The University of Chicago campus has been on my to-do list for quite sometime. Today I finally made it down there for a meandering photowalk with Chris Smith from Out of Chicago (yep, the same Out of Chicago hosting the Summer Conference I’m teaching at in a couple weeks).
We attempted to get into the The Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, which is the main building I was interested in checking out today but no such luck, you have to be a student or show up with a student or alumni willing to let you mooch off them, looks like I’m going to have to drag my husband down there to use his alumni clout to get in…or it seems if you’re not from the Chicagoland area you can get in, perplexing!
Even if that was a bust we did check out a number of the other amazing buildings on campus, first up Rockefeller Chapel donated by John D. Rockefeller housing the second largest carillon (which is a musical instrument typically housed in a bell tour…yep, had to look that one up) in the world. The largest was also donated by Mr. Rockefeller and is in NYC. This chapel, deceiving name considering I always envision a chapel meaning some small, quaint place of worship and there is absolutely nothing small or quaint about this building. While I greatly admire Gothic Revival architecture like this, and there’s a whole lot of it on the UofC campus, it’s not my favorite type of architecture to photograph.





We then headed over to the Arley D. Cathey Learning Center (also knows as the Harper Reading Room Library), the very vision of what you’d expect from such a prestigious university and also in line with the Gothic Revival architecture.


We also wandered into the building located at 5757 South University Avenue, I can’t seem to figure out the particular name of the building but it’s in the process of being renovated so I guess we weren’t supposed to be in there, to our luck they allowed us a couple minutes to make a few images. While Chris is not a fan of the modern additions in terms of the lighting and furniture to such a historic building, I actually love the combination of new and old architectural and design elements mixing together.

The building at 5757 South University Ave segued nicely to the modern Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts. Probably my favorite stop of the day.

This is a roof line of one of the Commons on campus…should have paid attention to the actual name of it…sorry.

This is a sculpture titled Construction in Space and in the Third and Fourth Dimensions by Antoine Pevsner

There are so many buildings we didn’t even venture into, you could seriously spend all day, if not many days, exploring the historic and modern architecture on campus.
Oh, and one more thing while we were there…Chris interviewed me for his new podcast , that outta be a cringe worthy listen coming soon.