Chicago’s windowless buildings

Tom Koehl grew up in the Chicago suburbs, but during his years in New York, he began to notice its telephone exchange buildings, also known as “switch hotels.” When he moved back to Chicago, he couldn’t help but spot windowless buildings everywhere in the Loop. It was the EnWave building at State & Adams that inspired his question for Curious City.

Such buildings, it turns out, are known as infrastructure buildings. Their mysterious exteriors house one kind of utility or another: electricity, heat, phone services...even air conditioning. But whether their facades feature simple grooved concrete or dynamic Art Deco imagery, infrastructure buildings are fascinating.