Malvika Jolly

With its collection of musicians, murals, theaters, artists’ studios, violin-makers, corsetieres; with its open-air courtyard that appears sudden as a breeze from the hollow of the fourth floor; with its streams of children hurrying to and from lessons—with all this strung together via a vintage elevator with operator, the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue is one of the best places in the city to peer into windows in order to catch glimpses of the curious lives within. It’s the kind of place that seems, at times, to contain every imaginable thing or person you could ever wish to meet. But its most tempting window—the eye of the Fine Arts Building—belongs to the second-floor storefront, which was, until recently, home to the Selected Works Used Books and Sheet Music bookstore.