With any luck you’ll never participate in a pickup game like the one pictured above at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago.
Harry Weese, the building’s architect, was in his own words, “a man ten years ahead of a time that never comes.” A Chicago Magazine article is a storehouse of great Weese anecdotes, including this one:
A certain lawlessness that had always been part of his personality was starting to take over. The architect Stanley Tigerman, who early in his career worked briefly for Weese, remembers walking with him in River North one day when a car alarm went off. Weese’s response was to pick up a rock, bash in the car’s window, and continue walking.
It’s more than a little ironic that a man with a lawless streak would be chosen to design a building that symbolizes the law’s might and power. The building is, according to one critic, the “clearest rebuttal” in the Weese vs Mies opposition.