Lee Bey

Banger of an intro to the 1987-1988 NBC tv show The Bronx Zoo. Music by Thomas Dolby.

My architecture column today. The Griffin Museum of Science and Industry contemplated seven glassy and visually transparent Welcome Hall designs before selecting the one now criticized as too big and obstructive for the landmark site.

"Lee will highlight trends and happenings in architecture, particularly those pertaining to his native South Side. Lee will also discuss his acclaimed book Southern Exposure." If you're free at 1:30 today, come check me out.

My job is to poke around buildings, yet I’ve often taken a busman’s weekend at OHC to see even more, or to check out old favorites. Here are the places I'd like to see.

I've posted some of these before, but it's wild to see the Palace of Fine Arts in ruins during the years between the end of the 1893 Worlds Fair and the 1933 opening of the MSI? I first saw a few of these images in an elementary school library book when I was a kid. I was astonished.

A Sun-Times archi-scoop today. The park district originally (and rightfully) told the MSI the planned North Portico addition was too big and too incompatible -- then later ok'd the project after getting support letters for it from Landmarks Illinois and the state historic preservation office.

My column in the Sun-Times today: www.everygoddamnday.com/2026/10/bloc...

My architecture column today. "The groundbreaking comes weeks after the museum announced plans to construct a two-story tall, 458-foot wide Welcome Hall in front of the building’s North Portico main entrance off 57th Street."

Was digging the cast iron facade work today on architect Christian Eckstrom's Munn Building, an overlooked Chicago School beauty from 1910 at 815-819 S. Wabash Ave.

My architecture column today. “To see it from the street, it looks like poetry,” Landmarks commissioner member Suellen Burns said of St. Simeon.

My architecture column today. Frankly I was surprised the federal program Save America's Treasures still existed -- and as you'll see from the link in the column, made grants to some pretty worthy projects.

Meet Lee Bey? I've met this guy and he's alright. Come see him at this free event. And he'll also show a few photos from his upcoming West Side book, and South Side images he's shot since Southern Exposure was published -- can you believe? -- seven years ago this month.

The way Rollo sez "What's happ'nin' Mama," tho.

My architecture column today. "Built in 1927 as the Avalon Theater, the building was designed by John Eberson, who modeled the work after an intricate metal Persian incense burner he found in a Royal Street antique store in New Orleans’ French Quarter."

AIA Chicago's DesignNight 2026 award ceremony is happening now. You're not there (me either), but you can see and read about some of the winners here.

Am digging the Audi RS6 Avant that Henry Da Souza drives in MobLand.

This weekend's architecture column. "Other highlights over the last 100 days: four marriage proposals at the center; three bald eagles sighted; 11,424 Obama Burgers served up at Tafari’s Kitchen restaurant and 150 people dancing the Electric Slide on the John Lewis Plaza."

Some late breaking reporting this evening on the MSI carbuncle: "But the park district must now review final construction drawings — a step that could represent a potential firewall in the museum’s path toward constructing the arch-backed, 458-foot wide limestone and glass structure."

In a letter to the editor in today's Sun-Times, the distinguished author and city historian Tim Samuelson said the MSI's "current proposals to significantly alter both the building’s north and south elevations display gross disrespect for a masterpiece."

Got an email from a publicist telling me about an upcoming biopic on architect Louis Kahn, called Joy Will Prevail. "The film offers an intimate exploration of the professional and romantic relationships that inspired Kahn’s final residential commission. Griffin Dunne plays Kahn. I'm interested.

My architecture column today. "The new hall would be almost 30-feet tall and a whopping 458-feet — nearly three-quarters of a city block — in length: A big old wide-brimmed hat blocking the screen at the movie theater."

Today's architecture column. The building was designed by David Haid "whose most recognized work is the auto pavilion where Cameron Frye’s dad kept that ill-fated red Ferrari in the 1986 movie 'Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.' The architect supervised the repair of the pavilion’s glass after the scene."

Today's architecture column. Google HQ plaza to get a Sanford Biggers sculpture to replace the Dubuffet, and the tech giant releases new renderings and details of the renovated atrium as the renovation project continues.

After a month off, Bey is back! With a column about the winners announced today of World Business Chicago's design competition.

Back on the architecture beat today after a month off to work on the West Side book and start another project. So I'm resuming gawking at buildings. Like the old Rand McNally HQ, 536 S. Clark by Holabird & Roche from 1912. Offices & printing plant, then. Federal offices & immigration court now.

Where the meat industry in this country seems to be headed.

Paul Myers spent decades preserving, researching and sharing Marktown’s history. The lifelong East Chicago resident known as “Mr. Marktown” died Wednesday at 73.

Thank you!

Me crossing beef off my shopping list …

Spotted earlier this afternoon. St. Anthony's church, 300 E. Kensington, 1960, Saverio "Sam" DiMaio architect.

Why did I like this sitcom, given I was only 9 years old when it premiered in 1974? Lasted 15 episodes and I can't remember a single one. But the opening credits of Paul Sand lugging his double bass past some of Boston's finest architecture stayed w me.

In @nytopinion.nytimes.com “The twin towers were a product of their time, the mid-1960s, and what has replaced them is still, sadly, in too many ways a product of that same time,” the former architecture critic Paul Goldberger writes on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks.

Off the grid on South Torrence Avenue.

Here's a nicely restored version of Steely Dan's "Second Arrangement," the famously lost track from the Gaucho album. I've heard scratchy and incomplete versions. This is one sounds good.

Cool to look at the Obama Presidential Center through the eyes of the typographers at Pentagram (Michael Bierut and team) who did the big letters (5350 point Gotham Bold) up top. www.pentagram.com/work/the-oba...

I was re-watching this last night, and it holds up really well: V for Vashon, the 1972 three-part episode of Hawaii Five O. The pampered scion of a mob family decides to pull off scores like his grandfather did in the olden days -- and sets off a chain of events that ruins everything.

The ending of The Wildman of Wildsville, a 1962 ep of Beany & Cecil that embraces and pokes fun of midcentury hipster/beatnik culture. Tons of puns and wordplay, Jackson Pollock-inspired backgrounds, jazz, and Lord Buckley (look him up) voicing the Wildman.

Took a break this morning in one of the coolest spots in the city, the Pullman Club Coffee shop, 605 E. 111th

A follow-up of sorts to yesterday's post on the Lou Grant show: The only other print journalism tv series of the era that I can remember is The Insiders. It was ABC's answer to Miami Vice. Lasted just a season.

Printers Row Lit Fest is coming up next month. I'll be there Sunday Sept 13 in discussion with Trygve Thoreson about his excellent new book, Daniel Burnham and Louis Sullivan: Personal Histories of Two Icons of American Architecture. We'll be on Center Stage at 4pm.

Today our members showed up to bargaining to once again tell Chicago Public Media we're asking for real protection: • No layoffs due to generative Al • No cutting hours or pay because of GenAl • No eliminating future jobs to make room for GenAl • GenAl can't write or create our editorial content

A little early -- and Phil Spector-ish -- Dolly Parton.

The 1976 movie Monkey Hustle, filmed largely in Woodlawn and on 63rd St between Cottage Grove and Dorchester, a strip that was demo'd in the 1980s and 1990s. Everything in this scene from the building they're in to buildings outside --including this section of the CTA Green Line -- gone.

Our readers and members deserve reporting from REAL HUMANS!

The Chicago Sun-Times Guild is fighting for generative AI protections at the bargaining table. Follow along as we continue to push for a fair contract.

Ran across this image from 2022: a much-appreciated co-sign from @josephsikora4.bsky.social, the actor who plays Tommy in the Power series universe.

This is a cool slice of Old Skool from 1980. And I'd like to hear Michael McDonald take a run at this too.

From the 1965 film Mickey One.