally as "The Corncobs", Marina City has the most hideously awful floorplans of any apartment building I've ever been in. But they do look cool as shit.

Nuance / Ken Griffin will just put his name on it eventually: Ken Griffin is a billionaire hedge fund manager who likes to pay ungodly amounts of money to be allowed to put his name on things like museums and libraries.

[petersolarz]

Untitled © Peter Solarz

Northwestern, Lake Michigan, Evanston Illinois

[misterveeare]

Veiws from the Taste of Chicago - September 8, 2025

[achronalart]

There are many photos of the new Obama Presidential Center already, but while I have seen plenty from the west, from the north, from the south -- even from the air! -- I haven't seen many (well, any) from the east, where it is bordered by the lush, gorgeous Jackson Park.

So since I was out on a nice early morning walk in Jackson Park anyway, on a gorgeous cool overcast late spring morning recently, I took some photos of the Obama Center from that side.

And friends, boys, and girls, it looks stunning in that setting.

[carrie11]

Marina Towers | Chicago

[turbulenthandholding]

Why Frank Lloyd Wright?

Frank Lloyd Wright wasn’t a native Chicagoan as he grew up moving around during his childhood before his family settled in Wisconsin.  He did spend a significant portion of his life and career in Chicago and its suburbs, including at his home and studio in Oak Park, which is where Carmy toured in episode 5.

But why did Carmy seek out Frank Lloyd Wright?

The architecture of the city is something a lot of Chicagoans are proud of and I feel like, in the 20 years I’ve lived in the Chicagoland area, know at least something about.  The architecture tours in the city are plentiful and fascinating (my favorite version is the boat tours on the Chicago River – and if you can’t go yourself, Chicago PBS legend Geoffery Baer filmed a pretty good rendition for WTTW).  But there are a lot of other major Chicago architects they could have featured on the show – granted, Frank Lloyd Wright’s home and studio is the best space to support a filming expedition like this.  Other options would have been looking at Bauhaus/Mid-Century Modern architect Mies van der Rohe, who was at what is now the Illinois Institute of Technology from the late 1930s to 1958 and left his 'less is more' mark on the city and suburbs, including the McCormick House at the Elmhurst Art Museum in suburban Elmhurst or the Edith Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois.  (However, I think the minimalism of the interiors of McCormick and Farnsworth Houses would not have played as beautifully on camera as Wright’s home and studio did.  I have been to McCormick House multiple times and…yeah.  It’s stark.).

Or, they could have looked at major 19th Century architects like Daniel Burnham (as featured in Erik Larson’s Devil in the White City, Burnham’s partner John Wellborn Root, Wright’s mentor and boss Louis Sullivan, or Holabird and Roche.  (Chicago Architecture Foundation for more information).  They could have filmed Carmy visiting the exteriors of lots of interesting and important Chicago buildings, similar to Syd’s food adventure in S2E3.

However, I think Storer chose to have Carmy explore FLW’s home and studio in the episode because of parallels in both circumstance and ethos between the character and the architect.

Like Carmy, Wright was not an exceptional or even good student:

“...he was admitted in January 1886 to the University of Wisconsin as a ‘special student’ in the ‘scientific’ curriculum.  He did not fare especially well.”  -foreword of Essential Texts (p14)

Also like Carmy, Wright did have a large extended family who were wealthy enough that uncles and aunts commissioned buildings that likely sparked Wright’s interest in architecture, and also gave him early opportunities to discover and spark his passion for building.  However, Wright’s childhood was also tumultuous; his parents’ divorce in 1884 after a contentious and even potentially violent marriage (his father mentioned “emotional cruelty and physical violence and spousal abandonment” in the filing) certainly left a mark on the lives of Wright and his two sisters.  His father left shortly after the divorce was granted and Wright never saw him again – potentially another parallel.

“It may be that financial difficulties stemming from his parents’ divorce in 1885 prompted him to take a job in Professor Allan D. Conover’s architectural office during the spring and fall semesters of 1886, and to work that summer for Silsbee* in Spring Green.  Perhaps his love for architecture was kindled by those two men.  Or it may be that with prosperous relatives, his mother – with whom he lived, his father having left Madison – did not need further assistance, and that Wright sought employment because his love had already blossomed on its own.  Whatever the circumstances, he withdrew from the university in December.  Early 1887 found him in Chicago working for Silsbee as a renderer and draughtsman.”  (Essential Texts p14) *who had been hired by “the Lloyd Joneses, an enormous extended family from which Wright descended on his mother’s side.” (p13)

Wright worked at another Chicago firm after Silsbee, before moving to Adler & Sullivan, who had one of the preeminent Chicago architecture firms of the day.  One of their best known works is the Auditorium (Theater) Building.

Wright rose through the ranks there quickly, becoming:

“Sullivan’s protegee and confidant…Perhaps because Sullivan and Wright had grown so intimate–the one finding the ‘son’ he never had, the other acquiring a substitute ‘father’ – it became a matter of personal rejection, at least to Sullivan, when the two disagreed over the terms of Wright’s contract and the conditions of his employment.  Feeling himself betrayed, Sullivan fired Wright, who immediately opened his own office in 1893. (p15)

Wright was fired for taking outside commissions, which was not allowed by Wright’s contract with Sullivan.  Not exactly the same as Carmy pretending his order had a fennel allergy and substituting blood orange on the paupiette of hamachi – but also not miles away.  And I think there are echoes of some of the chefs mentoring Carmy across his career, both positive and asshole chef David in the relationships that Wright formed with his own mentors.

What about Frank Lloyd Wright’s personal life?

Frank Lloyd Wright married his first wife, Catherine, in 1889 - the same year he built his home and studio in Oak Park.  They had six children together.  However, over the course of several years Wright became close with Mamah Borthwick Cheney.  Neighbors of Wright in Oak Park, she and her husband had commissioned a house from Wright.  Over the course of his work on the Cheney house, he and Mamah began an affair that took them away from their families to live in Europe for a year.  It was quite the scandal, in the Chicago area and in the architecture world.  The Cheneys divorced but Catherine would not grant Wright a divorce for several years, though she eventually did.  Wright and Mamah moved to Taliesin, the home and grounds Wright built in Spring Green, Wisconsin, and lived there together with her two children.  

By accounts and in spite of the scandal, Wright and Mamah Cheney seemed to have the deepest connection of all of the (several) women he was with.  However, it was not made to last.  Mameh, her children, and several others who were working on the Taliesin grounds were brutally murdered and the house was burned down.  The loss left a profound impact on Wright, who eulogized Mameh in a local Wisconsin newspaper:

“Unless we realize that Right Now is the most important moment of our lives, ‘there will become a bitter time when the thought of how much more potent with love and affection the precious Present might have been, will desolate our hearts.’” (p 20) - quoting from Wright’s obituary for Mameh Borthwick

Every second counts, you know.

However, I don’t think Wright’s romantic relationships have significant parallels to Carmy’s.

The Prairie School and Inspiration

Other than his formative years and early career beginnings, the place where there are the most parallels between Carmy and Frank Lloyd Wright are in the work itself.  The architectural achievement Wright is best known for is establishing the Prairie School (or Style).  This style is incredibly rooted in place – organic is the word Wright (and Sullivan) used consistently – and calls for buildings to make sense in the context of the landscapes surrounding them.

“By this, Wright meant that architecture should be suited to its environment and be a product of its place, purpose, and time.”  (source)

Sound familiar?

Frank Lloyd Wright was given the American Institute of Architects’ Gold Medal in 1949.  His acceptance speech, which ties together both fundamental aspects of the philosophy of organic architecture, which drove the Prairie School as well as Wright’s later work, and a statement of legacy, interestingly combines the same sense of legacy – a chef creating a dish which inspires another chef to iterate or create another, related dish, and on and on – which Carmy spoke about with Marcus in season 3:

…because this thought that we call organic architecture has gone abroad.  It has won abroad, under different names.  A singular thing.  We will never take an original thought or an idea until we have diluted it, until we have passed it around and given it a good many names.  After that takes place, then we can go, and we do go. Well, that has happened.  This thing has been named different names all over the world.  It has come back home and I use the word – I say come back home advisedly – because here is where it was born.  Here it was born in this cradle – as we are fond of calling it – of liberty which has denigrated into license.  Now, what are we going to do with it?  Are we going to let it become a commonplace and shove it into the gutter, or are we really going to look up to it, use it, honor it – and believe me, if we do, we have found the centerline of a democracy.  Because the principles of an organic architecture, once you comprehend them, naturally grow and expand into this great freedom that we hoped for when we founded this nation and that we call democracy.   Well, it’s enough.  Isn’t it?”  (Essential Texts p294)

I think this passage speaks to what Carmy and Sydney agreed early on, in season 1 and 2, on how they wanted the new world order of the restaurant they would create together to work. Not a hierarchical shit show, but someplace where every person on the team could grow together and contribute (as Tina does, and Marcus, and Nat, and Richie, and Sweeps, and even Neil...). As they said in episode 10, they finally have their team. Frank Lloyd Wright had this idea of the importance of really, truly inhibiting yourself though not at the expense of the collective.

“Nor should we forget his profound commitment to individualism, to everyone’s duty to be one’s self, regardless of social pressure, while keeping in mind the goal of social harmony.  Equally important was his commitment, not to a predatory individualism leading to the accumulation of uncurbed power, but of every person’s obligation to oppose it in the name of democratic principle.  As a latter-day Jeffersonian democrat, Wright spent a good deal of time criticizing government and corporate hegemony, believing it would inevitably subvert individual freedoms.  However poorly he may have expressed at the times, however the very fact that he spoke of such things set him apart from most architects, and still does.”  (p22)

It's possible that Frank Lloyd Wright was selected as the reference point here to poke at some of the things that Storer seems to be quietly insinuating about fine dining and classicism. Or it could just be that Storer wanted Carmy to seek out a beautiful Chicago space for inspiration.

[cest-fromage]

More Chicago on Film

Camera: Zorki 4k w/ Jupiter8

Film: Kodak Vision3 200T