A vacant city block since 1989, after Mayor Richard M. Daley approved its demolition to erect a multi-use skyscraper with retail, hotel, office, and residential spaces, Chicago's Block 37, as it has come to be known, is finally on the verge of healing the wound that the demolition wrought (many developers backed out due to insufficient funding). The most recent scheme, by Chicago firm Solomon Cordwell Buenz (SCB), cannot bring back the character of the block previous to demolition, which included the landmarked McCarthy Building and, ironically, two theaters in an area now referred to as Chicago's Theater District, though the design admirably attempts to find a balance between the city's rampant historicism and Modernist history, within a program that values money over neither of these ideals. Aside from the design's stylistic values the most interesting questions arise from the design's response to its surroundings in scale and location of program elements. Block 37.........................Chicago, Illinois