The Magnificent Mile

On Saturday we took a guided walking tour hosted by the Chicago Architecture Center. The CAC offers many different tours; we wanted to stay far away from crowds and road closures due to the NASCAR Street Race in Grant Park, so we chose a tour of The Magnificent Mile.

The “Mag Mile” is a section of North Michigan Avenue that runs from the Chicago River north to Oak Street, where the avenue ends at Lake Shore Drive. It’s thirteen blocks or - you guessed it - one mile long. (Our neighborhood, River North, is the area west of the Mag Mile.) The busy avenue has six lanes of vehicle traffic, but it’s also pedestrian-friendly, with wide sidewalks separated from the street by blooming gardens. There are upscale stores, hotels, and restaurants along both sides. And the buildings showcase a wide range of architectural styles, including Gothic, French Renaissance, Art Deco, and Mid-Century Modern.

Our walking tour covered just four blocks of the Mag Mile, but there were plenty of notable buildings in just that short stretch. Here are some highlights. (To see captions, view this post on a laptop or desktop.)

Start of The Magnificent Mile

Michigan Avenue Bridge, Wrigley Building, Tribune Tower

Wrigley Building

Built 1920-24 by chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, Jr. for the company headquarters. Designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White. Based on Seville Cathedral, combined with French Renaissance style.

Wrigley Building façade (glazed terra cotta)

Hotel Intercontinental Chicago

Built 1928-9 as an athletic club for The Shriners. Designed by Walter W. Ahlschlager.

Hotel Intercontinental façade (Indiana limestone)

One of three friezes in ancient Assyrian style, designed by George Unger, in collaboration with Walter Ahlschlager, and carved by Léon Hermant.

McGraw-Hill Building façade

Built 1928-29 as McGraw-Hill publishing company headquarters. Art Deco style, with sculpture by Gwen Lux. Preserved via façade-ectomy, 1998-2000.

"Lux Panel" from McGraw-Hill Building

One of four original panels now on display inside the North Bridge shopping mall (behind the façade).

543/545 N Michigan Ave

Built 1931. Designed by Philip Maher. A surviving example of the 4-6 story buildings originally envisioned for Michigan Avenue, in the style of the Champs-Élysées.

Tribune Tower

Built 1925 as headquarters for The Chicago Tribune. Neo-Gothic style. Designed by John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood.

Tribune Tower façade (Indiana limestone)

Tribune Tower - famous building fragments

Starbucks Reserve Roastery

Built 1990 as Crate & Barrel flagship store. Designed by Crate & Barrel founder Gordon Segal and Solomon Cordwell Buenz.

Burberry Chicago Flagship Store

Built 2012. Designed by in-house Burberry designers, with details provided by multiple architecture and engineering firms.

Fun Facts:

• The Wrigley Building’s white façade is made from terra cotta in six different shades that become brighter the higher up you go.

• The historic Art-Deco façade of the McGraw-Hill Building was preserved through a "façade-ectomy." About 4,000 Indiana limestone slabs forming the old façade were carefully removed and stored before the old building was demolished. The stone slabs were later re-installed onto a steel frame fronting the newly-constructed building.

• The Hotel Intercontinental Chicago was originally a men’s athletic club, with a miniature golf course, shooting and archery ranges, a billiards hall, a bowling alley, and a two-story boxing arena.

• The Tribune Tower has about 150 fragments embedded in its exterior walls. These are stones, bricks, and other pieces of historically significant sites around the world.