Recently we published a photograph of Lake Point Tower, which made me think of this trivia question.
Q:Lake Point Tower (seen below) at 505 North Lake Shore Drive is the only residential building east of North Lake Shore Drive. But it's not the only one with an odd house number. What is the other building with a street address indicating that it is on the east side of Lake Shore Drive?
This building should actually have the address 954 North Lake Shore Drive, but has been granted the vanity address of 999 Lake Shore Drive, even though it is on the west side of the street.
One of the few magnificent old mansions remaining on Lake Shore Drive is being renovated.
The Carl Constantine Heisen House (1250 North Lake Shore Drive) looks like it's been gutted and workers are busy putting things back together. It's really amazing that such a beautiful mansion remains at this location when so many of its contemporaries were knocked down so that skyscrapers could be built in their place.
In fact, the southern turret of the Heisen house is mere inches away from a neighboring tower.
The home was built in 1891 and designed by architect Frank Abbott.
Among those who have lived at the home is Dorothy Dickson, the daughter of a Chicago journalist who married Heisen when she was 20. He was a ballroom dancer of note and she had a semi-successful silent film career back before the movie industry moved to what would become Hollywood. They eventually moved to Britain and divorced. Her Chicago-born daughter became a big deal on the London stage.
It's not very often I get to post pictures of pretty girls in this blog instead of buildings, so here you go:
Last month we posted a film in this blog that showcased Chicago as it was in 1948. One scene in that film showed an unnamed castle along the city's lakefront.
We now know what that castle was. It was the home of legendary Chicago businessman Potter Palmer, who is responsible for making State Street what it is today.
Sadly, the castle which once overlooked Oak Street Beach is gone, replaced by the sibling apartment blocks known as 1350-1360 North Lake Shore Drive. We have friends who live there, so we won't call the buildings ugly. Whoops.
Recently, the "Ask Geoffrey" segment on WTTW's Chicago Tonight brought up the Palmer Castle and gave some very interesting background information.
On the first warm day of 2009 I found myself wandering around the New East Side. It's the location of the last place I lived, The Shoreham, and a dozen other high rises along the lakefront. Wandering toward the water I was struck by something new -- a new boathouse at Dusable Harbor (401 North Lake Shore Drive).
When I lived in Lakeshore East, this was where a dank funk would roll out from beneath Lake Shore Drive and tumble into the welcoming waters of Lake Michigan. That's not what I found in 2009, though. The little area had been completely fixed up, with the previously mentioned boathouse, and a new bridge to keep Loop-bourne joggers from becoming unwillingly merged with speeding cyclists on the lakefront path.
Last night WTTW ran a piece on the new boathouse that we mentioned back in June. It's a nice look at how great architecture can come in very small packages.
1969 was a great year for Chicago architecture. Across the city buildings large and small were going up in a frenzy of cranes, and bricks, and steel.
One of those buildings marking its progression into middle age is Lake Point Tower(505 North Lake Shore Drive).
Paul LeRoux, over at LPT sent us a packet of information related to the building's anniversary, including a neat brochure with some great photography of the building by Bart Shore and Anthony R. Vizzari we hadn't seen before.
Mr. LeRoux also sent over a video about the tower, which highlights many of its fabulous views. You can view the video here:
If you're low bandwidth, or would like a DVD version, it's available in the management office for $5.00.
There are several private events scheduled to celebrate Lake Point Tower, but there's also a public event. October 28th the developer and architect will take part in a symposium at 12:15pm at the Chicago Architecture Foundation (224 South Michigan Avenue). Also at the symposium will be Edward Windhorst, and Kevin Harrington the authors of an upcoming book titled Lake Point Tower, A Design History. It is due to be released in mid-September.
In addition to these efforts, the people at Lake Point Tower are getting all social with their building. Here are blog, Twitter, and Flickr links.
Here's some Lake Point Tower trivia:
It's the only residential building east of Lake Shore Drive.
It is surrounded on three sides by water.
It has a private park and pond.
It is in the American Institute of Architects list of the top 150 most loved pieces of architecture in America.
A number of architects live and have lived at Lake Point Tower, along with sports stars and other celebrities.
Lake Shore Drive was the inspiration for the 1980's Activision game "Freeway." Well, the original name was "Bloody Human Freeway" but most of us remember it being marketed with a chicken, not a person, crossing the lanes of traffic.
From Atari Age:
Even though Freeway looks a bit like Frogger at first glance, the two games are actually very different. According to David Crane, he got the idea for Freeway from watching a man trying to cross Lake Shore Drive during rush-hour traffic while attending Chicago's Consumer Electronic Show.
More at Atari Age including a ROM you can download and play the game on your computer.
