CHICAGO LANDMARKS ON THE COURSE

On race day, you’ll run past dozens of landmarks that make up Chicago’s architectural fabric. We’ve chosen four of those landmarks—the Chinatown Gate, Marina City, the Chicago Board of Trade Building and the L—to feature on this year’s artwork for the Bank of America Chicago Marathon. Learn more about these iconic sights so when you run past them, you’ll know their story.

MARINA CITY

Instantly recognizable by its two corncob towers, Marina City is a five-building complex along the Chicago River designed by Bertrand Goldberg to be a city within a city. In addition to the residential towers, the complex also included an office building that has since been converted to a hotel, a theater building and a base structure with recreational space. With amenities including a grocery store, bank, barber shop, pharmacy, restaurants and more, Goldberg aimed to create a development that had use during day and night, with residential and commercial functions that could financially support each other.

The 65-story residential towers were both the tallest apartment buildings and the tallest reinforced concrete buildings in the world when they were completed in 1962 and 1963. The towers generated significant interest, with 3,500 applications for around 900 apartments before the towers were completed. The studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments, described by Goldberg as petals of a sunflower, grow wider as they expand to the unit’s balconies, creating distinct floorplans within the building that match the uniqueness of the exterior. (continued on page 44)

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CHICAGO BOARD OF TRADE BUILDING

The Chicago Board of Trade Building caps the southern end of the LaSalle Street canyon and Chicago’s financial district. Completed in 1930, the building stands as a homage to the original activity within the building and the age in which it was built.

The Chicago Board of Trade began in 1848 as a grain futures exchange, and the exterior of the building reflects this heritage. The clock facing LaSalle Street is flanked by carvings depicting a Mesopotamian farmer holding wheat and a Native American holding corn. Similar carvings also protrude from just below the pyramidal roof of the building. On top of the building stands an aluminum sculpture of Ceres, Roman goddess of grain and agriculture, with a sheaf of wheat in one hand and a bag of corn in the other. Additional crop themes appear across the building’s exterior.

Constructed during the height of the Art Deco movement, the Chicago Board of Trade Building features classic architectural elements of the time including rectangular forms and multiple setbacks that emphasize the building’s verticality. The building’s lobby continues the theme, with a striking black marbled walls accented by gold details that also use rectangular designs to contribute to the Art Deco feel.

Welcome to Chinatown

CHINATOWN GATE

As participants turn from Cermak Road onto Wentworth Avenue, they pass under the iconic Chinatown Gate. Designed by architect Peter Fung and installed in 1975, the gate welcomes visitors to the heart of Old Chinatown, which stretches down Wentworth from Cermak to 24th Place. The artwork on the gate has been refreshed in recent years, but the four characters on the gate, which translate to “the world belongs to the commonwealth,” according to the Chicago Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, remain the same. The gate is modeled after a wall in Beijing and reflects the architectural tone of the neighborhood, which features a rich array of buildings with Chinese motifs and design elements.

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THE “L”

Since the 19th century, elevated trains, commonly referred to as the L, have transported Chicagoans around the city. In 1892, the first elevated train carried passengers from Ida B. Wells Drive and Wabash Avenue south to Pershing Road and State Street. Other train lines were constructed in the following years, and by 1897 elevated tracks circled the central business district, forming the foundation for today’s Loop L.

Fifty years after multiple train lines first converged on downtown, the Chicago Transit Authority was formed to join the various private companies that had been operating on both elevated and subway lines, which were facing financial problems. The L runs throughout Chicago and into several surrounding suburbs using lines that since 1993 have been identified by colors.