Miraculous Monoliths on the Magnificent Mile Part II

Every time I post a picture of a cool building I tell myself not to type too much, but I always end up going over board. I probably will on this one too. Last time we were on top of the Sears Tower I looked out at the Chicago city scape and decided that the coolest building out there is the Tribune Tower. It sits directly across Michigan Avenue from the Wrigley building, and next door to the gigantic Grant Wood reenactment I went on and on about a few postings ago. Check out how cool this joint is! It was built waaaay back in 1922 towards the end of the Gothic skyscraper movement in the United States (see New York's Woolworth building) and looks like it came right out of Gotham. In commemoration of their 75th anniversary, The Chicago Tribune held a contest to design the building. The winners of the contest were John Howells and Raymond Hood, who also did our beloved Rockefeller Center in New York City. Second place went to some other folks that ended up building their design in Houston as the Gulf Building, which is nowhere near as awesome. The Tribune building is covered in coolness. The architecture is as gothic as a French cathedral, and actually has butresses and gargoyles on the top of it. The gargoyles include a howling dog and Robin Hood, in memorium of the designers.

What I like most about the building are the international stones built into the first few floors. The Tribune asked their correspondants and producers to bring back rocks from significant buildings around the world, and they've inserted them into the exterior walls. Check out the picture of me next to the Cathedral of Notre Dame brick. Among the 136 famous rocks are chunks from the following: The Taj Mahal, The Great Wall of China, Lincoln's Tomb, The Parthenon, The Great Pyramid of Giza, The Berlin Wall, The Alamo, Westminster Abbey, and some petrified wood from that redwood forest in California. They've recently shoved some of the steel from the World Trade Center in there, and there's a chunk of the moon in a box by the window. They would have put the moon rock in the wall but NASA legally owns every moon rock and they've only loaned it to the Tribune. Those selfish moon misers. So how does that work anyway? "Hello international person, I'm from the Chicago Tribune and was wondering if I might have a chunk of your historically significant structure." Maybe they just pulled a Napolean and "acquired" it. By the way, all the scenes in the batcave from The Dark Knight were filmed in the basement of the Tribune Tower.

To avoid the craziness of the St. Patrick's Day crowds we thought it best to park a few blocks away from where they dye the river. We ended up leaving the car right next to Chicago's historic water tower. It was built in 1869 as a means to store water in the unlikely event of a fire. Two years later Miss O'Leary's cow knocked over the lantern and the tower got to see some major action. Maybe they should have built it a wee bit taller as the structure is now the only building (still standing) that survived the fire. There's only one older water tower in the world, which is in Louisville Kentucky and was built in 1860. This may not have any significance to you Westerners, but the Chicago Water Tower is the inspiration for the design of the Whitecastle hamburger joints. Classy.