Chicago's Fine Arts Building : Music, Magic, and Murder

Let Keir Graff take you inside Chicago's Fine Arts Building - a building that hides worlds behind its doors.Exploring the Fine Arts Building’s warren of hallways is like stepping into a time machine.It’s not a museum-it’s a place of work. The walls reverberate with timeless music. Sopranos soar up to the high notes as violin bows draw tunes from strings.Someone plays a piano so busily they must have twelve fingers.Dancers’ feet thud against wooden floors. A tuba burps out “Ride of the Valkyries” as the doors of the manually operated elevators provide percussive slams. And more quietly, behind closed doors, painters paint, writers write, and luthiers shave soft ribbons from billets of spruce. In Chicago's Fine Arts Building, celebrated writer and Fine Arts Building tenant Keir Graff takes readers behind the scenes of this cultural hub.Initially conceived as a space for artists' studios, a home for the city's working artists, the building was an immediate success, but the Great Depressio