Connecting the Windy City

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk. Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.
--Soren Kierkegaard

Oh, Soren, you make my heart sing . . . what a nice thought from a guy whose most well known work is Fear and Trembling.

Well, I’m taking the advice of Existentialism’s papa, and I’m walking around a lot these days. At least I think I’m walking. And if I think I’m walking, then I probably am.

I’m hoofing it because the knees don’t take too kindly to running anymore. Running around in circles or going nowhere on a treadmill kept me busy for a number of years. But all those miles haven’t brought me any closer to deep and soulful insight. And they haven’t taken me any farther away from the things I’d like to avoid.

So I’ll save a couple hundred bucks on running shoes each year.

Another reason I'm walking is that I tripped over February awhile back and found myself at the beginning of March with no ice on the lake and a blue sky overhead. Even though it was only a couple degrees above freezing today, the sun was shining and I was hatless and I had that school kid feeling that spring wasn’t too far away.

It helped that the melting snow was forming puddles on the sunniest of the sidewalks and the geese at North Pond were bending their long necks toward tufts of muddy grass that had been uncovered in the thaw.

Mostly, though, I’m walking for the exercise. And for the view.

A guy like me can burn off over a hundred calories for each mile of the stroll up Michigan Avenue. Experimentation over the past week or so has shown me that a leisurely pace will get you a green light all the way from Jackson to the Water Tower. You try to push the pace too hard, and you’ll get a red light about every third intersection.

The things you can see while walking, though, those are important, too. Just today, on my walk from Jackson to the Lincoln Park Zoo, I saw a greyhound with an argyle sweater and little purple boots.

I’m guessing that at doggie school he gets bullied.

On Huron I saw a carriage driver pat his horse on the muzzle and feed him a carrot. It’s difficult to chew on a carrot with a bit in one’s mouth. I never realized how difficult before. Dobbin tossed his head as I passed and his sad horse eyes instant messaged . . . What are YOU looking at?

In the long walk from downtown all the way to the zoo I saw exactly one woman in a fur coat. Dark. Ankle length. The tall gal wearing it didn’t look like she was worried about medical insurance. In fact, she didn’t look like she was worried about much of anything. A dysfunctional Congress wasn’t going to stop her from leading the parade into Neiman Marcus.

Funny, five years ago you couldn’t have walked ten feet down the Mag Mile without seeing a pelted dolly or two. Hard times? Democrats in charge? Fear that naked P.E.T.A. volunteers will set them on fire? It would be fun to find out.

As I entered the protective canopy alongside what used to be Phillip Maher’s lovely Farwell Building before the Ritz-Carlton Residence folks killed and skinned it, an elderly woman heading my way stopped to adjust her scarf. In the process her three-pronged walker capsized. It seemed no big deal to take a few steps toward her side of the walkway and upright it for her. She seemed appreciative.

It’s the kind of thing you see people doing in Chicago all the time. It’s a good city with big-hearted people. The current President is one of us, good and big-hearted. He would have picked that frail woman’s three-pronged walker up, too, although he would have gotten to it before I did.

He knows what any compassionate citizen of this great country must surely know. He knows that there are folks who, through no fault of their own, need some help. In the last analysis, a few steps out of our way won’t break the bank. That's the way we do it in the Windy City.

With that in mind, I’ll just be walking on.

Months ago I wrote of my surprise at seeing an exact replica of Chicago’s Standing Lincoln across the street from The Houses of Parliament. No altruistic act is simple, straightforward or without conflict, but the partnership that was formed between England and the United States to place Lincoln’s statue on London’s Parliament Square would have made Basil Fawlty and his crew look like five-star innkeepers.

By way of review . . . way, way outside the empire, back in provincial Chicago, old Eli Bates kicked off in 1881 and left enough money behind to erect a statue of Abraham Lincoln. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, an Irish immigrant and the foremost sculptor of his day, conceived and executed the work, which was dedicated in 1887 and which still stands at the head of Dearborn Street in Lincoln Park.

To get to London, though, we have to go by way of Cincinnati, a city that had a fair shot at becoming the mid-continental superstar, if only the City with the Big Shoulders hadn’t muscled all the other players out of the way by getting the canal built first, hogging the title of Stacker of Wheat and Player with Railroads.

Just as old Eli Bates had done in Chicago, a wealthy Cincinnati department store and hotel owner, Frederick H. Alms, left a $100,000 legacy to place a statue of Lincoln in a place of prominence to honor the centennial of Lincoln’s birth n 1809. Mrs. Alms established a committee of five influential Cincinnati citizens to choose a sculptor.

Everyone agreed on George Grey Barnard – except for Mrs. Alms, who wanted her husband’s gift to underwrite the work of Gutzon Borglum. But what does a woman, especially a woman stricken with grief, know about such things? Borglum only went on to wrest Mount Rushmore from the Dakota badlands.

As The New York Times reported on December 17, 1910 . . . “Rather than have any further wrangling over who should give to the City of Cincinnati a monument to Abraham Lincoln, Mr. and Mrs. Charles P. Taft, the former a brother of President Taft, volunteered on Thursday to give the $100,000 necessary for that purpose.”

Barnard, the beneficiary of Taft’s generosity, was born in Kankakee, trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris and, like Saint-Gaudens 20 years earlier, had found success in a conspicuous space, having finished the sculptural work for the Pennsylvania State Capitol in Harrisburg.

Once chosen to execute the important work, Barnard’s plan was to sculpt Lincoln in a way that portrayed the president as a workingman who had risen to greatness. In a sense the work was to be about the country as much as it was the president – a country in which even a farm boy from the hinterlands of Illinois could become the head of state. So the statue, necessarily, was as much prairie farm boy as it was savior of the union.

It wasn’t until March of 1917 that the benefactor’s brother, the former President of the United States, William Howard Taft, unveiled the statue in Cincinnati. In the elation that ensued Charles Taft made an announcement that he would pay for a replica of Barnard’s Lincoln, that statue to be sent to London where it would stand outside the Houses of Parliament.

The former President’s brother had reason to believe that his gift would be accepted. Some years earlier the American Peace Centenary Committee had been established to figure out ways in which the hundred years of peace between the United States and Britain, formalized in the Treaty of Ghent in 1814, could be celebrated.

Anticipating that the love you take is equal to the love you make, the American and British Peace Centenary Committees agreed to mark the century long love-in by exchanging statues. Saint-Gaudens’ Standing Lincoln, the work of Augustus Saint Gaudens, was chosen for America’s gift, and the British government agreed to provide a site in Parliament Square between Westminster Abbey and the House of Parliament. For its placement. [pmsa.kcl.ac.uk]

But World War I interrupted the plans, and Standing Lincoln didn’t make it across the pond. And this is where the last and most amazing part of They Got Lincoln, Again and Again begins.

For the first time in our lives, Jill and I have spent January and most of February in the tropics, bunking down beneath the palm trees on Florida’s Treasure Coast. The weather was unseasonably cold, and Floridians were on high alert, guarding against the almost certain hypothermia brought on by nighttime temperatures in the high 40’s.

Weather forecasters, especially, were in freak-out mode. Each newscast brought an updated set of reminders. Keep your pets indoors. Watch how you use those space heaters. Outfit the car with survival gear in case of breakdown.

Still, almost every day the sky was a deep blue and the sun was shining. As I tried to explain to almost anyone who would listen, warm weather is unimportant if you’ve got a shot at wearing shorts and a short sleeve shirt and standing in the sunshine. They’ve got that going for them down there in the Land of the Hanging Chad . . . it’s a rare day when you can leave the sunglasses on the wicker whatnot as you head out the door.

Anyway, we were showing houseguests around the area just south of the Gulfstream Gulf Club, coming into Delray Beach, when the onboard navigator told me that I needed to turn right on George Bush Boulevard, a street on which, as it turned out, a turn to the right was the only option.

Which I did.

Turned to the right, that is. Onto George Bush Boulevard. In broad daylight.

Me. One of only 17 people in the entire United States of America who voted for both Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.

At that point I knew it was time to start thinking about coming back to the frozen northland.

Which we did.

But not until we watched the televised implosion of the 30-story hurricane-wrecked condo building up on Flagler Drive. As the dust settled and the wealthiest five percent walked their jewelry back into the adjoining properties, we loaded up the car and headed out of town.

It took the better part of three days to cover the 1300-plus miles between the land of the foolish grin and Chicago. Three days on the interstate system through Gainesville and Atlanta, on through Chattanooga and Nashville and Bowling Green and Indianapolis.

Georgia, among other things, is the Imperial Valley of billboards. Jill spotted the best one, an advertisement for dental implants . . . two words, 50 feet tall . . .

GOT TEETH?

Tennessee is mercifully free of outdoor advertising, but the waterfalls of ice frozen all along the mountain passes above Chattanooga were enough for Jill to start snapping cell phone photos. The session continued until I suggested that we were traveling at 75-miles-an-hour through heavy shade, and odds were not in favor of an Ansel Adams day.

The rolling hills and pastures of Kentucky, so lovely in the summer, are largely forgettable in the winter.

And Indiana, well, Indiana, in summer or winter, is . . . Indiana. There is a moment of excitement when you pass Seymour, but even with Little Pink Houses, it’s still Indiana.

Then, finally, as the sun dropped closer and closer to the horizon we were through what historian William Cronon called “the sweet pungent odor that was Gary.”

Cronon opened his book, Nature’s Metropolis, with a description of a similar entry into Chicago. A long car ride – his was as a child traveling in the backseat on a trip from southern New England to Wisconsin – and then after all those miles . . . the Big City.

His child’s impression was of how brutish it all was. “Chicago,” he writes, “represented all that was most unnatural about human life. Crowded and artificial, it was a cancer on an otherwise beautiful landscape.”

I thought of those words as we surged out of the toll booth on the Skyway, after giving a few ducats to help out our Australian and Spanish brothers with their 99-year lease. We crossed the Calumet River and, with the skies around us darkening, off in the distant northeast was the bright and shining giant, the City of Big Shoulders.

The blue-tinted crispness of its glass and steel buildings stood in high contrast to the blurred smudge of soot and grime that we were driving over. It was like reaching down for another fistful of popcorn while watching the beginning of The Wizard of Oz and looking up to find that the film was filled with fantastic colors.

A dozen miles later, the sun set as we rolled down Lake Shore Drive and across the Chicago River.

We were home.

Back in a big, beautiful, ass-busting city, a place with a guarantee that you will never have to turn right onto George Bush Boulevard.

So me and the missus are standing across from Parliament Square, trying to figure out how 40 Greenpeace folks ended up on the roof ruining the pictures of Big Ben with banners protesting the abuse of the environment, when she nudges me and points to a statue over on Parliament Street.

“Looks like Abraham Lincoln,” she says.

“Yep, sure does,” I say.

And I take a picture, one of the dozens of pictures I took of the statues and memorials that occupy every bit of free space in London.

We’re proud of our sculpture in Chicago. Heck, we’ve got Calders, a Miro, a Picasso, a few Henry Moores, even an entire auto junkyard that Frank Stella piled up inside the Metcalfe Federal Building on Jackson. But here in the Windy City our sculptures are like super-heated molecules moving quickly away from one another.

Sculpture-wise London is the equivalent of a substance cooled to near absolute-zero. Works aren’t just plopped into parks and plazas . . . in many places they step over the curb and stand in the middle of the street.

Anyway, it turns out that she who is wiser than I was right and that the Parliament Street statue really WAS Abraham Lincoln.

That London Lincoln – the throne-like chair, the standing President, his head bowed, a farm-boy’s oversized hand grasping the iron lapel of his frock coat – is familiar to every Chicagoan. It’s a replica of Augustus Saint-Gaudens sculpture that stands at the north end of Dearborn in Lincoln Park, the work we call The Standing Lincoln.

Saint-Gaudens had at the age of 17 seen Lincoln’s train as it moved toward the President’s inauguration. After schooling, including studies at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and a time in Rome, he received his first major commission in 1876 for a sculpture of Admiral David Farragut that still stands in New York City’s Madison Square Park.

Five years later Chicago lumber baron Eli Bates died and in his will left the city enough money to cover two projects, a fountain and a statue of Abraham Lincoln, each to be located in Lincoln Park. Saint-Gaudens was chosen for both projects. The fountain, Storks at Play, is located to the south of the Lincoln Park Conservatory.

It took several years for the sculptor to form his vision of the fallen president into its final form. Using his boyhood impression of Lincoln as he viewed him on that inaugural train, standing “tall in the carriage, his dark uncovered head bent in contemplative acknowledgement of the waiting people,” (www.sgnhs.org) along with the life mask of Lincoln and the casts of his hands made by Leonard Volk before the President was elected, Saint-Gaudens began work.

He used a six-foot, four-inch Vermont farmer, Langdon Morse, as his model, beginning at Cornish, New Hampshire, in the summer of 1885. (www.waymarking.com)

The pedestal on which the Lincoln Park sculpture is mounted was the design of Stanford White, who began his career as the principal assistant to the foremost architect of the day, Henry Hobson Richardson, and who was a partner in the most prestigious architectural firm in New York City, McKim, Mead and White.

Sharing the fate of Lincoln, in June of 1906 White was shot three times in the head at point blank range by multi-millionaire Henry Kendall Thaw on the Madison Square Roof Garden. From that roof it is certain that he could have seen the Admiral Farragut statue, another Saint-Gaudens work for which White designed the pedestal.

The Standing Lincoln was unveiled on October 22, 1887. Chicago Mayor E. A. Roche headed the dignitaries on the dais, and Abraham Lincoln II, the 15-year-old grandson of the late president, released the flag covering the statue. (www.lib.niu.edu) And in that place at the head of Dearborn Parkway Saint-Gaudens work has stood ever since.

As hundreds of thousands of young men were dying on the western front during World War I, negotiations were being carried out for a statue of Lincoln to be erected near Parliament Square in London. The struggle between lawmakers and artists that ensued makes for a fascinating story. Read about it in the next installment of They Got Lincoln – Again and Again.

I got a new pair of sandals for my birthday in July . . . a slick leather pair with soles that have guitar-shaped treads. It was the perfect gift for a guy a year away from his seventh decade of service to mankind. With the exception of gym shoes and sweat socks, I’ve had trouble wearing real shoes ever since.

A couple days ago I took my sandals out for a walk up to the drugstore on Clark Street. The temperature was in the 50’s, and the wind was building toward the 40-knot gusts we listened to all night long. Just around the corner on Sheridan I was hailed by a security guard in a hospital van. The wind in the deaf aid meant that I had to walk out into the middle of the street to hear what he was yelling, which was --

Are you the patient who was just admitted to the hospital and then walked away?

Right. I got it. Everyone around is bundled up for the winter, and I’m breezing down Sheridan in sandals and shorts. Now I know what it feels like to be profiled. I also know what it’s like to convince a suspicious hospital security guard that I’m just an older guy trying to hang on to the summer for as long as he can . . . while standing in the middle of rush hour traffic on Sheridan Road, my hand cupped around my ear.

These are the days that we would hang on to if we could. The trees are beginning to change, and the sky and the lake make one another look even more achingly lovely. The newly planted mums have just begun to flower, the flowers of yellow and russet foretelling the future more precisely than the chill in the air ever could.

Chicago’s a good old girl at this time of the year, a real gal on a walk back from the beach thinking about a couple of beers at the neighborhood joint as she strolls.

She’s feeling the exuberance of summer and youth and the assurance of infinite possibility fade a little this week as kids kill each other in the streets and a hundred or so prune-skins point their palsied fingers south toward Rio de Janeiro.

But she’s still got youthful energy on her side, and a simple walk around the neighborhood is all it takes to see it.

Before heading up to the top for another cliff dive, the window washers grab a smoke as they speak quietly to one another in Spanish at the base of Mies van der Rohe’s Commonwealth Plaza

The guys from Streets and Sanitation re-paint the lines and turn arrows on Diversey, the bright white paint gleaming new as the orange traffic cones guard the work.

The traffic ticket dude rides down the street on a bicycle, his pocket filled with tickets to be written while a guy in a neon yellow vest walks up the sidewalk in the opposite direction, sweeping trash into his long handled scoop-it.

Two fire inspectors, clipboards in hand, check out the hose connection in front of Sunrise Assisted Living at Clark and Wellington.

All the while the boats bob in the harbor, the sun sparkles on the lake, and always, always that unbelievable prairie dream of a downtown promises to love you to death or break your heart. Or both.

Chicago is a town where the bums weave themselves into the urban fabric like statuary, street art with jingling Starbucks cups. A brawny town of stone and steel, washed clean each day in a glacial gift, a Fountain of Youth in a berg that will never grow old. It’s a place where the business gals go bare legged and the gentlemen loosen their neckties at mid-day.

The other day I was waiting for the old 151 at the bus stop on Washington in front of the Pittsfield Building when Mayor Daley came strolling by, headed east with an aide. He met my eye and I bade him good morning.

I wanted to tell him that the Olympic thing was no big deal, that the place he has largely re-made is one of the great cities in the world. I wanted to tell him everything that I have written here, but he’s a fast walker – on his way to do who knows what, perhaps to begin deliberations on The Next Big Thing.

Chicago writer Nelson Algren said that Chicago is an October sort of city, even in spring. That’s a good thing, Mr. Mayor. So keep the faith . . . you’re taking care of a sensitive little world beater here, singing her own song as she beats it back home.

Two days ago the President of the United States of America gave an important address to the United Nations General Assembly. Before the speech he met with the Prime Minister of Japan at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City. After the address he joined the leaders of nations contributing peace-keeping troops, followed shortly thereafter by a wreath-laying ceremony for fallen United Nations staff members. By 1:15 he was at lunch with world leaders.

After lunch he headed straightaway to a sit-down with President Medvedev of Russia. And then he and the Head of the Family, Mrs. President Obama, hosted a reception for Heads of State at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I ride a bike ten miles from our apartment to the Loop and back, and I have to rest for a day or two. This guy is fleet of foot. The Secret Service advance team must be running cable 24 hours a day.

Anyway, he started his speech to the princes of peace at the United Nations by announcing that there was a new sheriff in town, and the U. S. of A. would be taking the moral high ground henceforth.

On my first day in office, I prohibited – without exception or equivocation – the use of torture by the United States of America (Applause. Applause. Applause) I ordered the prison at Guantanamo Bay closed, and we are doing the hard work of forging a framework to combat extremism within the rule of law.

Within the rule of law . . . that phrase must have sent shivers down Mr. Cheney’s stint. Right there at the top of the speech, like it was REALLY important.

And it must have been a tough one to listen to for the hoarders who have been running the Walmarts out of .45 and .38 caliber ammunition for the past nine months in anticipation of the horrors the administration will wreak on their Second Amendment rights.

Thomas Jefferson had something to do with that Amendment, the guy with the ponytail who said, “Conquest is not in our principles. It is inconsistent with our government.”

Jefferson probably would have nodded in agreement when the President said, “Every nation must know: America will live its values, and we will lead by example.”

Then came the “Four Pillars,” the heart of the speech, which the President defined as (1) stopping the spread of nuclear weapons; (2) the pursuit of peace; (3) the preservation of the planet; and (4) a global economy that advances opportunity for all people.

So I’m wondering where the noble opposition goes with this one. To disagree with the country’s elected leader one would have to: (1) be for the spread of nuclear weapons; (2) be against the pursuit of world peace; (3) be for the continued destruction of a livable planet; and (4) be against the concept that all men should be guaranteed the pursuit of happiness.

That last phrase – that pursuit of happiness thing – I’ve read that somewhere before.

In an increasingly hostile world another United States President appeared before Congress almost 60 years ago and listed that same principle as part of what he called the “four essential human freedoms.” Franklin D. Roosevelt in his 1941 State of the Union Speech defined those freedoms in this way . . .

The first was freedom of speech and expression – everywhere in the world.

Next was the freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world.

Thirdly, came a freedom that would secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world.

Finally, Roosevelt spoke of a freedom from fear, a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation would be in a apposition to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world.

On that distant January night Roosevelt ended his speech with these words:

This nation has placed its destiny in the hands and heads and hearts of its millions of free men and women, and its faith in freedom under the guidance of God. Freedom means the supremacy of human rights everywhere. Our support goes to those who struggle to gain those rights and keep them. Our strength is our unity of purpose.

It is interesting to note that for Roosevelt the nation’s greatest strength was a unity of purpose. We may well disagree on the ways in which the President Obama’s four pillars are lifted into place. That’s the beauty of living in a free country. It was what led John F. Kennedy to observe that the unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion. But we citizens of this great nation should not disagree on the overriding importance of the basic doctrine that is the unity of freedom for all people.

What we need is for the wrong-side-of-the-aislers underneath the Big Dome to cinch their neckties up a little tighter and choke the nay-saying for awhile. We get it. You lost. You’re unhappy. But the greatest test of a man’s nobility is that he puts aside his own personal unhappiness and works to make the lives of those around him better.

That’s what a representative democracy is supposed to be about.

I’m thirsty tonight, but I’m just going to have a Diet Coke and save the beer calories for a time when it’s really important. Instead I’ll pour a page or so of words about one of the oldest beer sellers in Chicago.

The Berghoff story begins with Herman Joseph Berghoff, who left Dortmund, Germany, at age 17 and landed penniless in Brooklyn in 1870. During his initial travels in America, he worked on a sugar plantation in the South, as a pastry cook on a freighter and a seaman on a cruise ship. He also spent time with the Buffalo Bill Wild West Show and a year working on the railroad out West (Chicago Architecture Foundation).

Settling finally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, he represented a Cincinnati brewery until he opened his own brewery in 1887. With eyes on the expansion of his business, Berghoff set up shop in Chicago at the World’s Colombian Exposition of 1893, an event unlike any the world had ever seen. In the six months that the fair ran, over 27 million thirsty folks came to Chicago.

Taking the popularity of his beer at the fair as a sign, Herman opened the Berghoff Cafe in 1898 to showcase his Dortmunder-style beer. Originally located at the corner of State and Adams Streets, one door down from its present location, the bar sold beer for a nickel and offered sandwiches for free.

The bar prospered even during Prohibition (1918-1933) when it served near beer and Bergo Soda Pop. Clearly, a bar without alcohol could not last long, so the business expanded into a full-service restaurant, which gained wide popularity by the end of Prohibition. In 1933, when Prohibition ended, Herman Berghoff was first in line at City Hall to receive Liquor License Number One. On that one day the establishment served 50 barrels of beer.

Long after most restaurants ended the practice, the Berghoff maintained a separate men's only bar. The segregation ended in 1969, when seven members of the National Organization for Women sat at the bar and demanded service. One particular female lifted her stein and her camera to record the occasion. A "gentleman" took exception, and attempted to end the photo session. The photographer was not about to give the camera up without a fight and bit a chunk from the man's hand. The emergency room doctor told the man that it was dangerous to be bitten by a human. "I don't think the bite was from this world," the man responded (Chicago Architecture Foundation). One is reminded of W. C. Field's line, "A woman drove me to drink, and I hadn't even the courtesy to thank her."

The Huber Brewing Company of Monroe, Wisconsin began supplying beer to Berghoff’s under contract in 1960. It remains one of Huber’s flagship beers (The Best Breweries and Brewpubs of Illinois). The popular restaurant ended operations on February 28, 2006. The building now contains a bar and a cafe that is open during weekday lunch hours, along with a large banquet and catering facility.

Of particular note in the three-building complex that comprises the Berghoff property is the west structure, designed by Charles M. Palmer and completed in 1872. The facade is of cast iron, which was ordered from the foundry and bolted to the exterior of the building. Looking carefully, one can see the bolts that secure the facade to the building.

Cast-iron storefronts began to appear in Chicago as early as 1857. For example, between 1857 and 1858 John Mills Van Osdel built approximately 1,100 feet of cast-iron frontage. During this same period many iron foundries were established in the city, many of which produced cast-iron storefronts. Such facades found favor with builders as an alternative to elaborate masonry construction (Chicago Architecture Foundation), foundry work being cheaper and quicker than the work of an individual sculptor or stone mason.

Although cast iron facades gave designers the chance to beautify the exteriors of their buildings, lending the structures a substantial and sophisticated appearance, the material had one serious flaw. Its melting temperature of 1150 to 1200 °C is about 300 °C lower than the melting point of pure iron and about 200 °C lower than the average melting temperature of steel. When the great fire of October 8th and 9th of 1871 swept through the business district, largely located in and along Lake Street, cast iron facades became molten, pulling down the masonry walls on which they were hung.

The Page Brothers Building at 177 North State Street, directly across the el tracks from the new Wit Hotel, is the only other building in Chicago’s Loop to have such a cast iron façade. One can see it from Lake Street, around the corner from the Chicago Theatre. It was the work of early Chicago architect John M. Van Osdel, who designed the first Palmer House and the Illinois Executive Mansion in Springfield. Purchased from the City of Chicago in March of 2007 for 1.625 million dollars (City of Chicago Department of Community Development), the Page Brothers Building is another early Loop building that has stood the test of time.