Visit the secret spaces atop Chicago

It’s surprising, in a city that celebrates its architecture, how few viewers visit the Chicago Architecture Foundation‘s YouTube channel. The videos featured there often focus on topics of keen interest to Chicagoans in general and its architecture buffs in particular.

I’m only an occasional visitor to the CAF channel, but I always find something delightful when I do visit. The latest find: Tony Macaluso‘s visits to some of Chicago’s “secret spaces,” including the roof of the Auditorium Building, which was once the site of the city’s first observation deck.

In the video, Macaluso quotes the words of a British journalist who visited the Auditorium Building in 1896:

Go first up into the tower of the Auditorium and in front, nearly 300 feet below, lies Lake Michigan. But then turn around and look at Chicago in the other direction to the west, and you might be on a central peak in the Alps. All about you they rise, the mountainous buildings. You’re almost surprised to see no snow on them. And who would suppose that mere lumps of iron and brick and mortar could be sublime?

Chicago! Chicago! Chicago! Not if I had a hundred tongues, every one shouting in a different key, could I do justice to her splendid chaos.

See a bit more about Chicago’s secret spaces in this video of Macaluso’s CAF Lunch Talk:

(Visited 323 times, 1 visits today)