A Weekly Dose of Architecture Books

This third and most likely last installment in the inadvertent "Places in Time" series looks closely at three books: the first about Chicago from the Great Depression to the mid-1980s; the second one about the broader American built landscape over roughly the same period of time; and the third jumping to Switzerland and tracing the urban development of Schlieren, near Zurich, over a 15-year period this century. All three of the books were in my roundup of holiday gift books a couple of weeks ago. The first two Places in Time posts looked at Detroit/Chicago/St. Louis and  Paris/Indonesia/Flanders . Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986: How Technology, Politics, Finance, and Race Reshaped the City  by Thomas Leslie, published by University of Illinois Press , June 2023 ( Amazon  /  Bookshop ) In my holiday gift books roundup a couple of weeks ago, I wrote that, of the four pieces in the subtitle to Chicago Skyscrapers, 1934-1986 — "technology, politics, finance, and...

AIA Guide to Chicago by American Institute of Architects Chicago, edited by Laurie McGovern Petersen University of Illinois Press , June 2022 Paperback | 5 x 10 inches | 648 pages | 580 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9780252086731 | $42.95 | "The new fourth edition of the acclaimed guidebook" ( click here for publisher's description and author bio ) REFERRAL LINKS :       Architectural Guide Chicago: A Critic's Guide to 100 Post-Modern Buildings in Chicago from 1978 to 2025 by Vladimir Belogolovsky DOM Publishers , August 2022 Paperback | 5-1/4 x 9-1/2 inches | 280 pages | 745 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9783869224183 | €38 | "This book looks at Chicago through the prism of Post-Modernism — under the premise that this style did not cease to exist sometime in the 1990s, but is, in fact, still with us today." ( click here for publisher's description and author bio ) REFERRAL LINKS :       REVIEW : Full disclosure: I wrote a g...

Chicago Skyscrapers, 1871-1934 Thomas Leslie University of Illinois Press , 2013 Hardcover | 10-1/4 x 10-1/4 inches | 264 pages | 160 illustrations | English | ISBN: 9780252037542 | $39.95 PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION : For more than a century, Chicago's skyline has included some of the world's most distinctive and inspiring buildings. This history of the Windy City's skyscrapers begins in the key period of reconstruction after the Great Fire of 1871 and concludes in 1934 with the onset of the Great Depression, which brought architectural progress to a standstill. During this time, such iconic landmarks as the Chicago Tribune Tower, the Wrigley Building, the Marshall Field and Company Building, the Chicago Stock Exchange, the Palmolive Building, and many others rose to impressive new heights, thanks to innovations in building methods and materials. Solid, earthbound edifices of iron, brick, and stone made way for towers of steel and plate glass, imparting a striking new...

AIA Guide to Chicago edited by Alice Sinkevitch and Laurie McGovern Petersen, published by  University of Illinois Press , 2014, Third Edition. Paperback, 568 pages. ( Amazon ) Building Ideas: An Architectural Guide to the University of Chicago by Jay Pridmore, published by  University of Chicago Press , 2013. Paperback, 160 pages. ( Amazon ) Chicagoisms: The City as Catalyst for Architectural Speculation edited by Alexander Eisenschmidt with Jonathan Mekinda, published by  Park Books , 2013. Hardcover, 184 pages. ( Amazon ) Recently I received review copies of three books on Chicago, so it seems appropriate to put them together into one review, discussed in alphabetical order. Having produced my own guide to architecture in New York City , and therefore having researched many guidebooks, one of my pet peeves with guidebooks (architectural or otherwise) is when they are not designed with their use in mind. By this I mean being carried around, h...