Top architectural milestones

1. The death knell rings for infamous high-rise projects such as the Robert Taylor Homes and Cabrini-Green when the Chicago Housing Authority initiates its $1.5 billion-plus Plan for Transformation. (2000)
2. City Hall gets a vegetated roof, symbolizing Mayor Daley’s pledge to make Chicago the greenest city in America. (2001)
3. Chicago’s Helmut Jahn and Netherlands-based Rem Koolhaas/OMA complete eye-catching buildings at the Illinois Institute of Technology, refocusing the design world’s attention on the historically significant school and the South Side. (2003)
4. The National Trust for Historic Preservation purchases Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House in Plano, Illinois, ensuring the landmark won’t be destroyed or moved out of state. (2003)
5. Millennium Park is completed, bringing two Frank Gehry creations—the Pritzker Pavilion and the BP Bridge—to Chicago. We don’t mind the Pritzker Pavilion’s resemblance to Gehry’s previous projects; in winter, we like pretending we’re in Bilbao. (2004)
6. John Ronan captures the public’s imagination when his 2003 proposal for turning Chicago’s Old Main Post Office into a mausoleum appears in Stanley Tigerman’s exhibition “Visionary Chicago Architecture.” The almost 3-million-square-foot post office, which has been vacant since 1995, was purchased in October 2009 by English developer Bill Davies, who might want more lucrative tenants than the deceased. (2005)
7. Santiago Calatrava agrees to design the Spire, cementing Chicago’s reputation as a destination for starchitects—until the recession halts construction, making the giant pit on the site a symbol of the housing bubble. (2007–08)
8. Renzo Piano completes the Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing. The light-filled, energy-efficient museum addition gives national media another reason to acknowledge that people live in the Midwest. (2009)
9. The demolition of several buildings at Michael Reese Hospital, which were partly designed by Walter Gropius, seriously damages Chicago’s modernist legacy. (2009)
10. Hometown favorite Jeanne Gang’s Aqua tower is finished. It’s the tallest building in the world designed by a woman. (2009)