Lost Chicago

"Lost Chicago explores the architectural and cultural history of one of America's greatest cities, a city whose architectural heritage was recklessly squandered during the second half of the 20th century. David Garrard Lowe's prose and over 270 rare photographs and prints, many of them published here for the first time, illuminate the decades when Gustavus Swift and Philip D. Armour ruled the greatest stockyards in the world; when industrialists and entrepreneurs such as Cyrus McCormick, Porter Palmer, George Pullman, and Marshall Field made Prairie Avenue and State streets the rivals of New York City's Fifth Avenue; when Dankmar Adler, William Le Baron Jenney, Louis Sullivan, John Wellborn Root, Daniel Burnham, Martin Holabird, and Frank Lloyd Wright were designing buildings of incomparable excellence. Here are the mansions and grand hotels, technically brilliant office buildings (including the first skyscraper) and department stores, magnificent trains, and movie palaces, parks, and racetracks that thrilled residents and tourists alike before falling victim to the wrecking ball of "progress.""--BOOK JACKET.