The Gang Gets COVID - Part 2

Did you read Part 1?

Outside the Frederick C. Robie house

When last we blogged, we woke up on a wet Friday morning in Chicago and headed to the University of Chicago campus, south of downtown.  As is our norm, we were early, but it was finally time to start our tour of the incredible Robie House, designed by famed architect Frank Lloyd Wright!  After returning our audio guides to the gift shop, we met our docent outside in the courtyard of the house; the gift shop occupies what used to be the family's attached garage, which was one of the first ever - Wright was a trendsetter in more ways than one, that's for sure.  We ventured into the home through the bottom of three floors, which served as the family's private, non guest quarters; accordingly, this floor was far less ornamented than the main floor, which we'd see a bit later.

Standing in the courtyard, looking up at the second level

Our guide noted that the vertical mortar between many of the bricks

is colored red to match the brick (see it versus the white, horizontal mortar?),

which fools the eye into thinking the bricks look longer.

"Long" is an important word for the Robie house, as you'll see.

Heading in!

Wright played with compression and release in this house, as he did in many of his structures.

The bottom floor is quite short (the BFG here is only a few inches away from the ceiling),

which makes you feel compressed, but once you climb the stairs and step into the great room on the second floor,

the high ceilings there provide a needed release.

Even though the bottom floor is less ornamented, there's still plenty of Wright staples,

like cool glasswork and built in furniture.

Bookshelves, chair, and safe original to the home

After seeing the family lounging area and kids' playroom on the first floor, we climbed the stairs to the main level, comprised of the huge living and dining rooms.

Wright's structures are obviously incredible, but his glasswork is always my favorite

Poor kiddo, trying not to cough all over these fine people.

Also, check out the use of compression here along the exterior hallways -

the ceiling in the main part of the living/dining room is much higher

See how long this hallway is?  This is only half of the length of this main room,

and the outside porches extend the footprint of the house even further.

Wright built this house long and skinny, to suit the plot of land on which it was located.

The back nook of the dining room, which overlooks the garage and courtyard

The fireplace dividing the living and dining rooms

That's an open space above it, to connect both rooms and extend the ceiling sightline

Once we finished in the main rooms, we headed upstairs one more time, to the family bedrooms.  They weren't super remarkable (other than having a slightly peaked middle part of the ceiling, which is not a normal Wright feature - it was his accommodation for the roof potentially having to deal with snow in the winter), but I did get some shots of cool furniture:

I love this little yellow chair

These were original to the house - I think one was a dining room chair

As our tour concluded, we headed back to the gift shop and pondered some of the more interesting tidbits we'd learned.  For example, the Robie house is an example of Wright's prairie style, which aimed to increase the sightlines from the house to the surrounding open landscape.  That caught a few of us off guard, since there are no "open landscapes" around the house, as you may have been able to tell from the pictures in Part 1 of this blog series.  Here - check out the Google street view of the corner the house is on.  It's crazy to think that NONE of the structures currently here existed when Wright built the house in 1910, including the Rockefeller Chapel and Gothic themed Saieh Hall for Economics!

After picking up a Wright illustrated table runner in the gift shop, we hopped back in the car and headed toward downtown to find some lunch.  As we drove, we analyzed what our next steps should be; while we had two more nights reserved in the hotel, Chris was still feeling pretty cruddy, and with the tour concluded, we'd just finished the last of the activities we'd booked (and paid for) in advance.  We pondered starting the drive home after lunch but figured that would put us home around 10pm, which sounded exhausting (particularly after our lack of sleep the night before).  We made the decision to enjoy Chicago for the rest of the day, attend our already scheduled cocktail and dinner plans, and head home the next morning, early on Saturday.

Pondering our next step while taking a look at the lake

With that important choice made, we reconsidered our lunch options; we'd originally planned to stop by Goose Island Brewery's downtown location and eat at a sandwich spot nearby.  However, we'd no longer be having our previously reserved Saturday night dinner at a place we'd long wanted to visit; thus, we called an audible and rerouted the car's GPS to Frontera Grill, Rick Bayless' landmark Chicago spot, hoping they could accommodate us for lunch instead.  They had plenty of space for the two us to enjoy our midday meal, and we thoroughly enjoyed the experience!

While we were there on the early side (11:30), there were several open tables during the lunch service.

The restaurant even runs a three course meal option for lunch, which we both picked -

amazing food and a great value!

(The margaritas were extra, but they were worth every penny)

My crispy carnitas tacos (front) and Chris' fish tacos (back), featuring Lake Michigan walleye

We've been wanting to eat at Frontera Grill for 15 years now,

since Rick Bayless won the first season of Top Chef Masters.  Finally!

Catching a shot of the El (the elevated train) as we walked to lunch

Post lunch, we decided Goose Island was still in the cards, but instead of hitting up the more central downtown location, we visited their Salt Shed Pub, which just opened in May.  Although we sat inside, the patio of the pub overlooks the River, including nearby Goose Island, which is the real name of an actual island in Chicago (I didn't know that!).

Trying some yellow fizzy things

Since we'd just come from lunch (and were completely stuffed), we didn't do food here, but it looked great.

We also made good use of their fridge offerings to pick up some great brown beers,

including a few variations of Bourbon County Stouts you can only get in the Chicago area.

Full of margaritas and tacos and beer and cold medication (well, one of us), we headed back to the hotel for a much needed nap before starting our evening excursions.  On the next blog post, we hit the town for one last night before heading home!

Later!

Amy