Try explaining what a skyscraper looks like to someone who is blind

The Chase Bank building (where “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” is taped, has slanted columns.

A skyscraper tour for the blind. Isn’t that an oxymoron?

In the past, I’ve been ambivalent about special attempts to make visual things more accessible to those of us who can’t see them. I credit the institutions for trying. I really do. And some special accommodations — like the advance tours before plays — have truly enriched my experience. But I couldn’t imagine how the Chicago Architecture Foundation was going to pull off their special walking Must-Hear 25th anniversary tour highlighting, of all things…skyscrapers.

Sighted people have to step back and look up to take in a skyscraper, don’t they? People who are blind might be able to feel the building on the first floor, but I doubted whether people who are blind or have visual impairments could get any perspective, ahem, of a skyscraper without being able to see it.

The sense of touch is nothing like the sense of sight. Touch is too particular. A fingertip can’t possibly take in the grandeur of, say, a 90-story tower.

But, aha! The Chicago Architecture Foundation docents had thought this through. One hearty CAF volunteer pulled a wagon full of substantial building models behind her on the tour. She’d pull the appropriate one out for us to feel as a fellow docent described the building we were standing in front of, and we used other parts of our bodies, not just our fingertips, to explore the buildings themselves:

• The Monadnock building on the corner of Dearborn and Jackson is the tallest load-bearing masonry structure in the world, and we were encouraged to stretch our arms into the windowsills to get a sense of just how thick the load-bearing walls have to be to hold the building up.
• The Marquette Building at Dearborn and Adams was built in 1895, just years after the Monadnock. We used the palms of our hands to feel the cool terra cotta on the exterior, and our docent explained that terra cotta is fireproof. “It was very popular in buildings that went up shortly after the great Chicago fire.”
• A docent described the mosaics on the ceiling in the Marquette Building’s lobby and encouraged each of us to spread our arms and hug one of the Ionic columns at the entrance to get a sense of the grandeur.
• At Federal Plaza, one of the docents suggested we use our foot to trace the border of the blocks at our feet and explained that the entire complex is based on a 28-foot grid pattern using blocks that size. ”The seams of the granite pavers in the plaza extend into the lobbies and up the sides of the Kluczynski Federal Building.”
• At Chase Tower, we leaned back to get a sense of the way the building slants.

So maybe people who are blind can’t get the entire picture of what a skyscraper looks like, but thanks to the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s Must-Hear tour I know a lot more about the history of some of these skyscrapers and why certain materials were used to build them. I often pass by these buildings and plazas on walks with my Seeing Eye dog Whitney, and gee, I may stop in at the Marquette lobby every once in a while to give my ionic column a hug.