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Forget the blues. Forget da Bears, or da Bulls.For all its blue- collar bluster and bratwurst, Chicago emanates a world-class aesthetic that helped define modernism. The city echoes a condensed New York skyline and Boston's eminent walkability, but its upstart sensibilities embracing modern art, daring architecture and stunning sculptures are entirely homegrown.
America's third-largest metropolis survived a trial by fire, the 1871 conflagration that seared 73 miles of street, leveled 17,450 buildings and killed 300 people. Just 22 years later, it beat out New York to host the World's Columbian Exposition (during which Chicago earned its moniker, "the Windy City," after a visiting reporter heard one too many local blowhards bragging about the hometown).
In those intervening years, experimentation and outright rebellion flourished. Architects like Henry Hobson Richardson married traditional ornamentalism with geometric simplicity. Others were determined to revolt against perceived excesses of the past and to wring out a uniquely American landscape. William LeBaron Jenney was among those who forever revolutionized urban scale with his steel- frame constructions. His creations flouted the five-story limitations of buildings past with their metal framework; the walls bore none of the building's weight. The skyscraper embodied the streamlined potency of modern architecture and modern civilization.
No wonder a Chicago School of Architecture emerged, led by forces like Louis Sullivan, who famously declared its philosophy, "Form follows function." Today, a walk through almost any downtown block encounters the bold multitudes of designs, from the Chicago Tribune Tower's Gothic and art deco munificence (435 N. Michigan Ave.) to the Federal Center's geometric minimalism (Dearborn Street).
This living architectural legacy has created a city of contrasts, at once exhilarating and harmonious. Here German imigri Ludwig Mies van der Rohe carried his own three-word motto, "less is more," with his international style (now the commonplace rectangular-box office building), so-called because its design could be plopped down any place in the urban world and fit in. Frank Lloyd Wright, disciple of the prairie school of thought, patterned the living space after the open natural environment of the Midwest. While most of Wright's handiwork lies in Chicago's suburban edges, like the splendid Robie House (5757 S. Woodlawn Ave.), he renovated the atrium in the Rookery (209 La Salle St.) within the...