Don’t Touch the Plumbing
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Security was tight last week when Lookingglass Theatre conducted a press tour of its new digs, still under construction at the Water Tower Water Works on Michigan Avenue. After the usual check-in, the crowd had to produce photo IDs and don double badges before being shepherded from the woebegone tourist center (who decided this space needed a fast-food restaurant?) into the dugout-in-transition Lookingglass will call home. Back in 1998, when the Department of Cultural Affairs began to hunt for a theater company to bunk with the working pumping station in the city’s most venerable landmark, it seemed like a cool idea. In 2000, when the space was awarded to Lookingglass (with a two-decade, dollar-a-year lease), it sounded even better: a heady cocktail of innovative theater, historic architecture, and muscular infrastructure. For the nomadic Lookingglass, which has performed in 22 venues since its founding by a group of Northwestern University graduates in 1988, it promised to be a rocket to establishment status. Chicago theater specialist Morris Architects/Planners, Inc., set to work on the design, and Lookingglass began to plan its fund-raising strategy. Then came 9/11.
Roosevelt’s President Under Wraps
