Lost Chicago [Paperback]

David Garrard Lowe (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 2000

30th Anniversary

These dazzling, poignant pages recreate the magical built environment that thrilled generations of Chicago residents and visitors alike before falling victim to the wrecking ball of “progress.”

Here are the grand residences and hotels, opulent theaters, legendary trains, and state-of-the-art office buildings and department stores—including the world’s first skyscraper. Here too are the famous convention halls, parks, and racetracks of a great American city whose architectural treasures have been, and continue to be, recklessly squandered.

Rare photographs and prints, many of them published here for the first time, document the transformative architectural achievements of such giants as Dankmar Adler, Louis Sullivan, John Wellburn Root, Daniel Burnham, William Holabird, and Frank Lloyd Wright. But this remarkable book is much more than a portfolio of now-vanished buildings; within its pages are evocative sketches of scores of Chicago personalities, from the world-famous (Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Dreiser, Clarence Darrow, Ben Hecht, Jane Addams, Cyrus McCormick, George Pullman, and Gustavus Swift, to name just a few) to the locally notorious.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Lost Chicago is more than just another coffee table gift, more than merely a history of the city’s architecture; it is a history of the whole city as a cultural creation.”—New York Times Book Review

(Mark Smith New York Times Book Review )

"Lowe''s book excels on its visual ground: page after page of gilded hotels, lovely parks, grand mansions and smashing restaurants, all vanished. . . . But there is more here than simple nostalgia, reinforced by mouth-watering photographs. There is also the real story of Chicago architecture, very different from the one we have been fed in textbooks and college survey courses."—Newsweek

(Douglas Davis Newsweek ) --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

David Garrard Lowe, the author of Stanford White’s New York, Beaux Arts New York, and Art Deco New York (Watson-Guptill, 2001), lectures freqently at the Smithsonian in Washington, the American Adademy in Rome, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in his home city, New York.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Watson-Guptill; Revised edition (October 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823028712
• ISBN-13: 978-0823028719
• Product Dimensions: 11.4 x 8.7 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,336,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars essential pictorial of Chicago's lost architecture, January 27, 2003

By 

audrey (white mtns) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lost Chicago (Hardcover)

If you care about the history of Chicago and/or American architecture, you will be blown away by this photographic treasure trove of the Windy City's lost legacy. Through fire, ignorance and greed many of the country's most beautiful buildings have been lost. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871, the merchant princes and the stockyards, George Pullman and Hull House's Jane Addams, Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright, the Columbian Exposition. These people and events shaped what few would neglect to identify as one of America's architectural centers.

This beautiful book is filled with more than 200 black-and-white photographs of buildings, bridges and other structures tragically allowed to fall into disrepair, destroyed by natural disaster, or bulldozed for parking lots and malls, repeated testaments to the Gordon Curve, predicting that a building is valued most when it is new, that it is least valued and most likely to be razed at approximately 70 years of age, and that if it makes it past that nadir it will begin to rise again in value as a relic and monument.

Each chapter is preceded by several well-written and accessible pages, and each photograph is accompanied by informative paragraphs and quotes. The author delves into Chicago's beginnings as a frontier fort and its rapid growth into a bustling mercantile hive, along the way outlining the history of the peoples and policies of various times from 1803 to the 1970s, organized into ten conceptual and functional groups such as residences, hotels, railway stations, churches, arthouses, The Fire and the fairs.

The photographs are wonderful, many I've never seen before, and each is described well, though the book would benefit by containing more maps. The book is constructed of good heavyweight paper and concludes with picture sources and notes, and a good index. It should be of interest to those with some connection to Chicago, architecture or American history, particularly of the 18th and 19th century.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A "must" for students of Chicago history & architecture, June 6, 2001

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost Chicago (Paperback)

In Lost Chicago, historian David Lowe explores the architectural and cultural history of America's great "heartland" city. This is a community who architectural heritage was all to often squandered during the last five decades of its growth and evolution. Lowe's elegant, and informative text is wonderfully enhanced with more than 270 rare, period photos and prints (many of them published here for the first time). Lost Chicago is a celebration of the age of Gustavus Swift and Philip D. Armour and the greatest stockyards in the world; when Cyrus McCormick, Potter Palmer, George Pullman, and Marshall Field were the national barons of business and industry; when Prairie Avenue and State streets rivaled New York's Fifth Avenue; when architectural giants ranging from Louis Sullivan to Frank Lloyd Wright were designing buildings of incomparable excellence and innovation. Lost Chicago is a "must" for students of Chicago history, architecture, and personalities.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Seminal Book on Chicago's Lost Architechture, May 23, 2001

By 

Christopher Batio "Christopher B" (Washington DC, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lost Chicago (Paperback)

First issued in 1975, this book captures the magnitude and the magnificence of Chicago's architecture that has been destroyed (by nature and man). Today Chicago is widely regarded as an architectural jewel (and it is, I live there!) but after reading this book you won't be able to stop imagining how much more amazing the city might be if the Urban Renewal movement of the 1960s and early 1970s had never happened. If you are interested in architecture, Chicago history or urban design and planning, read this book!