Lost City: Chicago Edition: Carson Pirie Scott Building Still Empty

The Carson Pirie Scott Building on State Street, one of the greatest achievement of architect Louis Sullivan, and a one-time commercial anchor of downtown Chicago, remains vacant and empty, three years after the department store chain abandoned its flagship home. 

I was in Chicago recently, and decided to check out the downtown for the first time since it was gutted of all soul by the swift departures of Marshall Field's, Berghoff's, and Carson Pirie Scott. Field's is now a Macy's and some Chicagoans I spoke to are still angry about it. But at least the grand building is open for business. The Scott structure, just two blocks to the south, is a sad ghost of itself, the breathtakingly ornate cast iron frontage put to no use. 

Supposedly a Target may inhabit the space. Is that better or worse than it's remaining empty? Isn't it awful that the only businesses today that can use a grand space such as this are the soulless, big-box chains the blight our landscape?