Inside outing

This morning I said to monshu, "Open House Chicago is going on. What are some buildings you'd like to see?" In the interests of not running all over creation, he restricted the choices to Rogers Park. I made my own list and, when we compared, we found our top choice was the Emil Bach House, a Frank Lloyd Wright home from 1915. A couple years back, it was bought by the Pritzers and completely refurbished. They're now renting it out as a vacation home (yours for the bargain price of $1500/day).

We expected it to be popular and, indeed, the line wound round the block. Chicago Architecture Foundation volunteers were working it, offering annual memberships ($65/person) to cut in line. One of them put the wait at about an hour and a half, and she was pretty close: by our estimation, 80 minutes. Rather than pair each group with a tour guide, they had docents spaced at strategic points in the house and grounds and sent us one from one to another, although the relay all began to break down after we visited the upper storey.

The GWO and I came to the same conclusion: beautiful, but I wouldn't want to live there. Like most of his works, it has such a strong personality that there's no much room left to impose your own. I loved all the the little niches and nooks, but couldn't escape the thought monshu had upon seeing them: "A nightmare to clean." He also pointed out that the back porch and teahouse weren't weatherised, significantly cutting down on the amount of usable space.

Compared to the Robie House in Hyde Park, the Bach House does feel small. It wouldn't take much of a crowd to make the living room unnavigable (doubtless the reason for the staged viewings) and the ceilings often felt uncomfortably close to my head. On the plus side, it's on the north edge of a double lot, affording great views of the gardens and plenty of light in the bedrooms. The view of the Lake, sadly, has been reduced to a small square between apartment complexes across the alley.

After this, the other choices were each a bit more anticlimactic. First we stopped off at the Loyola campus to see their spanking new Institute of Environmental Sustainability. The most intriguing aspect of the design was the greenhouse space, a room without walls on the upper storey. There is a door controlling access to the stairs, but I pointed out to the Old Man how trivially easy it would be to swing around the side of it and pass even the largest potted plants back to a waiting accomplice. It afforded tremendous views of the block of Kenmore now pedestrianised and appended to campus.

By now, we were both in need of food, so we stopped at Dak on Granville for rice bowls before continuing to the Conway House on Sheridan. I've always admired this lovely old pile, recently vacated by the Madames of the Sacred Heart. Some lovely dark wood built-ins and mosaic floors inside, but the "open house" only included the main level, and not even all of that. No line to speak of, so I suggested hitting the north mansion at Berger Park across the street. Again, great built-ins and other details, but sorely in need of some TLC. It looks rode hard and put up wet, which is only to be expected of a service building in a funds-starved park district.

Next year we'll be prepared, make our plans ahead of time, and hopefully make it to some Loop locations. (Big Tim posted that he was going to try to hit nine of them today; based on what we heard about yesterday's lines, he'll be luck to make half that number.) Such a damn big city and I've seen so very little of it.