Chicago galore

Apr. 17 2013

by Laurence Ogiela

It celebrates its 175th anniversary this year, and this is where the famous Route 66 begins. Barack Obama calls it "Home", and it is said to be a mini New York. Third largest city in the United States and capital of the Midwest, Chicago stretches along Lake Michigan. And, its skyline is almost as impressive as Manhattan's. Above all, Chicago has something that New York envies: its quality of life.

Sure, the city is known for being windy, even frigid in winter. But from spring to fall, it becomes particularly pleasant. Its 24 kilometers of beach, its parks and its bike path along the lake are always full.

Urban renewal
When you first enter the city, you are immediately struck by the line of skyscrapers that suddenly rise above the great plains of the Midwest. For, like its rival New York, Chicago is a vertical city. And it was Chicago that laid the foundations for the construction of skyscrapers, long before New York.

Today, it still has four of the tallest buildings in the world. The most emblematic of the city, the Willis Tower, better known as the Sears Tower, with its 443 meters high, remained the tallest building in the world until 1998 when it was dethroned by the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This sleek black tower and its competitor the John Hancock Tower, also black but not as tall, mark the boundary of downtown Chicago. On the 103rd floor of the Sears Tower, at 412 meters high, Chicago reveals its glass and steel anatomy. For thrill seekers, transparent cages protrude from the tower's facade and give the feeling of walking above the void.

Aerial view of South Chicago © City of Chicago

From the observation deck of the John Hancock Tower, you have a bird's eye view of downtown on one side and the Gold Coast and its beaches on the other. To get a complete overview of the city's architectural wealth, you should take a thematic cruise on the Chicago River. There, buildings of different styles and periods follow one another: the Jeweler's Building, in the European Renaissance style of the 1920s, which housed Al Capone's speakeasy or the Trump Tower, the second tallest skyscraper in Chicago, completed in 2009.

Paradoxically, far from downtown in Oak Park, another renowned architect, Frank Loyd Wright, reinvented horizontality with his low-rise prairie houses that can also be visited. And, as all recent large-scale construction must be accompanied by a work of contemporary art, Chicago has many grandiose sculptures on its streets by Calder, Chagall, Picasso...

In the last ten years, former mayor Richard M. Daley has rehabilitated the lakefront and the downtown area where he created Millennium Park, which now covers the old railroad tracks that used to run along Michigan Avenue. Here too, there are original architectural achievements such as the Jay Pritzker Pavilion and Frank Gehry's BP Bridge, and stunning contemporary artworks such as The Crown Fountain.

But the most incredible achievement is Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate, nicknamed the Bean because of its shape. It admirably reflects the Chicago skyline that stands out through the vegetation of the park. In addition to rehabilitating the city, which was once industrial and devastated, the mayor has made it one of the greenest in the United States.

The first gay neighborhood
Chicago is also one of the most gay-friendly cities in the United States. The epicenter of gay life is in the Boystown neighborhood, a 15-minute subway or cab ride from downtown. LGBT businesses line the length of Halsted Street and Broadway, between Belmont and Addison. The neighborhood is especially easy to spot because it features Art Deco pillars in the colors of the Rainbow Flag.

Gay beach in Chicago © Laurence Ogiela

Chicago was the first American city to officially recognize the existence of a gay neighborhood. It is also the city that organizes one of the oldest gay and lesbian film festivals, the Reeling Festival, which celebrated its 30th anniversary in November last year. Boystown and the Andersonville neighborhood, even further north, also have the highest concentration of gay homeowners in the United States.

Andersonville was once the territory of the Swedish community before it was invaded by lesbians, soon followed by gays. "Andersonville is quieter than Boystown," says Benjamin Kelner, an employee of the city's Office of Tourism and a resident of the neighborhood. "We party in Boystown on Saturday nights, and have brunch in Andersonville on Sunday mornings. Plus, the gay beach isn't far at the end of Hollywood Street. "The beach is taken over in the summer by a crowd of handsome men, who swim in the cold waters of Lake Michigan against the backdrop of the Chicago skyline.

Main photo © Laurence Ogiela