How did such a backward-looking guy wind up so far ahead of his time?
Author Archives: James Krohe Jr.
Posted inNews & Politics
A White Is Not a WASP
To the editors: The University of Chicago at the turn of the last century stood in a south side that was poor and non-WASP, not poor and nonwhite as I alleged in my piece of June 18 about Daniel Burnham (“The Man With the Plan”). I read in the Trib that the mayor’s wife planted […]
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Reading: The Writer’s Life
Mark Harris thought he was writing a book about Vachel Lindsay. Turns out he was writing about Mark Harris.
Posted inNews & Politics
Holligans at the Gate
When the World Cup comes to Soldier Field next summer, will the world’s most violent fans come too?
Posted inNews & Politics
Flood of Memories
Reflections on Urban Infrastructure Occaisoned by the First Anniversary of the Great Leak
Posted inNews & Politics
Cityscape: Chicago’s Classic Look
Union Station, the Merchandise Mart, the Wrigley Building, Marshall Field’s–all were designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White, purveyors of “Commercial Classicism” made to order.
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Cityscape: No Room for Writers
The closest thing Chicago has to a writers’ memorial is a small room in the new library decorated with vandalized book pages.
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Designing a Better World
Architects have a special calling to improve society, having done so much to screw it up in the first place.
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Cityscape: Welcome to Chicago?
The tourism pros think downstaters visit Chicago because they are impressed by the big city. Actually they come for the thrill of feeling superior to it.
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Stains of Our Lives
To the editors: Thank you for giving us Nina Sandlin on saddle soap [Our Town, April 24]. Household cleaning gets short shrift in most journals. Chicagoans have had little to cheer about lately; what a relief to know that one can dare each day without fear for one’s midwales. A thinking person’s Heloise deserves a […]
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Cityscape: Merchandising Modern Art
The new building design declares the MCA’s embrace of mainstream values–flag, MOMA-hood, and apple pie.
Posted inNews & Politics
Skeletons in Our Closet
How foolish can one get? Four or five governors later, they’ll open it again. –from a reader’s letter to Springfield’s State Journal-Register In the summer of 1968 I was 19 years old and living uselessly in Springfield when the man who lived across the street asked me if I wanted a job digging holes in […]
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A Streetcar Named . . . What?
Options for the proposed Loop circulator were unveiled for public comment this summer, but planners so far have ducked the problem of what to call the thing. Following the local custom that gave Chicago the el, we get the “circ”–hardly euphonious, if gratifyingly butch. Rail systems in San Francisco, Atlanta, and Portland bear acronymic monikers […]