Looping the Loop: The Ups and Downs of Chicago’s Downtown

On Friday March 6, 1992, this one-day colloquium focused on architecture, real estate, and urban values in the Loop, Chicago’s financial and commercial heart. Renowned as one of the most dynamic central business districts in America, the Loop boasts commercial and civic buildings by an honor roll of contemporary architecture firms and preserves a rare mix of world-city dealing and everyday metropolitan bustle. Yet, below its skyline of international glitz, the Loop’s daily working population is shrinking, its tax base is contracting, and the office blocks that comprise this one square mile are over 20% unoccupied. After years as a pedestrian mall, State Street is about to be reconfigured, while the old Montgomery Ward and Block 37 lie fallow. While shopping and movie-going migrated up North Michigan Avenue, it often seems that the only people left in the Loop after-hours are the peripatetic homeless and lost conventioneers drawing funds at ATMs on sites where famous movie palaces once thrived. Amid discussion of new suburban paradigms such as “Edge Cities,” this colloquium—which preceded the Great Chicago Flood of April 1992 by just a few weeks—posed the following question: Could the traditional urban core be obsolete?

Speakers:

Michael Anania, poet and essayist, Chicago

Geoff Goldberg, Project Director for the Lake Calumet Airport, IL

John MacManus, Planning Supervisor, Chicago Park District

Ross Miller, architecture critic and historian

George Ranalli, architect

John Sweeney, real estate developer

Bob Thall, photographer and professor at Columbia College, Chicago

Respondents:

Nitin Bhutani, Planning Department, City of Chicago

Mark Bouman, Professor of Geography, Chicago State University

Robert Bruegmann, Professor of Architectural History, University of Illinois Chicago

Michael Freedberg, Center for Neighborhood Technology

Mildred Friedman, independent curator, New York; Board Member, CIAU

Ray Gastil, Project Manager, Regional Design Program, Regional Plan Association, NY

Miriam Gusevich, Office of Research and Planning, Chicago Parks District

Peter Hales, Professor of Art History, University of Illinois, Chicago

Barbara Jakobson, independent curator, New York; Board Director, CIAU

Ralph Johnson, Partner, Perkins & Will, Chicago

Cheryl Kent, Progressive Architecture

Ron Krueck, Principal, Krueck & Sexton, Chicago

Greg Lynn, architect and Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Chicago

Judith McBrien, Perspectives Film and Video, Wilmette, IL

Charles Moore, Moore Andersson Architects, Austin, TX; Board Director, CIAU

John Vinci, Principal, Office of John Vinci Inc., Architects, Chicago

Ray Wang, ArcLight Film and Video, Chicago

Karen Wilson, Commissioning Editor for Architecture, University of Chicago Press

All photographs featured here are the work of photographer Bob Thall, who presented his work during this colloquium. To learn more about Bob Thall’s work, please visit bobthall.com.