1950s Chicago Skyline taken from the Shedd Aquarium

That skyline looks a lot different from today's skyline. Chicago is a very different place from back then. I remember taking the El train into Chicago with my mother. The backs of apartment buildings would whizz by and I'd wonder how people could possibly live in places like those, piled on top of each other in dingy soot stained buildings. 

This picture shows what folks would like to remember, but not what the reality was. Mom and I would go to Marshall Field's and Carson, Pirie, Scott to shop, but not venture much further than that. Just a block or so either way and the El would rumble overhead, the buses belched fumes and people would be hunched in doorways sleeping off an ill-spent night. Trash littered sidewalks and questionable sorts would catch you by the arm and ask for change.

Of course, some of that still exists in certain areas of Chicago, but not so much the Loop. That all changed during the second Daley's reign as "da Mayor." The Loop is a much cleaner and attractive place to be. The skyline exhilarating and the architecture magnificent. A summer afternoon spent on a boat tour of the Chicago River is a surprising and gorgeous experience now. Back then no one would have ventured it or would even have thought of it.