I’ve always enjoyed the holiday season on the Shimer campus. The trees that line the length of State Street are completely bare now and reveal the low profile and open spaces of an architecture that seems designed for winter. Did you know that Mies van der Rohe called his steel-and-glass masterpiece, Crown Hall, the perfect embodiment of a “universal” space? He was talking about a space that is flexible, open to associations, capable of continual change. It’s fitting, I think, that Shimer, where all that happens every day, is right next to it.

If you haven’t seen Shimer in Chicago yet, we all invite you to come. The city is beautiful this time of year and, after the holidays, the Open Lounge will once again be a bustle of activity until dark as everyone delays the inevitable plunge into the frigid tundra to go home.

Come to think of it, if you’d rather wait until spring, we won’t hold it against you.

With fondest Season’s Greetings from
3424 South State Street,
 

Ed Noonan
President