Saturday & Sunday: Open House Chicago 2013 gives you access to 150 ofChicago's greatest Places and Spaces

Saturday Update: 

photograph: Lynn Becker

11:00 a.m., Saturday, October 19th, Architect John Ronan will join Carl Giegold of Threshold Acoustics at the Poetry Foundation, 61 West Superior, to discuss their design of the foundation's new building.  More special events here.

click images for larger view.  all images courtesy Chicago Architecture Foundation

Put on your running shoes and fill out our dayplan.  Open House Chicago is back for 2013.  This Saturday and Sunday, October 19th and 20th, this annual Chicago Architecture Foundation event gives you rare access to some of the greatest interiors in the city, at 150 locations from Rogers Park to South Shore and Pullman, to Garfield Park and North Lawndale, and all points in between.   The full guide ran in yesterday's Trib.  You can also download it here:

Perkins+Will offices

If you're an architecture buff, you not only get to see all the great places, but many of the places they were created.  Almost a third of the downtown locations are offices of leading Chicago architects, structural engineers and designers, including Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill architecture, ARUP, Gensler, Clayco and Forum Studio, Goettsch Partners, HOK,  Holabird and Root,IA Interior Architects,  Jahn,  JGMA, Nelson, Nagle Hartray Architecture, Perkins+Will, RTKL, SOM, Thorton Tomasetti, VOA Associates, and Wright Heerema Architects. 

St. James Chapel at Archbishop Quigley Center

You also have the chance to get inside many of the city's great places of worship, from Holy Name Cathedral, to Holy Cross Immaculate Heart of Mary, Our Lady of Sorrows, Loop Synagogue, St. James Chapel at the former Quigley Preparatory Seminary, the Mosque Maryam, Fourth Presbyterian, St. Thompas the Apostle, St. John Cantius, Midwest Buddhist Temple St. Paul's in Pilsen, and more, including Burnham and Root's former Immanuel Presbyterian Church, now the Lin Shen Ching Tze Temple.

Ling Shen Ching Tze Temple (photograph:  Lynn Becker)

More?  How about the ornate lobby of the Civic Opera House, the Spertus Institute, the John Vinci/Mies van der Rohe Arts Club, John Ronan's Poetry Foundation, Henry Ives Cobb's Newberry Library, Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie and Emil Bach Houses.  Get inside Helmut Jahn's Campus Chiller Plant, the Brewster Apartments, the Elks National Memorial, Thalia Hall, and the Chelsea Hotel.

University of Chicago, South Campus Chiller Plant

You like a good beverage?  There's City Winery and the Goose Island Beer Company.  Ever wonder what goes on at those big concrete silos at Halsted and the River?  Check out the Prairie Material Concrete Production Facility.

Prairie Material Concrete Production Facility

We could go on, but there's only so much my laundry lists can convey.  To get the full picture - complete with great photographs of all of the 150+ sites - check out the official Open House Chicago website.  While the overall festival runs 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, be sure to check out the sites you really what to see.  Some has special hours.  Others are open only one of the two days.

original Sears Tower