A fascination with Marina City, Chicago


As I was looking at some old photos, I stumbled across one of Chicago, and it jogged my memory of my fascination with Marina City. I've never seen it IRL (In Real Life), but it's one of my earliest memories of getting excited about architecture.

And no, I never became an architect (I couldn't do the math), but I became a graphic designer, and I still have a fascination with architecture, both old and new. And I sometimes wonder if it was the parking garage of Marina City that fascinated me so much, because I collected Matchbox cars when I was a kid.

For the record, Marina City is just north of the Chicago River between State and Dearborn Streets. Hang on, I'll go look up when it was built. Wikipedia says that it opened in 1963, so it would have been the latest thing back when I was a little kid, in the mid-sixties.

As you've probably guessed by now, I was a nerdy little kid. I had View Master reels of cities like New York, and Chicago. The only other building in Chicago that I remember was the John Hancock Building, which I visited in 1976. I had recently purchased my first car, looked at a map, figured out how to get to Chicago (I lived in Minneapolis), and drove there. I went to the top of the John Hancock Building, but apparently I forgot to go visit Marina City at the same time.

And I think the fact that it was called "Marina City" was what really fascinated me. I imagined that it would be like living on a spaceship, where you could live, work, and play. The closest I ever got to that feeling was working in a tower in downtown Phoenix, which had things like a post office, a couple of restaurants, and even some shops. Of course, it wasn't residential! It was called Valley Center at the time, and is now known as Chase Tower.

Anyway, getting back to Marina City, if you're old enough to remember the original Bob Newhart Show (the one from 1972), you may recall that he walks over the State Street Bridge and Marina City is very visible behind him. I loved that show as a kid, and I went wild over the view of Marina City!


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