Blair Kamin writes in the Trib of the new cornice crowning the Carson Pirie Scott building:

bq. From the 12th floor, behind windows that are now properly recessed, you witness firsthand Sullivan’s ability to create exquisitely layered spaces. There, just outside the windows, are the elements that form the layers: the rounded columns and their delicate bands, the lush column capitals and the dazzling ornament of the overhanging soffit. Here, precisely as Sullivan intended, the ornament seems to grow naturally out of the building rather than being slapped onto it like a postage stamp.

His next column offered a description of the Field Building (LaSalle Bank headquarters), my not-quite-daily shortcut to LaSalle Street:

bq. It is at once a visual feast and impeccably restrained. Signature Art Deco zigzags animate everything from the fluted columns that line the corridor to the outlines of the clocks accenting the bridges that join the north and south balconies.

Oh, and the principal architect of the Carson’s job, Gunny Harboe, has apparently separated from AECOM and will move in next door to my office. Odd thing is, the Marquette is a jewel of history surrounded by a bunch of (mostly) mediocre monuments to corporate Modernism. And surely he had an in on the “Sullivan Office Centre” space on the upper floors of the Carson’s building, where the views are undoubtedly better. (However, the full-block floorplates there are probably huge and the smaller spaces narrow-and-deep.)

“I didn’t know that, but sticking it to the man makes this all the more sweet,” said Jerome Hicks, taking a long drag on a Dunhill cigarette. “I can say without guilt, if you don’t like it, go somewhere else.” — quoted by Charles Sheehan in the Trib, 19 January

The greedy zillionaires running multinational giant Reynolds American have apparently decided that harvesting $15.6 billion a year by slowly strangling millions of people to death isn’t enough. No, they’ve discovered a new twist on insidious evil: they’ve “gone local,” crouching behind a made-up brand name — Marshall & McGearty, who in real life are a corporate chemist and an ad-man, respectively — to create a corporate simulacrum of the idealized Ye Olde Tyme Corner-e Tobacconist-e Shoppe, hawking “custom blended” cancer sticks for $8 a pack.

“Reynolds, a subsidiary of Reynolds American Inc., plans to test the idea and see how the brand does before potentially expanding the concept.” (AP/N&O)

And where is the test market for this cynical marketing ploy, the first place where gullible and stupid American consumers will be suckered into literally trading their lives for corporate marketing hoo-hah? Why, Wicker Park, of course. And in a fit of good timing, the lounge coincidentally opened just as the deal-with-it-later smoking ban passed the City Council, resulting in a shower of free publicity.

Bleaugh. Good thing that the many local demolitions have left behind big piles of spare bricks. C’mon, let’s welcome them like we welcomed Starbucks — a corporation, mind you, a third smaller than RJR (measured by annual revenues).

And oh, it turns out that RJR’s largest shareholder is British American Tobacco. Together, RJR and BAT (which merged their American operations in 2005) sold $70 billion in cigarettes in 2004, making BAT bigger than McDonald’s, Coca-Cola, Starbucks, Nike, and the Gap combined.

From The Daily Northwestern:

bq. Archana Sriram suffered facial fractures, a broken jaw, a hip fracture and a broken leg after she was hit by a yellow Hummer at the intersection of Lake Street and Sherman Avenue, she said from the hospital Monday… “EPD says they can’t look up registered yellow Hummers in the area, only license plates,” Sriram said. “Hopefully people can keep their eyes out.”