I used to live in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago, which had a visually delicious building boom in the early 20th century during a period an architect friend of mine once described as being stylistically dominated by "architectural porn." And since I am shamelessly and reverently fluent in architectural showoff terms like bas relief and Moorish pilasters and Juliet balustrades and Gothic spandrels, the neighborhood was a wonderland of happiness for me.
I discovered early on that I lived relatively close to the Uptown Broadway Building, which was a glorious visual feast of styles and eras and shapes and textures and optical chaos and exquisite balance in one captivating explosion of glazed terra-cotta love that spoke directly to me every time I passed by it or crossed the street to get a better view of it or walked an extra five blocks to a different EL stop just so I could visit it ... and more than once made a special trip just to take pictures of it in different sunlight or dramatic nighttime uplighting. It's one of the many neighborhood gems that regularly brightened my everyday Chicago goings-about, and I'm feeling nostalgic about my old haunts today so I dug through all my old photos and found this and now I just want to go back even more.
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