Chicago Cultural Center

The story

Enter slowly and look at the surfaces before the rooms. This building opened in 1897 as the city's first permanent central library and as a memorial hall for veterans of the Civil War. Its two purposes explain the unusual mixture inside: an institution devoted to books built with the ceremony of a palace.

Marble, brass, colored stone and tiny glass mosaics cover the stairs and corridors. The largest visual reward is overhead. The Preston Bradley Hall holds a vast Tiffany glass dome, assembled from thousands of pieces that soften daylight into color. On the other side of the building, another dome gives the former Grand Army of the Republic rooms a different, more solemn character.

The library moved in 1991, but the building stayed public. Today it offers free exhibitions, performances and civic events. That continuity is what makes the place special. The decoration is grand, yet the doors still open to anyone. Before leaving, look back down a staircase and notice how the mosaics turn ordinary movement through a building into a procession.