Have You Seen Our Skyline Lately?

It's hard to see the forest for the trees.  And it's hard to see the skyline for the skyscrapers.  That's why sometimes it's good to get out of the city and take a step back in order to appreciate what we have.

This is what the skyline looks like these days, as seen from the Adler Planetarium (1300 South Lake Shore Drive).  If you haven't taken a close look at it in a while, you may notice the Legacy at Millennium Park (21 South Wabash Street) sticking up in the middle of the action.  Also the Trump International Hotel and Tower (401 North Wabash Street) makes its presence known in the center, and the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Illinois Tower (300 East Randolph Street) has new prominence now that its vertical expansion is done.

This picture is provided as a public service because the Chicago TV stations do a really awful job of showing what the city looks like.  WFLD tries, but its studio background ("cyc" [pronounced "sike"] in TV lingo) is so over processed and cartoonish it's hard to believe what you see.  And WGN-TV's bumps are so archaically outdated that they still show the old Sun-Times building that was torn down six years ago.

So do yourself a favor and click on the picture to see the Chicago skyline in all its glory.  Or at least what my CrappyCameraPhone™ can reproduce.

Slice of Life: The Spires of Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Three generations of skyscraper tops are visible in this shot of the southwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Lake Street.

• Yesterday:
• The Carbide and Carbon Building, 230 North Michigan Avenue
• Today:
• The Smurfitt-Stone Building, 150 North Michigan Avenue
• The Heritage at Millennium Park, 130 North Garland Court
• The CNA Center, 333 South Wabash Avenue
• Tomorrow:
• The Legacy at Millennium Park, 21 South Wabash Avenue

Status Update: The Legacy at Millennium Park

Once again, we're checking in with what we think is one of the great overlooked skyscraper projects in Chicago.  The Legacy at Millennium Park is using a narrow footprint to not only achieve great heights, but to help clean up what used to be a seedy stretch of Chicago's Loop.

As you can see, the glass has come quite a way since our last update .  Because of its location, it will likely become one of the great icons of the Chicago skyline.

Status Update: The Legacy at Millennium Park

If the Waterview Tower ever gets completed, I'd like to think that this is what it would look like.  The Legacy at Millennium Park spent a couple of years trying to restore and preserve some pretty nasty retail storefronts.  Now that it's free to rise upward, it is; and at quite a pace.

There are three reasons I like this building:

1. It echoes the art deco-era towers that sit in front of it along Michigan Avenue
2. It helped with the massive clean-up of Wabash Street that's turned it from a scary alley into the beginnings of a neighborhood.
3. It blocked my old bosses view from her condo.  Suck it, Diana.