A One-Hour Tour

My parents came into town from St. Louis to see the new house this weekend, which went a long way towards making it feel like a completed home. And since, like most residents of Chicago, I view out of town relatives as a handy excuse to do touristy things, we decided to take an architecture boat tour of the city’s main river. My wife had taken one years ago, and said it kept the attention of most of her high school classmates—high praise. Since the company that boasted finishing their excursions with a thirty-knot speedboat ride along the lakeshore didn’t seem quite our speed (my mother has a rule about not engaging in any activity prohibited to women who are pregnant) we opted for the more leisurely folks at Shoreline Sightseeing, who did not disappoint.

Some highlights of the tour included learning how and why civil engineers reversed the flow of the Chicago River, as well as what styles of architecture speckle the skyline. We saw the architecturally insignificant home that now stands on the spot where Abraham Lincoln was nominated for president, and saw some early construction for the Chicago Spire (which, at 2,000 feet, will be one of the tallest buildings in the world upon completion in 2011). There was history about the John Hancock building and the Sears Tower, as well as a fresh little fable about the Great Chicago Fire—that the famous cow has been exonerated of all charges, and there is now a theory, evidently, that the fire was actually started by meteorites.

I know—it was new to me too.

The most literary aspect of the tour came towards the end, when the guide mentioned Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, which tells the tale of the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. I’m currently reading the book, and many of the architects in the 1893 fair—such as Daniel Burnham, John Root, and Louis Sullivan—were key in designing the city itself. It was fun getting a more vivid picture of how Chicago has changed in the past 100 years. I know very little about architecture, really, so a novice like me got a lot out of it.

The tour was also a nice way to get a fresh start to the month. May was surprisingly hectic, which took a toll on both my personal life and writing productivity. I’m glad to say, however, that this past week I was finally able to get some work done on the novel I’m writing, and that I cracked 60,000 words last Friday. There is much revision to be done, but I also have no shortage of things I still want to write. So here’s hoping that June, in the spirit of the afternoon, brings calmer waters.

Posted by Alan Ackmann - Jun 1, 11:38 PM.
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