Until last year the A. Finkl & Sons Co. furnaces glowed orange at night. A lonely car might have breezed past on the darkened street, or the No. 73 bus, ferrying bleary-eyed workers to homes on the west side of Chicago.
Documentaries about artists can go wrong in a million different ways. Take John Maloof's recent Finding Vivian Maier, which is more a film about Maloof's transformation from a ragpicker into the self-appointed keeper ...
The critics were brutal. Headlines called it a “fizzle,” a “fiasco,” and “a total bust.” Some 30,000 people had gathered on the banks of the Chicago River in the city’s downtown on the night of October 4, waiting to see three floating houses set ablaze.
NATO held its international meeting in Chicago a couple months before I decided to quit driving a cab in 2012. Mayor Emanuel turned the city into a militarized showplace for the visitors' benefit.
Every city is a text. You can read the city. My favorite way to read Chicago is like a book of poetry. Not necessarily straight through but jumping around, page to page, focusing hard on one thing, then flipping past others ...
Chicago’s Greyhound terminal in late Aug. 1966 certainly lacked cheer and charm, and perhaps safety. But to me, holding a one-way ticket back to Calumet County, WI, it was a suitable escape platform from my job as a “Summer Girl”
Conventional wisdom holds that the larger the population of a city, the more successful the place must be. If the population’s growing, that city must be doing something right. If it’s withering, it must be in decline.
A family history wrought in the steel mills of Southeast Chicago. An excerpt from the work of Christine Walley, author of "Exit Zero."
An interview with scholar, author, and filmmaker Christine Walley about her documentary "Exit Zero."
In Chicago, the demise of the Prentice building dims the city's architectural legacy and sense of place. Does being a global city mean being a city of sameness?
We have perhaps the most valuable resource on the planet -- a self-sustaining region -- and we've mostly ignored it. Local leaders and urbanists weigh in on why we should invest in the Great Lakes over the next century.
The story of Fun Town is a vital part of South Side black history. There was fun, peace, and soul.