Art You Know

  [Wacker Drive, Chicago, September 7, 2009 /Image & Artwork: designslinger] Cities are constantly changing and evolving organisms, sometimes through specific planning and sometimes haphazardly. Chicago city planners decided to clean up the city's dingy, dirty riverfront in the early part of the 20th century. The Wacker Plan was an offshoot of the great Chicago Plan of 1909, and was designed to remove the unsightly movement of freight from the rivers edge as well as the decorative portion of the new upper roadway.   [Lower Wacker Drive ramp /Image & Artwork: designslinger] It was a pretty innovative idea at the time: take the delivery of goods and locate them to the lower levels of the buildings along a service road. So a double-deck, road bed was constructed adjacent to the main and southern branches of the river, as well as the new (we're talking 1920s here) Michigan Avenue retail corridor.   [Lower Michigan Avenue /Image & Artwork: designslinger] It's hard to believe that this was once the ground level of Michigan Avenue, then known as Pine Street. The forest of steel now supports the pedestrian and auto traffic of the boulevard above.   [Intersection of Michigan and Wacker /Image & Artwork: designslinger] Although it is dark and kind of creepy, I love the ethereal quality of the light. [Stairway to Michigan Avenue with the Intercontinental Hotel in the background /Images & Artwork: designslinger] From the shadowy depths, you climb into the bright light of Chicago's Magnificent Mile.   [Billy Goat tavern, 430 N. Michigan, Lower Level /Images & Artwork: designslinger] In Michigan Avenue's basement, you will find one of the city's most popular landmarks, the Billy Goat tavern. Immortalized by Chicagoan John Belushi in a classic Saturday Night Live skit with the line, Cheezborger, Cheezborger, Cheezborger, No Coke! Pepsi! The Billy Goat was once primarily a hangout for Chicago Tribune newspapermen, until Belushi, SNL and the arrival of the tourist.