The Chicago Cultural Center – Formerly Chicago's Central Public Library

The Chicago Cultural Center opened in 1897, is a Chicago Landmark building that houses the city's official reception venue where the Mayor of Chicago has welcomed Presidents and royalty, diplomats and community leaders. It is located in the Loop, across Michigan Avenue from Millennium Park. This building is a favorite cold weather location for Urban Sketchers Chicago.

The following interior sketches of the Chicago Cultural Center are by Alex Zonis

Originally the central library building, it was converted in 1977 to an arts and culture center at the instigation of Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Lois Weisberg. The city's central library is now housed across the Loop in the spacious, post-modernist Harold Washington Library Center opened in 1991. The building was designed by Boston architectural firm Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge for the city's central library, and Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) meeting hall and memorial in 1892.   

This is the Harold Washington Library. With the conversion of Chicago's former central library into the Chicago Cultural Center in 1977, a long-term temporary central library was opened in the Mandel Building at 425 North Michigan Avenue and much of the library's collection was put into storage.

A highly publicized design competition, the winning design was awarded to the most overtly traditional approach in the midst of some very diverse proposals. The building recalls neoclassical institutions, but is not literal in all its details. Anyone who walks past this solid red brick structure is compelled to look up when a strong sense that you are being watched overcomes you. It is one of four10 foot tall owls situated at the corners of the roofline.

With the support of then Chicago Mayor Harold Washington and Chicago's wealthy Pritzker family, ground was broken at the chosen site at Congress Parkway and State Street, covering an entire block. Upon the building's completion in 1991, the new mayor, Richard M. Daley, named the building in honor of the now-deceased former mayor Harold Washington, an advocate of reading and education among Chicagoans as well as an advocate of the library's construction.

One perfect note

Continuing with Urban Sketchers meet at the Chicago Cultural Center...

I was already sitting at a great angle sketching the grand piano in the Music room when two ladies arrived chatting in Russian and walked to the piano. One sat down and proceeded to play a piece of Tchaikovsky intoning it in a familiar Russian manner. That was just a warm up, the concert would actually start later.

The piano in my sketch was nearly complete so I just sat the lady pianist in front of it, tiger striped outfit and all. 

I was sitting there sketching, listening to Tchaikovsky and thinking that life rarely gets better than this: beautiful room, Tiffany glass, wonderful live music, five old and new friends around me, a pen and a sketchbook. Cheers!

Telling the Story

So many Urban Sketchers capture their cities in the architecture but for me it's the people. There's nothing like people-watching in the city. It gets my creative juices flowing! So many stories, each unique and yet somehow universal.

While most of USk Chicago sketched in the Cultural Center I ventured across the street to
the rink at Millennium Park.  Despite the cold it was filled with skaters. There were tourists and locals, novices and pros, kids and the forever youngs and of course the speedsters. HA! When you're trying to sketch them they're all speedsters!

After sketching at the rink for I while I went back to the Center to meet up with the others and to finish up the color on my sketches. What a great group! It was a fun day!

We took over Chicago Cultural Center

The January Urban Sketchers meet turned out a spectacular event. An unprecedented number of artists showed up. It felt like there were 30 of us, or perhaps it was only 20 and I am exaggerating in my excitement. I really could not count us all, there literally was at least one Urban Sketcher in every room, and the Cultural Center is a very large building. One of our sketchers - Lucas - invited two of his classmates from American Academy of Arts and his painting teacher! It also felt that perhaps the movement is finally making traction in Chicago and beginning to gain momentum.

The internal architecture of the building is so beautiful that it is very hard to settle down and select something one to draw. I knew I had to limit myself to something manageable. I sketched in the Cultural Center before and was aware how easy it is to be enchanted by its beauty and try to grab too much for a given amount of time. So I chose a window, just one window, looking south on Washington Ave.

My First Urban Sketchers Experience

My First Urban Sketchers Meetup (Wes Douglas)

It was one of the coldest days at the beginning of 2013…January as I remember. I took the Metra West line train into Ogilvy Transportation Center and walked to the Chicago Cultural Center (the former Chicago Library on Washington and Michigan Avenue). Gosh it was cold but I made it. And when I entered the south entrance and walked up the stairs, I met Alex Zonis for the first time and recognized her immediately from her Facebook picture. She said “Welcome to Urban Sketchers and there are lots of us here. If you see someone sketching, it’s probably one of us.”

But let’s back up about a month. How did I come to walking 10 blocks in 15º F cold to join up with Urban Sketchers Chicago? In December 2012, I walked over to the Elmhurst Public Library from my office to check out the new book section (as was the habit of mine during my lunch breaks).

The library is only a block away so it was good exercise. Scanning the creative book section, I stumbled upon a book called “The Art of Urban Sketching." By now, many people are very familiar with it but at the time this book was new to me. I come across books on sketching all the time and I even seek them out. But this book caught my attention and realized that I was learning a new term, "urban sketching."

With the background noise of a woman on her laptop hammering on her keyboard as if she was a percussionist in a rock band (sketch shown on the left), I flipped through the sketches from various artists and learned about the existence of the global community. Then I went to the website and noodled around there until I noticed that off to the right were local chapters listed. I clicked on the link for "Urban Sketchers Chicago" and found the Facebook group page. Then I asked to "join."

Only a few days later did I receive notice that I had been accepted into the group. I do not recall if Alex Zonis herself had responded to me but she was and has always been the face that I recognized from my first encounter with the group.

Since I had been sketching most all of my life, sketching scenes from my life were already embedded into my daily habits. I merely continued sketching random scenes that appealed to me but with a new focus on paying attention to only those scenes that were directly in front of me. And I became a prolific poster of my sketches to the USK Facebook group.

Then I found out that this Chicago chapter meets once a month at various locations around the Chicagoland area and the next one was scheduled for the Chicago Cultural Center on Michigan Avenue. "What? You mean I can actually meet real, live people from a Facebook group? Does that even happen?"

As a matter of fact it does happen and it continues to happen for urban sketchers every year, every day.

Now back to that bitter cold day in January. I walked around the Chicago Cultural Center and noticed the sketchers that Alex had told me about – some in clusters sketching together and some by themselves, alone in a corner. All of them were busy sketching and little to no conversation took place.

I think I had envisioned that these get togethers were going to be like workshops where artists were collaborating, laughing, having fun and enjoying each others' company. But then I had to remind myself that these were artists and artists tend to be quiet, focused people who, like me, have trouble sketching and talking at the same time. And I was ok with that.

At the end, when all of the urban sketchers were invited to meet back at one of the entrances to share what they had sketched, it was then that I realized the magic of this group. I was able to see how many people had shown up and braved the cold on this God-forsakenly cold day in order to do what they enjoyed best with other like-minded individuals. And to have the ability to see such a range of talent and working styles opened my eyes to the true benefits of being a part of such a wonderful community.

And to top of this already wonderful experience, Alex Zonis and Mary Lanigan Russo had asked me to consider being a correspondent of this group. This essentially allowed me to be a regular contributor to this USK Blog. I thought it would be fun. The rest, as they say, is history.