5/21/09 UPDATE: I've updated the article with some information provided by our tour guide, Anthony Rubano. Additions are in blue. Other additions have been added in the picture captions. Thanks Anthony!
If you've lived in Springfield for any amount of time, you've surely come to find yourself wanting something to do, but don't have any idea as to what it could be. You end up blaming Springfield for being sleepy and boring?I won't argue against that too much, but, there actually is stuff going on around town. You just need to look for it. Full disclosure: I wouldn't have known about it had it not been for the gf. 
Case in point: On Wednesday, I found myself looking at downtown Springfield in a whole new way. I attended 2009's first Springfield Pied Piper Architectural Walking Tour.
The Pied Piper tour is a free event sponsored by Downtown Springfield and hosted by Anthony Rubano of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency. It's a walking tour that meets in front of the Lincoln-Herndon Law Offices at the Old State Capitol plaza several times between May and October. I got there just a little before 5:30 p.m. and was joined by about 30 other attendees. The purpose of the tour is to reveal some of the interesting history and little-known facts about the architecture downtown. This tour took us down 5th Street, heading south from the Old State Capitol. Each tour will explore different areas of downtown.
Mr. Rubano pointed out all kinds of facts and other things you wouldn't otherwise think of while driving through. All the information was great and even entertaining. There was too much info for me to soak up while snapping pictures, so I'm going to try and contact Mr. Rubano for some more details.
The first topic of the tour was the Old State Capitol plaza itself. We were told about how projects like these sprung up all over the country in the 1970s as part of downtown revitalization projects?and how most of them were terrible failures. Most of the pedestrian malls were terrible failures because they were done in isolation from any other holistic urban improvements. Victor Gruen, the "inventor" of the pedestrian mall, envisioned them as but one tool to downtown revitalization. He was disappointed that municipalities were installing pedestrian malls while still allowing unchecked growth on the town's peripheries. No downtown could compete when strip and edge developments were allowed and often encouraged. Our next stop was the tall US Bank building on the corner of Fifth and Adams streets. We continued to head down Fifth, talking about Floyd's Thirst Parlor (the mutual agreement was it must have been Floyd's Shoe Store at some point in time ? but it actually was a women's clothing store), Bentoh's, Bridge Jewlery & Gifts, Gallina's Pizza, Ridgely-Farmer's State Bank, Security Bank (designed by the Bank Building and Equipment Corporation of St. Louis, ca. 1960), First United Methodist Church, the Illinois Municipal League building, Jackson Street (the oldest real brick road in Springfield the only real brick street left in downtown), the INB Building on East Jackson, the Illinois Association of Realtor's building (by Dave Leonatti of the Springfield firm of Melotte Morse Leonatti Parker, ca. 2007), the Vachel Lindsay Home, the AT&T building on East Cook Street, the drive-under US Bank on East Cook Street, and, finally the Widow at Windsor antique store. See the pictures below for more information.
The tour lasted about an hour and a half and was well worth the walk (the weather was excellent that day). Some of the interesting facts I can remember were the contrasts between the two banks on Monroe street. The Ridgely-Farmer's bank was built pre-Depression with a "we're strong and can protect your money" idea in mind, whereas the Security Bank was built in a post-Depression modern style (remodeled since then) as in "looking to the future." The Cook Street US Bank's unique design came from having a limited amount of space in which to put a drive-through facility. It was designed by Ferry and Henderson, ca. 1975. The concept was based on a building Wally Henderson saw at HemisFair '68, a world's fair held in San Antonio. The AT&T building ended up being one of my favorites. Its architecture differs quite a bit from the other windowless AT&T buildings you'll see throughout Springfield and other towns. It was designed in 1938 by renowned Chicago architecture firm Holabird and Root and is an example of Modernism that comes from a very stripped down classicism, rather than the European (Bauhaus) idea of Modernism. The tour ended at Widow at Windsor, where we were each served a glass of wine.
Even though you missed this tour, you can check out the rest on the first Wednesday of each month through October. I highly recommend it!