A Walk Down La Salle Street Part 1

To begin we'll call the walk La Salle street just like Forgotten Chicago advertised it as such. In reality It was The LaSalle-Clark-Dearborn-Wells Walk :D

On Sunday October 18th we meet at the Northeast Corner of Wacker and La Salle. We started our walk at Noon and proceeded to head north over the River past the Reid Murdock Center, Chicago one time traffic court and today the home of the Encylopedia Britannica.



We stopped at Carroll Street which at a lower level. It once ran from the Merchandise Mart to where the IBM building now stands.



We Walked up to Kinzie street and headed east to Clark where the funniest thing on the tour occured. Our guide was beginning to explain that the building below was built for the Thompson Restaurant Chain as a warehouse. He didn't get very far in when a double-decker tour bus passed by and someone from the bus yelled "We're on a bus" I guess he thought that was better than us walking :D We all laughed and the our guide continued onward. Thompson's Restaurant's were a nationwide chain that was based on the cafeteria model. The fast food model was the downfall for these kind of restaurants.



We then headed north on Clark past some doors on the vaulted sidewalk. We learned that some of the first inside bathrooms were under the vaulted sidewalks because the city still had poor water preasure. We headed west on Hubbard to the mosaic below. This mosaic proclaims the Illinois Terrazzo and Tile Company, but like a guides mentioned they couldn't find any info as if they were located at the address where the tiles are laid. What is funny though is 53 west Hubbard is the Home of Hubbard Street Adult book store. While we were looking at the mosaic, someone opened the door to peek out what was happening. I'm sure they've had groups of people protest in front so I guess they seen that we were harmless and went back inside.



We Continued to walk on Hubbard back to La Salle and Continued north on LaSalle to the Art Deco fronted Building below. This building is much older than it's Art Deco front suggests. In 1928 La Salle Street was Widened causing many buildings to cut back their fronts and put new ones one. The colors one this one is amazing!



This concludes part one of this series. In part two we'll head up on LaSalle Street, make a stop at a famous restaurant that used store horses and see some motels!