CHICAGO CARLESS

(Photo: Free with every Macy’s purchase…a Chicago street atlas?)

[This post was edited at 10:00 p.m. after an unexpected but satisfying day of hullabaloo.]

Devyn always tells me never to leave the house without my camera. Yesterday proved why. After I discovered, photographed, and posted about wayfinding signs installed by Macy’s in their new digs on State Street that actually list incorrect names for the streets surrounding the store, others found my entry about Macy’s poor proofreading skills hard to resist.

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(Photo: A nice amenity for tourists or the end of civilization as we know it? Credit: Looper.)

In July, Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin bemoaned the appearance of Chicago’s new sidewalk maps, or more properly, “City Information” signs. If you’ve been in downtown Chicago this summer, you’ve seen them: ten-foot-tall metal pylons containing a glass-encased city map on one side and an ad or cultural announcement on the other. Designed by starchitect Robert A. M. Stern (who also created Chicago’s new, art moderne-influenced bus-stop shelters), in recent months, 75 of the information signs have been installed on sidewalks throughout the Loop. Besides providing wayfinding goodness for those unfamiliar with the city, the signs are installed and maintained by street-advertising heavyweight J.C. Decaux, with not a single dime coming from the public fisc. So what’s the problem? According to Kamin, placing ads on the signs cheapens the streetscape. Ordinarily, I think Kamin’s opinion about the urban built environment is right on target. But in this case, I couldn’t disagree more.

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(Photo: “Can you tell me where you’re located?”)

I’m glad I had my camera with me today when Plankmaker and I took a shortcut through the soon-to-be “Macy’s on State Street”. All this week, workers have been busily installing new awnings outside the store and information maps within. Trouble is, no one actually proofread the new store maps before posting them throughout the store.

Ever heard of Wabash “Street”, Washington “Avenue”, or Randolph “Avenue”? Neither have I. But as the photos below show, that’s how Macy’s has labeled the store’s surrounding streets on its newly installed store information maps:

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(Photo: Louis H. Sullivan’s initials appearing in his exuberant cast-iron filigree that is–or was–the ground-floor facade of Carson Pirie Scott’s State Street store. Credit: Looper.)

It had to happen sometime. I mean, anyone who browsed through the ghost town that was Carson Pirie Scott’s downtown Chicago store at 1 South State Street this past Christmas–a year when, as uneventfully usual, Marshall Field’s State Street store was packed to the gills–suspected that Carson’s was on its last legs. You just knew that the recently completed, multi-million-dollar restoration of the store’s landmark Louis Sullivan exterior had to have an ulterior motive.

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(Photo: In New York City, pretty doesn’t always lie in the details: squinting up the East River from the Brooklyn Heights Esplanade. Credit: Looper.)

Recently, my Korean foodie friend, (”I don’t freaking look like Margaret Cho!”) Rozella, and I were discussing what we liked about Chicago. Unlike me, Rozella’s a native, but she spent several years away from the friendly shores of Lake Michigan before returning here, not long before I arrived, in the early 2000s. We came and we stay for different reasons. Rozella’s seen the world, now she has family obligations to live up to. I’ve seen the world, too, but there’s still a lot of wanderlust left in me. I stay put in Hogtown for entirely different reasons. I’m here because people say “hi”.

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