This Used to Be Chicago

Book excerpt: Warning: with This Used to Be Chicago as your guide, you may never look at Chicago the same again. Every building has a past — author Joni Hirsch Blackman finds the stories behind more than 90 Chicago buildings that used to be something else: the liquor store that used to be a speakeasy during Prohibition; the yacht club that used to be a ferry boat; the countless condominiums that used to be cracker, shoe, postcard or piano factories and, perhaps the most incongruous, the circus school that used to be a church. Imagine what your favorite buildings will house in another 100 years — that’s this book backwards! Explore your own neighborhood with a new eye, find places you remember from your youth, appreciate a new part of town you’ve considered only as it is now.