The Wrigley Building
Twin terra-cotta towers of shifting white, hand washed for a century to keep their glow above the river.
This guide to The Wrigley Building starts with an embarrassment from March 1921, when a Chicago Tribune photographer caught the freshly finished tower half-scrubbed clean and half still coated in coal soot from the city's factories and rail yards. It traces William Wrigley Junior's choice of white back to a color he remembered from the 1893 World's Fair, and the more than two hundred fifty thousand glazed terra-cotta tiles his architects used to chase it. You'll hear what it actually takes to keep a building that color in a river city's weather. Stand across the water after dark for the best view of the tower lit up.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.