I took the photograph on the left from the observation deck of Chicago's Prudential Building back in December of 1973, almost exactly 50 years ago. I think it must have been starting to snow, but you can still make out Michigan Avenue, East Congress Plaza Drive (the half circle roadway), as well as Grant Park. In the background, the tallest building on the right is 1130 South Michigan Avenue, where my sister Susan and late brother-in-law George once had an apartment, and across the street from it is the main depot and headquarters of the Illinois Central Railroad, now long gone. These days, of course, that depot and the office building next door to it are also long gone, replaced by an extension of Grant Park down to 12th Street, where new high rises now dwarf the 1130 South Michigan building. That observatory in the Prudential Building, where I took the photo, has been closed for years, replaced by observation decks at Sears Tower and the John Hancock Center, or whatever the hell they call those structures these days. Although I have read on the internet that it will soon be reopening, and if it is on the internet, it must be true.
The photograph on the right I took on the same day, and have used it on this blog before. This is what Chicago's Loop looked like 50 years ago. And as I mentioned in that previous post (last year or last decade, I can't remember), I have often wondered what I would have thought back then if someone had showed me a photograph of Chicago from fifty years earlier, back in 1923. I naturally would have thought it was a photo of a long gone era, and wondered what it had been like to live in Chicago way back then. But these days, when I look at the photograph on the right, it doesn't look like a different time to me at all. It looks very familiar, and if I was somehow transported back there, I would feel right at home. And immediately start buying Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, and whatever other stocks I could think of. With age comes wisdom, right?
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