One more chance, tonight, Saturday 7/18, to hear a great concert marking Christopher Bell’s 25th anniversary as director of the superb Grant Park Chorus. Macmillan, Vaughan Williams and Faure Requiem. www.grantparkmusicfestival.com/events/faure...

New artwork by Cheri Carlton with makeshift attribution card, CTA Low Line at Paulina

"That's the whole meaning of life, isn't it? Trying to find a place for your stuff" -George Carlin That's what I wrote, 3 years ago, as the multi-level white elephant $150 million warehouse so big it can almost be seen from space was still under construction. arcchicago.blogspot.com/2023/06/chic...

We've written before about the insanely ambitious multi-level $150 million warehouse on Division. Now we learn it's been empty since opened in 2024, and Amazon is picking it up at probably a fire sale price. www.chicagobusiness.com/real-estate/...

Was able to skip breakfast ‘cause I can still taste the air. Yum!

Going home sir! Lawrence (distracted) hmmm? Home sir!

Architectural Abercrombie

Full flight

Smoked Wings

The internet appears to be ablaze with angry posts over today's Wordle. I was down to my last attempt, struggling to find the three-consonant combination that started the puzzle. About to give up, I walked away, returned in an hour, and got it within five minutes. Yay, me.

As is the way of all flesh, he got old, and now he's dead, but when I was a teen, I was crazy for Pat Oliphant's cartoons - they spoke to my adolescent sense of acerbic disdain. Looking at the book again, I was reminded he was no fan of Richard J. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/a...

Two fishermen

The Wall Street Journal discovers Malort www.wsj.com/cmo-today/th...

The man who stole Christmas. (This afternoon at Federal Plaza)

Tale as Old as Time: Criminals work to abolish courts. www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/u...

CST architecture critic Lee Bey has a great story on how one of the things that said Chicago for decades, Bell Federal's lighted Weather Bell sign, is being re-activated by the developer converting the structure to residential. So I had to check it out. chicago.suntimes.com/architecture...

Yesterday, I posted how TIF districts are a fraud. Today, I'm reading a lot of outrage over $450 million in TIF money going to The 78, and I'm linking to my story from last June as a reminder that a tabula rasa like The 78 requires civic infrastructure. arcchicago.blogspot.com/2025/06/a-wa...

Barricade cosies popping up on the metal gates bordering Millennium Park - an attempt to make the carefully designed, internationally renowned civic jewel look less like it's been surrounded by crowd control purchased in bulk discount from the Traffic Safety Store?

The two towers of Marina City casting early evening shadows on two towers of Wacker Drive

Sculpture at the Obama Presidential Center: Bending the Arc, Martin Puryear

Sculpture at the Obama Presidential Center: Book Bird, Richard Hunt www.obama.org/stories/rich...

Sculpture at the Obama Presidential Center: The Hem of Heaven, Nekisha Durrett

TIF districts are a fraud. Monies supposedly collected for development in a given district are transferred out with the ease of shifting change from one pocket to another. There should be one Chicago capital plan and one fund, which is what we have anyway. www.chicagobusiness.com/real-estate/...

... and here's the link to Maxwell Evans's report for Block Club Chicago on the re-gilding of Jackson Park's Statue of the Republic. blockclubchicago.org/2026/07/13/j...

Block Club Chicago is reporting the Statute of the Republic's million dollar regilding is underway. As we wrote in April, with such a major investment, doesn't the sculpture deserve a better location than an isolated traffic circle surrounded by rushing cars? arcchicago.blogspot.com/2026/04/shou...

Sculpture at the Obama Presidential Center: Seeing Through the Universe, Maya Lin

Sculpture at the Obama Presidential Center: Torch Song, Alison Saar

And to round out today's Sunday Trib trifecta, architecture critic Ed Keegan gives us a look at Thrive, Jackie Koo's TOD mixed-use affordable housing design in South Chicago, just blocks from the aborning South Works Quantum campus www.chicagotribune.com/2026/07/12/c...

Robert Loerzel's great piece on the Aragon Ballroom in the Trib today encouraged me to throw up (?)(!) some of my own pics of its spectacular interior, a Chicago tribute to Jazz Age exuberance. arcchicago.blogspot.com/2026/07/chic...

Also in the Trib today, cultural historian Robert Loerzel has a great history of Chicago's still-surviving monument to Jazz Age ebullience, Uptown's spectacular Aragon Ballroom, opened in 1926. Be sure to check out the great photoset from the Tribune archives. www.chicagotribune.com/2026/07/12/a...

For the Trib, Hannah Edgar offers up a first take on the $70 million renovation of Ravinia's Hunter Pavilion. A big thumbs up for the work by Lohan Architects; the acoustical revisions, a work in progress, apparently a mixed bag. Anyone been? Your impressions? www.chicagotribune.com/2026/07/12/r...

Nice tourist-centric appreciation of Chicago by Rima Suqi in the current Condé Nast Traveler www.cntraveler.com/story/fallin...

Crain's is out with its list of Chicago's largest architecture firms, and like AR's Swiss cheese of a national list, there's the unacknowledged factor of its dependence on firms co-operating. No Studio Gang, Pappageorge Haymes, JGMA, Smith-Gill, Lamar Johnson, Fitzgerald, Antunovich, etc.

Buc-ee's Beavers' oversized teeth go for the jugulars of other mascots. www.wsj.com/us-news/law/...

Mini-music festival, Logan Square Skate Park. Summer Smash Underground starts at 8.

Public places, grifter idolatry. washingtonian.com/2026/07/11/k...

Christmas in July, at the Equitable building

Leonard Slatkin, former music director in the 1970’s, rehearsing the Grant Park Orchestra in Tchaikovsky5 for concerts Friday, 7/10 and Saturday at 8:15pm (!) at the Pritzker. Program also includes Yevgeny Kutik in the Schwanter Violin Concerto. www.grantparkmusicfestival.com/events/tchai...

Madison Savedra's Block Club Chicago story on the Tattoo Factory's 50th anniversary inspired us to dig up these pics of its former dilapidated but suitably ornamented home across the street, demolished for an anonymous apartment block home to a PNC bank branch. blockclubchicago.org/2026/07/09/t...

Minor alterations underway at ground floor, 1 East Wacker, Kemper/Unitrin/United of America building.

If you're a brick, there's an award for the best of you, given out for 2026 in Vienna last month. One of the six was the Dạo Mẫu (Mothergoddess) Museum & Temple in Hanoi, which arb architects built out of 6 million roof tiles gathered over three years. www.brickaward.com/Winners/2026...

The plantings on Wacker Drive along the river are especially effusive and lovely this year.

Big Social Media is playing a hostile shell game with we users: 1. Constant reports how they're changing settings - without notice - to vacuum up and monetize your personal content to train AI 2. Posts about how to change settings to stop it. 3. Big social media revises the settings so you can't

Always something happening at Marina City…

Great lawn (and seating bowl) turnout for Third Coast Percussion with Grant Park Orchestra under Carlos Kalmar. 8:15- come on down! www.grantparkmusicfestival.com/events/sibel...

As, after 74 years, Chicago Magazine is folded into the Trib and ends its life and an independent publication, a few glimpses of its original early life as the WFMT Perspectives program guide.

After 74 years, Chicago Magazine is dead as an independent publication. It's being folded into the Chicago Tribune, which bought it from Primedia for $35 million in 2002. It began life in 1952 as the WFMT program guide, which became a massive cash cow once it began accepting advertising.