Curbed Chicago • 16th March 2018

A closer look at the skyscrapers changing Chicago’s skyline

As the birthplace of the skyscraper and home to one of the world’s greatest skylines, Chicago is in the midst of reinventing itself thanks to a new batch of tall, high-profile towers.

When the 836-foot-tall One Bennett Park opened in Streeterville this spring, it was Chicago’s first 800-footer to be completed in nearly a decade. It was followed this summer by the 896-foot NEMA Chicago project at the southern edge of Grant Park. Currently, there are three 800-foot-plus towers under construction

Curbed Chicago • 22nd January 2018

Mapping the West Loop’s unprecedented development boom

Long gone is the domain of family-owned meatpackers and warehouses in Chicago’s West Loop and Fulton Market District. Now it’s one of the busiest areas for new development in the city, teeming with Michelin-starred restaurants, trendy hotels, and offices for companies like Google and McDonald’s.

The neighborhood west of the Kennedy Expressway isn’t just Restaurant Row anymore, but an extension of the central business district and a major economic powerhouse for the entire city. So naturally, de

Curbed Chicago • 28th December 2017

Here are the high-rises under construction in Chicago right now

Over the past several years, a wave of new construction has redefined Chicago’s famous skyline as well as brought tall and dense developments to a number of overwise low-rise neighborhoods. New luxury apartments continue to be the driving force behind the Windy City’s vertical growth spurt, but some condominium, office, hotel, and educational projects are also in the mix.

Curbed Chicago • 11th October 2017

Open House Chicago 2017: The best new sites

The Chicago Architecture Foundation’s popular Open House Chicago event, a weekend-long series that opens up Chicago’s greatest building to the public, returns once again this weekend. And like last year, the Chicago Architecture Foundation will feature over 200 different sites throughout the city and nearby suburbs.

There are a lot of new additions and debuts in this year’s Open House Chicago, and to help us navigate the list, Interim Open House Chicago Manager Eric Allix Rogers has highlighted

Curbed Chicago • 22nd September 2017

A complete guide from O’Hare to Millennium Park via public transit

Are you a first-time visitor to Chicago? Or perhaps you have family or friends flying into O’Hare and they need help getting directions to downtown. Getting downtown—specifically to Michigan Avenue and Millennium Park—from O’Hare is super easy. The Chicago Transit Authority’s Blue Line runs directly from the underbelly of O’Hare to the heart of the Loop. It’s easy to navigate and is a bargain at only $5 for entry.

The total time from baggage claim to Millennium Park should take roughly an hour.

Curbed Chicago • 18th September 2017

11 transformative ideas for Chicago transportation

While Chicago residents often deal with congestion and crowding, the city boasts one of the most robust public transit systems in the country. Reliable public transit is vital to maintaining the city’s economic growth and serves as a catalyst for new development and investment.

In recent years, the city completed a number of notable projects like the Navy Pier Flyover, 606 Trail, Chicago Riverwalk, Loop Link express bus lanes, and the separation of cyclists and pedestrians on the Chicago Lakefr

Curbed Chicago • 26th July 2017

Here’s your Chicago megadevelopment cheat sheet

In the last several years, Chicago has been experiencing a development boom that has not only added thousands of new rental apartments and hotel rooms, but it’s one that is transforming neighborhoods and the city’s skyline. Billions of dollars are being invested in the city to bring not only new housing but also new office and retail space that translates to new jobs. Chicago has hit record numbers of active construction cranes and continues to lead the nation in residential tower construction a

Curbed Chicago • 28th April 2017

150 North Riverside claims its place in Chicago’s skyline

Just a week after it officially opened, 150 North Riverside is abuzz with activity. Office workers can be spotted eating lunch outside in the building’s ground-level park while tourists stop to look up and snap photos of the tower’s unique core-supported shape. Crews are still putting the final landscaping pieces together while others are working to build out the office spaces for the building’s high-profile commercial tenants. However, the sleek contemporary tower has formally claimed its place

Curbed Chicago • 21st February 2017

Milwaukee Avenue's transformative development boom, mapped

While many cities across the country are witnessing construction booms, the development activity currently underway in Chicago cannot be overstated. Last year, Chicago witnessed a post-recession record number of operating tower cranes, suggesting that the economic deep freeze of the recession is all but a memory. Perhaps surprisingly, the only US city to have more construction cranes operating last year was Seattle.

But Chicago's construction boom has spread out of the Loop and into the city's

Curbed Chicago • 23rd January 2017

Why Chicago’s Thompson Center is worth saving

With the new year comes a renewed effort from state leadership in Springfield to try and produce a budget—not just a balanced budget, but a budget. Fighting between state lawmakers has left Illinois, the country’s fifth largest state, without an official budget since Governor Bruce Rauner took office two years ago. And to help ease the financial pain the state is currently experiencing, Governor Rauner has proposed the idea of selling the state-owned James R. Thompson Center in the Loop. Designe

Curbed Chicago • 29th November 2016

Take a tour through Wicker Park’s new Robey hotel

After years of planning and performing renovation work, the new Robey hotel finally opens this week in Wicker Park. Located in the historic Northwest Tower designed by Perkins, Chatten & Hammond, the new hotel blends contemporary boutique hotel styling with the stoic art deco bones of the 12-story building. The project comes from developer Convexity Properties with the Mexico City-based Grupo Habita functioning as the hotel operator. In total, the hotel features 69 guest rooms and a number of fo

Curbed Chicago • 16th November 2016

A tour through Oak Park’s newest and tallest tower

Oak Park, Chicago’s neighboring suburb to the west, is best known for being the physical center of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Prairie School of architecture—after all, the legendary architect designed a couple dozen homes and buildings in the village. But just as the apartment boom has begun to reshape downtown Chicago’s skyline, some near suburbs are seeing the effects of the latest building boom through new, tall rental developments. Vantage Oak Park, a new 21-story, 270-unit high-rise wouldn’t come

Curbed Chicago • 20th October 2016

A look through the new Kenect apartments on Milwaukee Avenue

Thousands of new apartment units are being built along the bustling stretch of Milwaukee Avenue from the Fulton River District up to Logan Square, and one of the biggest new developments for this popular corridor is the Kenect apartment complex. The project, which features 227 apartments, officially opened a few weeks ago and according to Akara Partners founder and CEO Rajen Shastri is nearly half leased. There has been a flood of new rental projects opening throughout the greater downtown area,

Curbed Chicago • 23rd September 2016

How tiny houses can help serve Chicago’s homeless youth

Tiny houses are having a moment right now, but what would they look like in Chicago? Can they serve a purpose in the big city? Who would they serve? These are questions that architects Lon Stousland, Marty Sandberg, and Terry Howell had to ask themselves when designing their entry for AIA Chicago's Tiny Homes Competition. The trio looked to other types of housing styles typically found in Chicago—primarily the courtyard building—when drafting their ideas. The design worked, and the trio's idea o

Curbed Chicago • 21st September 2016

Small waterfront cabins are one of the things that makes the Midwest great

Winter in the Midwest can be very tough, sometimes just downright grueling. Folks spend the punishingly cold days inside, planning trips, block parties, and outdoor movie adventures for when summer finally rolls around. And as extreme as the seasons are in the Chicago area, there’s a sweet spot between Labor Day and Halloween when the air is crisp, the leaves start changing colors, and the sunsets are vibrant shades of red, yellow, and pink. This is that time period when every midwesterner shoul

Curbed Chicago • 23rd June 2016

Take a Tour of the New Block 37 Apartment Tower

The Chicago downtown construction boom has been largely driven by the rebounding economy and the swell of new residents looking to rent. Developers have been capitalizing on the rental boom over the last few years, and one of the highest profile projects to hit the downtown area during this cycle is the apartment tower at Block 37. Dubbed Marquee at Block 37, the new tower has just welcomed its first residents earlier this month.

With 690 units, the apartment tower at Block 37 is the largest re

Curbed Chicago • 5th May 2016

What Goose Island's Transformation Means for Chicago

After years of neglect, many of Chicago's industrial corridors are making big comebacks. Areas like Fulton Market and River North have blossomed over the last 15 years, transforming from skid rows into some of the most popular spots for city dwellers and the businesses they work at. However, as these two areas reach critical mass, attention is moving up the Chicago River's North Branch to places like Goose Island.

Goose Island may be best know for the beer company that takes its name from the m

Curbed Chicago • 20th April 2016

A First Look Inside Chicago's New Wolf Point West Tower

The once sleepy Wolf Point — a parcel of land that sits at the confluence of the Chicago River's north, south, and main branches — is waking up and will soon become home to hundreds of new residents. Ultimately, Wolf Point will become home to a trio of tall, glassy high-rises, which will offer new office space as well as apartments.

The new Wolf Point West tower, the first of the three to be completed, is currently receiving its finishing touches and has already welcomed its first residents. De

Curbed Chicago • 27th May 2015

A Tour Through the New Chicago Athletic Association Hotel

Over the last couple of years, developers have been a hot streak in transforming historic downtown towers into hotels, apartments and student housing, and one of the most anticipated in the latest slew of adaptive reuse projects is the hotel reboot of the old Chicago Athletic Association building on Michigan Avenue. Simply dubbed the Chicago Athletic Association Hotel, the totally restored 122 year old Venetian Gothic building and its 241 rooms are now officially open for business starting today

Curbed Chicago • 30th April 2015

A Last Look Inside the Historic Bush Temple of Music Before Its Big Makeover

The famous Bush Temple of Music on Chicago Avenue is about to join several other historic downtown buildings to receive new life. However, instead of being transformed into a hotel like the former London Guarantee Building, the Old Dearborn Bank Building, the Chicago Motor Club Building and the Chicago Athletic Association building, the Bush Temple will eventually house small apartments. Recently acquired by Cedar Street Companies, the Bush Temple will join the quickly growing inventory of the d

Curbed Chicago • 29th April 2015

Exploring Frank Lloyd Wright’s Oak Park

Before Frank Lloyd Wright became an internationally-recognized name in the world of design, the architect spent many years in Oak Park, Illinois, designing homes for Chicago-area residents. Wright got his start working for the famed Sullivan & Adler firm from 1888 to 1893, and it was under the tutelage of Louis Sullivan specifically that Wright began to explore the elements that would later define the Prairie School movement. For the rest of the 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth centur

Curbed Chicago • 27th March 2015

14 significant Mies van der Rohe buildings in Chicago

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe heavily influenced Chicago’s architecture—we have more Mies building than any other city. In 1938, he arrived in Chicago after leaving the Bauhaus School in Germany. The architect took a position at the Armour Institute of Technology (which became the Illinois Institute of Technology) and preached his “less is more” philosophy.

By the 1960s, Mies had clearly broken from the traditional Chicago aesthetic and developed a modern style using glass and steel. His designs ran

Curbed Chicago • 13th February 2015

Inside the Upcoming LondonHouse Hotel in the Historic London Guarantee Building

One of the greatest trends happening in Chicago real estate development at the moment is the adaptive reuse of historic buildings into hotels, and one of the most exciting projects underway is the complete renovation of the old London Guarantee & Accident Building on Michigan Avenue. Standing at the site of the old Fort Dearborn, the 23 story tower was designed by noted Chicago architect Alfred S. Alschuler and built in 1923. The tower exemplified the City Beautiful Movement, and became a perfec

Curbed Chicago • 7th October 2014

A tour of Ferris Bueller’s Chicago

If being stuck indoors while you practice social distancing has you pining for a day out on the town, dust off your copy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and distract yourself with a nostalgic trip through 1980s Chicago. The movie was a “love letter” to the city from filmmaker John Hughes. “I really wanted to capture as much of Chicago as I could,” he said. “Not just in the architecture and landscape, but the spirit.”

Chicago isn’t just a backdrop for the beloved 1986 film. Places like Willis Tower, Wr