A 160-page signed, hardcover book by William Swislow and Aron Packer
Chicago is home to what might be the world’s greatest urban concentration of outdoor stone carvings. Few know it exists, and much of it has been destroyed in the last 20 years. But if you look down at the right time, you can see thousands of carvings cut into the giant limestone blocks that still survive along some of the city’s lakefront.
Chicago’s lakefront carvings and paintings represent an important, beautiful, collective work of art. They resonate some with petroglyphs more typically associated with antiquity or back-country settings. But as urban petroglyphs they are unique. Stone carvings do pop up elsewhere, along the seaside in Barcelona, Spain, for example. But not in a profusion like Chicago’s thousands of sculptures.
For Chicago these carvings are as prodigious a cultural legacy as any of the city’s many assets. Perhaps someday more than just a few aficionados will recognize them.
