Warmth on a Chicago Winter Day

I’ve lived in the Chicago area since 1974. It’s a great place to live, but I’ve always felt it would be even better here if they put a retractable dome over the whole area so that we wouldn’t have to freeze through our long, frigid winters. Unfortunately, that’s not feasible, but the city of Chicago has found a partial solution. Since the 1960’s, they’ve been building, improving, and adding to a Pedway under about five miles of downtown Chicago. It’s a maze that they’ve made easier to navigate in the past few years by putting good signs along it's many paths. Prior to them putting up that signage, it was really easy to get lost there.

Helping us to navigate this maze, the Chicago Architecture Foundation (CAF) www.architecture.org has been giving a walking tour of the Pedway. We took this tour led by Ellen Shubart, CAF docent, who did a great job of shepherding us through this network of underground walkways.

The Pedway was constructed to help people get out of the cold and to connect all the transportation.

The tour begins in The State of Illinois Building, the James R. Thompson Center at 160 North LaSalle. This post-modern building was designed to depict the transparency of government. This was a concept of then governor James Thompson, for whom the building was named, - a fact I was unaware of prior to taking the tour. Four Illinois Governors have gone to prison since I moved here so I found that very humorous. It set a tone of levity for me for the rest of the tour.

Looking up toward the ceiling of the Thompson Center

Next, we went down to the Pedway and saw an entrance to the CTA [Subway]. One can walk on the Pedway from the Ogilvie commuter train Station to the blue and red lines of the subway to the South Shore Line commuter station without going outside. If someone is lucky and works in an office building with an entrance in the Pedway, he (she) can avoid going outside an entire day. How great is that!

The Pedway isn’t merely a walkway, however. Underground are various stores and restaurants and even a stained-glass exhibition. We were able to go to several buildings of interest either historically, architecturally, or currently. Thus, I learned how the County, City, and Court buildings are connected.

Then it was onward to the Cultural Center, the former central Chicago Public Library Building. This beautiful beaux arts building is a landmark and worth a visit by itself. Tours of the building are given Wednesday through Saturday at 1:15PM. In addition, the Cultural Center houses temporary art exhibits and lunchtime concerts each Wednesday at 12:15PM. All of these are free to the public.

Dome in the G.A.R. Hall

From there, we went east and entered through the Pedway to the Prudential Building, the Aon Building, and the Aqua Building designed by the famous architect Jeanne Gang. As we walked, we could see the progression of architecture in Chicago and the world through the decades. And best of all, on December 19^th, we didn’t have to go outside at all to see any of them.