The Chinatown Branch of the Chicago Public Library. Photo © Jon Miller | Hedrich Blessing
It is the kind of cold that burns the skin. But on a Tuesday morning in January, it’s bright and warm in the new branch library in Chicago’s Chinatown. Out the slim vertical windows, subway trains rush by on elevated tracks. Looking north, there is the illusion that the looming Willis Tower is close enough to touch. …
It was a surprise to many that Chicago invested $19 million to build the architecturally distinctive two-story library, a curving, glass-walled structure designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), the same architects behind the sophisticated One World Trade Center in New York and the Centennial Tower in South San Francisco.