Awash with Sights on the Chicago River

By Betsa Marsh

On a beautiful spring day, there may be no more serene way to explore a city than gliding along on a quiet boat, looking up at the tall buildings and sighing. It works in Venice, it works in Chicago.

In the Windy City, the focus is on those tall buildings during Chicago Architecture Foundation cruises, which take us along the Main, North and South Branches of the Chicago River to see angles we’d never see any other way.

The Wrigley Building, left, and the Tribune Tower. Betsa Marsh photo

Volunteer docents weave in some painless history and give us the skinny on more than a century of building ever higher.

And while Chicago likes to proclaim it’s the birthplace of the modern skyscraper, as a loyal Cincinnatian I have to toss my vote to the 1902-03 Ingalls Building downtown, which was the first reinforced-concrete high-rise office building in the world.

But I don’t quibble as I drift past Bertrand Goldberg’s Marina City, Mies van der Rohe’s 330 N. Wabash, and the Sears Tower, tallest in the Western Hemisphere. Docent Michael Defty tells us to look quick at the black landmark, because it’s

The 311 S. Wacker Building in the foreground with the Sears Tower behind. Betsa Marsh photo

soon slated for a coat of silver to help deflect the heat. Plus a glass bump-out that will let the truly brave step out onto a glass bridge and look 1,000 feet straight down. You go ahead–no really, you first.