Tuesday/ cold – but not Chicago’s cold

It’s 37 °F (3 °C) here in Seattle, and only 10 °F (-12 °C) in Chicago.
I mention Chicago, because I’ve been using Google Earth & Google Maps all day to annotate a Chicago picture — one that I had taken in 1990 from the observatory of the John Hancock Center.

Just for fun, I also created a simulated ‘2021’ view with Google Earth, from more or less the same spot and elevation. The forest of skyscrapers is now a lot denser.

The year is 1990, and the NBC Tower (center left in the picture) and the Swissotel (to its left) are both brand new. I had no idea that I would actually work in the Wrigley Building (center right in the picture), in 2006, some eleven years after my 1995 arrival in the United States. The Aon Center in the middle of the picture obscures the famous Hilton Chicago hotel (opened 1927, refurbished in 1985).
Now in 2021, 31 years hence, many more condominium towers have been added. (That neighborhood on the left bordered by Michigan Avenue, the Chicago River, Lake Michigan, and Millennium Park is the New Eastside). The St. Regis Chicago hotel on the far left has 101 floors. The most ignominious tower of them all, would be the Trump International Hotel & Tower, completed in 2009. (The second impeachment trial of its disgraced namesake started in the US Senate today).
The Wrigley Building was Chicago’s tallest structure, and first building with air-conditioning, at its completion in 1922. I took this picture from the 16th-story patio in June 2006, looking south along South Michigan Avenue. The building with the green pyramid top is the Metropolitan Tower (1924). The black high-rise structure closer on the right, is the Carbide & Carbon Building (1929), in classic Art Deco style.

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