LETTERS FROM CHICAGO

The city that invented the tall building and still reads its own architecture better than anywhere else. Letters From Chicago is about structure and the rooms it makes possible: lobbies built to astonish, factories still turning out steel, brick and timber, the Midwest makers worth the detour, and the interiors where American modernism began. We spend a chapter in the Merchandise Mart, the furniture wholesale building so large it was given its own postal code, and still the centre of the American trade. Plus the hotels with the best views in the country, and the tables that have been getting it right for a hundred years.

Each edition carries the city’s palette, taken here from Burnham brick and lobby brass; notes on sourcing from the Merchandise Mart and the makers beyond it; and a letter to the city at the back.