The Chicago School of Architecture / Continuity and Contrast

These two great buildings strikingly represent two distinctive eras. By the 1924 completion of the Wrigley Building (left), designed by Graham Anderson Porbst and White, the simple honesty which had earlier marked the Chicago School of architecture had softened to include classic details, such as this Italian-styled clock tower. Four decates later, the 1965 Equitable Building (right) designed by Skidmore Owings & Merrill and Alfred Shaw Associates, returned to simplicity - "less is more" - with the urgings of Chicago trend-setter, Mies van der Rohe. Forty years later the two still straddle Michigan Avenue, just north of Edward Bennett's 1920 Michigan Avenue Bridge.