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Photo: ajay_suresh, CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
A Broadway in Chicago outlet, this opulent theater was built in 1926 for the vaudeville circuit and is now glossed up for high-profile productions with 2,300 seats per show. The Producers and the mighty Oprah's The Color Purple both enjoyed long runs here.
The Cadillac Palace Theatre is a theater in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Operated by Broadway In Chicago of the Nederlander Organization, it seats 2,344 and is located at 151 West Randolph Street.
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648 ft. The 1965 Daley Center is Chicago's principal civic center and boasts a gigantic Picasso statue on the adjacent plaza. A true Chicago landmark, the Daley Center was featured in The Blues Brothers, who drive across Daley Plaza and crash through the glass walls of the building. The Mies-esque design was intended to age visibly: the color has faded in a rust-like direction from exposure to the elements.
Non-profit theater company in an extremely expensive space; they pride themselves on new works, but are better known for revivals of plays from the American theater canon. Post-show discussions with the cast are held after Wednesday and Thursday night performances.
850 ft. Located at the exact center of CTA's Loop transit system, this building is distinctive for its vertical curve. It has been renamed for each of the successive banks that have bought out its previous tenants — for example, it was the BankOne Tower until 2005. The plaza outside is more interesting than the interior — it is home to an enormous mosaic by renowned Russian painter Marc Chagall.
Oriental Theater
The Oriental Theater was once Chicago's most ornate movie palace, but this is now another Broadway in Chicago theater outlet.
1007 ft. Built by Adrian Smith in 1989, the granite-clad AT&T Corporate Center is one of the city's more distinctive skyscrapers for its massive size, spiked roof pinnacles, and a style evocative of both Gothic and Japanese architectural styles. It's not well-known, but it is the eighth tallest building in the U.S.
Root/Atwood, 1890/1895
A then-unprecedented amount of glass was used in this early skyscraper, bewildering a public still used to masonry walls. Note the difference between the first two floors and the ones above: hold-outs among the previous building's tenants forced developers to build the foundation and the first two floors under the top three floors from the old building, and then knock off the top three when their leases had expired. It was restored when it became the Hotel Burnham (see below) in 1999, and can be explored with a stop at the Atwood Cafe (also below).