Carbide and Carbon Building

Chicagoans have been arguing for almost a century about what the dark tower on your left is actually supposed to look like. Built in nineteen twenty nine for the Union Carbide and Carbon Company, right as Prohibition was in full swing, the thirty seven story skyscraper rises from black polished granite into a deep green terra cotta shaft and ends in a gold leaf crown that glows at night. The popular story is that architects Daniel and Hubert Burnham, sons of the famous city planner Daniel Burnham, designed the whole thing to look like a giant bottle of champagne, foil and all, as a wink at the illegal drinking still happening behind closed doors all over the city.

The architects themselves never confirmed that story, and the building's official decoration was actually meant to echo the prehistoric plant matter that slowly becomes carbon and coal deep underground, a quiet nod to the company that built it and the raw material its name was built on. But the champagne bottle comparison took hold decades ago and never let go, helped along by the fact that the tower really was lit from below for years in a way that made the gold cap shimmer like foil catching candlelight on a dark street. Tour guides still point it out as the champagne building without apology, long after the company that built it moved out, the Prohibition it supposedly winked at ended, and the tower itself was converted into a boutique hotel. It stands today as one of the finest Art Deco towers anywhere in the Loop, whichever story you choose to believe about why it looks the way it does.