Observations and Images on Architecture, Culture and More, in Chicago and the World. See it all here.
Get My Drift?
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Observations and Images on Architecture, Culture and More, in Chicago and the World. See it all here. |
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Get My Drift? |
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[February 2, 2008] - Big snow makes a rare Chicago appearance. |
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Global warming may not have abolished winter in Chicago, but unremitting big snows, interrupted only by massive blizzards, seem to have faded from view. Sure, it still gets cold, really cold at times, but then just days later, it's 40 degrees again, and all the evidence melts away. So the kind of snowfall Chicago experienced this week has become a rarity. By Friday night, much of it had already been to morph into the primary toxic byproduct of a Chicago winter: slush. Evil twin of the slurpee, infusing melting snow with auto exhaust, soot and street filth, to create a nasty, diarreahic gray porridge, ebbing out wide from the curbs and transforming downtown Chicago into a kind of Venice where the canals are too shallow for boats but too deep not to sink up to your ankles into the icy schmutz - twice - every time you cross a street. Once on high land, however, snow can have an opiate effect on the cityscape, muffling the raucous noise of traffic and placing a calming scrim over the hard edges of Chicago's raw-boned architecture.
Seventeenth Church of Christ Scientist, Harry Weese, architect
Trump International Hotel and Tower, Adrian Smith, SOM, architect
Snow cakes on Kenzo Tange's AMA Building
The AMA's arcade
The fountain, now spurting pools of snow, tombeau de neiges.
The riverfront esplanade at Marina City, Bertrand Goldberg, architect
Similar view at night, a few winters ago
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© 2008 photos and text Lynn Becker All rights reserved.
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Ice doesn't last long on the Chicago River. Here it can't even get past the Wabash Street bridge.
Wrigley Building, Trump Tower, and Mies' IBM 
