The sign looks much the same today, all spruced up with more color.

The shows are a little different. 1927’s “A Kiss in a Taxi” is gone, replaced by a racier, less-expensive version, “A Hookup in an Uber.”

Still the heart of Chicago’s Loop, this picture at State and Monroe was taken in 1893.

The buildings are still low because elevators and steel frames were just beginning to replace walk-ups with load-bearing walls. People don’t want to walk up six or seven flights of stairs.

Personal note: My own home in Hyde Park, near the University of Chicago, was completed one year earlier by architects Holabird and Roche, who designed some of the best of these new skyscrapers.

My thanks to Jeff Nichols who shared this wonderful photograph.