Rising Sinclair Masks Old Town Mural

Construction of The Sinclair (Courtesy of Old Town Spy Joel)

Chicago is a city of landmarks, both official and unofficial.  One of the city’s beloved, but still unofficial, landmarks is the trompe-l’œil mural painted on the south side of the LaSalle Towers apartment building at 1211 North LaSalle Street.  It’s called Homage to the Chicago School of Architecture, and is the work of Richard Haas and went up in the 1980’s during a renovation of the 1929 building.  But it’s not what it once was.

Old Town Spy Joel sent in the photo above showing that the mural is being obstructed by the construction of The Sinclair, a 35-story residential tower and supermarket at 1201 North LaSalle Street.  The tower portion of the Sinclair is on the east side of the property, but the parking and grocery podium extended westward, blocking the lower portion of Mr. Haas’ artwork.  Previously, this was a surface parking lot.

The new building blocks an image of the golden arch from the Transportation Building at the World’s Columbian Exposition.  The supports feature fake plaques of architects Louis Sullivan, Daniel Burnham, John Wellborn Root, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

This may be the one time in the last almost 14 years of this publication where a surface parking lot would have been preferable to… well, anything else.

The Sinclair pre-construction, before the arch lost its visibility

 

from Chicago Architecture http://www.chicagoarchitecture.org/2016/06/13/rising-sinclair-masks-old-town-mural/