Plateau Strategy_(top).jpg)
The story
Before going up, stand back and read the black X shapes across the facade. They are not decoration added to a finished tower. The exterior bracing helps carry wind and gravity loads, frees interior space from many columns and makes the building's structure legible from blocks away. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill completed the tower in 1969.
The observation deck sits on the 94th floor, 1,030 feet above Michigan Avenue. At that height, Chicago becomes a set of relationships. The rigid street grid stops at the irregular blue edge of Lake Michigan. The river cuts through the blocks. Parks protect long pieces of shoreline, and the towers gather around transport and water.
Do not spend the whole visit photographing the horizon. Find the Art Institute, the park, the river and the route you walked. Then find Navy Pier projecting into the lake. Seeing the next stop from above makes the final choice easy: the mapped walk is 1.11 miles, but a bus or taxi is reasonable when weather, time or energy argues against it.