Architecture critic chooses Givins Castle as one of his top 10 picks for Open House Chicago

”The underlying theme of my top 10 picks for this year’s Open House Chicago is superlatives: the world’s tallest church building, the former world’s largest post office, and the original Sears Tower, from which radio station WLS (the letters stand for “World’s Largest Store”) once broadcast.

Organized by the nonprofit Chicago Architecture Center and held annually since 2011, the event offers free access on Oct. 19-20 to an astonishing array of buildings — more than 350 — in Chicago and its suburbs. The center estimated that about 100,000 people attended last year’s event.

Blair KaminBlair Kamin has been the Chicago Tribune's architecture critic since 1992. A graduate of Amherst College and the Yale School of Architecture, he was a fellow at Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism. Kamin lectures widely and appears on television and radio. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.