Cover Photo: Monica Kass Rogers | Cover Design: Dan Streeting
We were brainstorming about where to do the photo shoot for this year’s Big Heat, our long-running feature chronicling the city’s food-and-drink culture that had been on a pandemic hiatus, when Jan suggested a food hall. It was a perfect idea, since the elevated reinvention of the food court is a still-recent phenomenon, dating back in Chicago to the 2016 opening of the Revival Food Hall by the 16” on Center company owned by Bruce Finkelman and Craig Golden. I’ve known Bruce and Craig for years, so I asked them if we might do the shoot at From Here On in the Old Post Office, their most recent take on the food hall, and they said yes. Chicago’s former Main Post Office opened in 1921 with a design by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White that featured a magnificent Art Deco lobby and occupied twenty acres of space to serve what was then the world capital of mail-order commerce led by the Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Montgomery Ward companies. Now it has been restored and turned into a majestic office building anchoring the south end of the West Loop. Surprisingly, this colossal historic renovation quickly gained traction by becoming the headquarters of such corporations as Ferrara Candy, Uber Freight and Walgreens. Less surprising when you see how beautiful it looks after the renovation.
When we started Newcity in 1986, we did not have an office space, so we rented out Post Office Box 802722 and, for a couple of years, I paid a daily visit to the then-fading and dingy temple, the Main Post Office, to collect checks, unsolicited manuscripts, press releases and everything else vital to the operation of a fledgling publication in those pre-Internet, pre-email days. I could not have imagined then that nearly forty years later, I’d be grabbing lunch inside its confines and working on its riverside patio with a laptop computer. Or, even more so, that I’d be dressing up in my most “urban chic” clothing to attend a gala in its expansive lobby, the air filled with the cocktail-fueled chatter of the actors, directors and donors who keep the Steppenwolf Theater Company moving forward.
—BRIAN HIEGGELKE
Look for Newcity’s June 2023 print edition at over 300 Chicago-area locations this week or subscribe to the print edition at Newcityshop.com.
IN THIS ISSUE
Unburdened Beauty Allana Clarke pursues Black futurity
Fungi Fantasia A visit to Windy City Mushroom is a trip
Big Heat The return of the Food & Drink 50
AND
Comics “Three Sisters: Welcoming Spring at Star Farm” A new comic by Anya Davidson
Poetry “Time Heals All Wounds” A new poem by Eve Ozer
Editor's Letter: October 2023 The world recognizes the vitality of Chicago architecture; we are central to the global conversation. But here at home, we undervalue it.
