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Washington Street Tunnel (Chicago)

1869 establishments in IllinoisBuildings and structures in ChicagoRailroad tunnels in IllinoisTransportation buildings and structures in Cook County, IllinoisTransportation in Chicago
Tunnels completed in 1869
Washington Street tunnel, east entrance, by P. B. Greene
Washington Street tunnel, east entrance, by P. B. Greene

The Washington Street Tunnel was the first traffic tunnel under the Chicago River. J.L. Lake was awarded the contract to construct the tunnel in July 1867 and its construction was completed January 1, 1869. This tunnel was 1605 feet long, from Franklin Street west to Clinton Street, and cost $517,000.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Washington Street Tunnel (Chicago) (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Washington Street Tunnel (Chicago)
West Washington Street, Chicago Near West Side

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Wikipedia: Washington Street Tunnel (Chicago)Continue reading on Wikipedia

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 41.883194444444 ° E -87.638055555556 °
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Address

Washington Street Bridge

West Washington Street
60606 Chicago, Near West Side
Illinois, United States
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Washington Street tunnel, east entrance, by P. B. Greene
Washington Street tunnel, east entrance, by P. B. Greene
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Civic Opera Building
Civic Opera Building

The Civic Opera Building is a 45-story office tower (plus two 22-story wings) located at 20 North Wacker Drive in Chicago. The building opened November 4, 1929, and has an Art Deco interior. It contains a 3,563-seat opera house, the Civic Opera House, which is the second-largest opera auditorium in North America. Today, the opera house is the permanent home of the Lyric Opera of Chicago. Samuel Insull envisioned and hired the design team for building a new opera house to serve as the home for the Chicago Civic Opera, as the company was called. The building is shaped like a huge chair, sometimes referred to as "Insull's Throne." Insull directed the chair should face west to signify turning his back on New York. Insull had left a vice presidency at General Electric in New York in 1892, after he was not named its president. Subsequently, he moved to Chicago and became president of Chicago Edison (Commonwealth Edison). Insull selected the architecture firm Graham, Anderson, Probst & White who were responsible for several other buildings in the downtown Chicago Loop. As they did on other occasions, the architects commissioned Henry Hering to produce architectural sculpture for the building. Mary Garden of the Chicago Civic Opera announced on July 15, 1929, that the opera's inaugural season would include the commissioned work of Hamilton Forrest entitled Camille.During the 1950s and 1960s the building was identified by a large "Kemper Insurance" sign, although it was not that company's headquarters. In 1993, the Lyric Opera of Chicago purchased the opera house facilities in the building it had rented for 64 years. In 2012, Tishman Speyer Properties L.P. sold the 915,000 square feet (85,000 m2) office tower portion of the building for $125.8 million to an affiliate of Nanuet, N.Y.-based Berkley Properties LLC.

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