Page 59 - (DK Eyewitness) Travel Guide - Chicago

DOWNT OWN  57

number of movable bridges
of any city in the world.
Visitors can also stroll along
nearby Riverwalk, parallel to
Wacker Drive from Wabash
Avenue to Wells Street.

i 35 East Wacker
Drive
Map 4 D1. Tel (312) 726-4260.
q Lake; State. Open 24 hrs daily. 7
∑ 35eastwackerdrive.com
This sandy-colored terra-cotta
office building, which became a
Chicago landmark in 1994, has
been described as a “confection”
– the dome at the top really
does resemble a birthday cake!
The building, designed by
Thielbar and Fugard, opened in
1926. During Prohibition, the
dome housed mobster Al
Capone’s notorious speakeasy,
the Stratosphere Club.
The building once had
private parking garages on
each of the first 22 floors;
jeweler tenants, concerned
about security, drove into
the elevator and were lifted
up to their floors. A 1988
renovation restored the
marble interior. Outside, a Corberó’s Three Lawyers and a Judge in the R. R. Donnelley Building
6-ton (5.4-tonne) clock with
the gilded bronze figure of o R. R. Donnelley the classics: a grid of
Father Time overhangs the Building Portuguese white granite
Wacker Drive sidewalk. frames the exterior curtain
77 W Wacker Dr. Map 3 C1. wall of silver reflective glass.
Tel (312) 917-1177. q Clark. The ground-floor marble
Open 24 hrs daily. 7 lobby, with its 42-ft- (13-m-)
high ceiling and huge,
The R. R. Donnelley Building, classical windows, is a
a modern 50-story office monumental space housing
tower overlooking the two sculptural groupings:
Chicago River, was built in 1992 Ricardo Bofill’s Twisted
in the Downtown area. Columns (1992), a set of
Designed by Chicago three Modernistic columns
architect James DeStefano, hand-carved from white
with famed Catalan architect Italian marble, and Catalan
Ricardo Bofill as the design sculptor Xavier Corberó’s
consultant, the building Three Lawyers and a Judge
combines classical aesthetic (1992), rough-hewn
with Chicago School basalt figures suggesting
(see pp28–9) functionality. human forms.
The many classical references At night, 540 high-intensity
to ancient Greece and lamps dramatically illuminate
Rome include the four- the building in a lighting
pedimented roof, a scheme designed by
contemporary take on Pierre Arnaud, who also
a classically proportioned illuminated the Pyramids,
35 East Wacker Drive, seen from across the Greek temple. The building the Parthenon, and the
Chicago River materials likewise conjure Louvre Museum.

056-057_EW_Chicago.indd 57 13/07/16 2:59 pm