The Tiffany tour continues, this time in the Original Marshal Fields building, now Macy’s.
Most people never look up!! Even when 7 floors above you is this amazing incredible vaulted mosaic ceiling. Temples of commerce are just as ornate as any Church.
You can take the elevator up to the 7th floor and get a much closer view of this incredible work. Not only the mosaics, there are also a number of globe Tiffany lamps.
I can see why, with all the modern cold white lighting, one misses these warm iridescent globes.
These are just a few of the images I took of the actual mosaic.
Ok, so most people don’t go up to Furniture and Design, but it is so worth it just to stare up at this ceiling.
Next stop the old Public Library, today it is The Chicago Cultural Center. Luckily when the new library was built, this building was just too massive and well reinforced, it was just to complicated to destroy. I know, people love to say – oh my city tears every old building down, but other cities are so much better at preservation. Guess what, all cities tear down old buildings, some more than others. We can’t keep everything, and those that remain become more important because there are fewer of them.
On the marble bannister, two things happened, they had to cut out the shape in the marble, then painstakingly create the mosaic to fit perfectly.
For all the wonderful mosaics here, and there are more, the dome is the real treasure here. This is the largest Tiffany dome anywhere, 38 feet in diameter, over 30,000 pieces of glass, there is a larger dome on the other side of the building, not designed by Tiffany, Unfortunately I couldn’t get to see it. From images online, it looks like I missed something special
The zodiac, fish scale glass. The dome was cleaned in 2008 and they were amazed by how much more light comes into the room. All of these pieces of art demand a lot of TLC in order to maintain their beauty.
Hanging from the dome is this light fixture that mimics the fish tail scales. Yup, my mind is going to a quilt pattern, although it probably is way too much work.
A few more mosaics, this one in an archway celebrates American authors. Built in 1897, Chicago was determined to prove that they are a world class city, I think they succeeded.
Although we couldn’t enter the hall because they were setting up for a private event, I spied this mosaic off to the side. Hebrew will always catch my eye and in many libraries – you will always find Hebrew. Makes sense since Hebrew is one of the earliest written languages. The alphabet has changed through the years. Of course, Alphabet is a contraction of the two first letters in Hebrew – Aleph -Bet.
The translation is: The Author who did not know, gave the book and said, please read this.
Leah