Different Slants

by Robert M. Katzman © March 11, 2021

When I come south to visit Downtown Chicago, it strikes me as a forest of tall, boxy glass buildings, indistinguishable from each other. To this South Sider now in exile, they seem like angry steel spikes piercing the sky, an assault on architecture. A forest I’ve been lost in.

The Downtown I knew intimately when I owned (1977-1984) the once essential/now obliterated, famously illegal, 24-foot wide, 8-foot deep wooden newsstand at Randolph and Michigan at the entrance to the steps of the underground Illinois Central Train Station, today is to me unrecognizable. Beautiful buildings like the old Library were once quite visible. The regal 1852 Marshall Field’s Department Store, a magnificent landmark was still open, then. 

by Robert M. Katzman © May 4, 2008

Some uses of brick and mortar are distinct 

From purposes that most people think

A building’s for, like keeping warm

Or seeking shelter from a storm

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