3 Review(s)

An exploration of the architectural and cultural history of one of America's greatest cities, a city whose architectural heritage was recklessly squandered during the second half of the 20th century. There are over 200 photographs and prints illuminating the decades when Gustavus Swift and Philip D. Armour ruled the greatest stockyards in the world; when industrialists and entrepreneurs such as Cyrus McCormick, Potter Palmer, George Pullman and Marshall Field financed construction that made Prairie Avenue and State streets the rivals of New York's Fifth Avenue; when Dankmer Adler, William Le Baron Jenney, Louis Sullivan, John Wellburn Root, Daniel Burnham, Martin Holabird and Frank Lloyd Wright were designing buildings of incomparable excellence. Here are mansions and grand hotels, office buildings and department stores, trains and movie palaces, parks and racetracks.