About the Fine Arts Building

all passes—art alone endures. These words guard the entryway to the Fine Arts Building (410 S Michigan Ave), the 126-year-old backdrop of this year’s fall fashion shoot. In the 1900s, Frank Lloyd Wright, sculptor Lorado Taft and Wizard of Oz illustrator William Wallace Denslow were among the many artists who rented studios in the building, a former assembly house for Studebaker carriages. Since then, paint has peeled, tiles have cracked, and practical concrete has replaced much of the pretty terra cotta, but—as one of the few buildings in Chicago with dozens of skylit studios—art indeed endures. We show off spots like the tenth-floor workspace of illustrator and painter Rich Lo and the showroom of classical-instrument dealer Elizabeth Stein. And we couldn’t ignore the gated elevators, which are still cranked by the hands of dutiful operators. After polka dots, we’re hoping those lifts are the next thing to come back into style.