Chicago Textures

Sometimes "textures" are things that you seek out in a city, things are only visible when you are looking for them. A reward for those who seek the unexpected. Other times, "textures" are pretty obvious. What was once a building between 8th and 9th Streets on Wabash, is now a parking lot. But it leaves behind the ghost of what it formerly was. The ghost image is a "living section" of what, it seems, was a timber-frame loft building of six stories. Still, I love looking at the silhouette. From it, you can immediately learn more about a building than you would normally be able to learn, even from working within it everyday.

The story is actually that there were two buildings here (the two on the right end of the block in the Google StreetView image below.) They had some sort of code issues and East-West University, rather than worry about remodeling them, just decided to tear them down. They weren't historic or anything, so they could just do that. Funny how that surprises me these days. It's a little annoying, just because the South Loop already has so many parking lots and so more were really not necessary. And, given the economy, redevelopment in the near term is unlikely.