Day 3 Chicago

 Our first visit this morning was to the Rookery, an 11 story building built in 1888. We decided to have a guided tour of the public areas of this building as its stunning light court was redesigned in 1907 by Frank Lloyd Wright. There were just four of us on the tour, myself and M plus two others, one of whom lived two miles away from me in London! Quite a coincidence.  The Rookery was one of the first buildings to use metal framing with masonry walls on such a large scale. Today it is the oldest standing high rise in Chicago.

 

You can see the rooks as part of the doorway's decoration.

  

This is the light court.

 Above the glass ceiling is a central atrium ringed by offices.

 

Wright added the lights in 1907.

Around the light court are the offices.

This is the oriel staircase that connects all the floors.

Afterwards we went on to the Chicago Art Institute and decided we would split up as M wanted to see the American art  and I wanted to see what they had in the impressionist galleries.

However, there were some pieces of art that I couldn't miss. This is 'American Gothic' 1930 by Grant Wood. I have seen the image many times but it was much smaller than I had imagined.

The vast majority of our art galleries just have paintings, drawings and occasionally photographs but here they had a mixture of other art forms including furniture and jewellery. I loved this Tiffany Lamp.

Marc Chagall's stained glass windows were another favourite of mine.

In the evening M fancied fish and chips so we went to the 'Elephant and Castle' pub. I should have known better. It was the worse meal ever in the worst sports bar ever. We didn't hang around and moved on to a cocktail bar for much needed civilised refreshment.

We wandered around looking at Chicago at night which we enjoyed especially down by the river.