Big-shouldered towers lined up along a flat horizon.
Chicago reads as a lakefront wall of big-shouldered boxes. Willis Tower is the giveaway: a bundled tube that steps back in chunks and wears a pair of tall antennas. John Hancock Center is the other dark column, a slightly tapered slab with two long television masts. Unlike New York, the profile is less a race of competing spires and more a row of heavy rectangles of similar bulk. The skyline sits low to a flat horizon with little mountain or water-arch drama. If you see two antenna-topped giants in a grid of mid-century towers, think Chicago before you think Seattle or Los Angeles.