Art
Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute, on the eastern side of the Loop, provides reason
alone to visit Chicago. One of the world's premier galleries, the Art
Institute has found generous patronage among Chicago's wealthy. Their
contributions have funded a magnificent collection that spans 5000 years
of art. The bronze lions flanking the steps are Chicago icons.
Chicago Cultural Center
A few blocks north of the Art Institute is the Chicago Cultural Center,
which often sponsors free music concerts. Galleries, exhibitions, beautiful
interior design and a permanent museum all make the cultural center
an interesting place to roam. It includes the Museum of Broadcast Communications,
a fun nostalgic museum that takes you back to the simpler days before
digital broadcasting and multiple channels. The radio era is recalled
by local stars such as Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. Television
exhibits include clips of pioneering shows like 'Kukla, Fran and Ollie'
and 'The Honeymooners' and are supplemented by famous local events,
such as the first Kennedy-Nixon presidential election debate of 1960,
which took place at a Chicago television station.
Magnificent Mile
This grandly named stretch of Michigan Avenue runs from the Chicago
River north to Lincoln Park. 'Mag Mile,' as it's widely known, is a
shopper's paradise: you can find everything from the swankiest upscale
boutiques to chainstores. Its most famous landmark is the Tribune Tower,
a 1925 gothic masterpiece that's home to the Pulitzer-prize winning
Chicago Tribune. Eccentric owner Col Robert McCormick had his overworked
reporters send rocks from famous buildings and monuments around the
world and then embedded them around the base of the building. The Magnificent
Mile lies northeast of the Loop.
Navy Pier
From 1918 to 1930, the huge Navy Pier on Lake Michigan's shore was the
city's municipal wharf. Later, it became the first home of the University
of Illinois at Chicago. During the 1970s and 1980s, it was like a decaying
beached whale - smelly, difficult to dispose of and with no known use.
Some US$200 million later, it has been converted into a combination
amusement park, children's museum, meeting center, food court and source
of many weary feet. The results have proven to be a hit, with 7 million
people each year trekking out to the pier, which lies immediately east
of downtown.
Field Museum of Natural History
Mummies, native American artifacts, stuffed animals and dinosaurs are
part of the 20 million artifacts in the collections of the Field Museum
of Natural History. Highlights include an ambitious walk-through exhibit
that attempts to capture the scope of Africa by taking visitors from
bustling city streets to expansive Saharan sand dunes; a recreated multi-level
Egyptian burial chamber housing 23 mummies; and a Dinosaur Hall filled
with skeletons, some of which measure their age in the tens of millions
of years. The Field's most dramatic acquisition came in 1997, when it
paid US$8.4 million for a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton named Sue. Found
a few years earlier by a less-than-savvy rancher who sold it for US$5000,
it's the best-preserved skeleton of the fierce meat-eater yet found.
Shedd Aquarium
The world's largest assortment of finned, gilled, amphibious and other
aquatic creatures swim within the marble-clad confines of the Shedd
Aquarium. The original 1929 building houses 200 tanks. The attached
multilevel Oceanarium is a spectacular space where huge mammal pools
seem to blend into the lake outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. The
centrally located tank is home to 500 tropical fish from placid nurse
sharks to less neighborly moray eels. Also on hand are Beluga whales,
Pacific white-sided dolphins, harbor seals, sea otters and penguins.
Lincoln Park
Chicago's most popular neighborhood is alive day and night with people
in-line skating, walking dogs, pushing strollers and driving in circles
for hours looking for a place to park. It's also home to the Biograph
Theater, where gangster John Dillinger was gunned down by the FBI in
1934.
Thugs with guns have since made way for banana-packing primates. The
free Lincoln Park Zoo, founded in 1868, enjoys considerable community
support. Among the highlights are huge monitor lizards, Gal?pagos turtles,
naked mole rats, fruit bats and spiders. The zoo has been a world leader
in gorilla breeding, with more than three dozen born here since 1970.
If you're lucky, the chimpanzees will be drawing on poster board with
crayons. Some of their works have been shown in galleries.
Lincoln Park borders Lake Michigan northeast of the downtown Loop.
Wrigley Field
Seventh inning stretch and the crowd belts out a beer-soaked version
of 'Take me out to the Ballgame.' There's only one place in the world
you could be - Wrigley Field. Home to the Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field
draws tourists year round who pose under the classic neon sign over
the main entrance to the baseball shrine.
This ivy-covered stadium, one of the oldest in America, is described
by some as being as 'big as a pillbox'. It's an old fashioned ballpark,
where the scoreboard is still changed by hand and where fans fought
tooth and nail to prevent the stadium being kitted out with lights.
If you don't have tickets, or don't want to see the Cubbies lose (as
they're prone to do), stroll over to one of the streets next to the
stadium, chat with the guys who hang around all day waiting for a ball
to be hit out of the park or go sink a beer in one of the neighborhood
sports bar. Notice how the surrounding flats have adapted their roofs
with bleachers for watching games. Players take fans on tours of the
stadium several times during the season.Wrigley Field is north of Lincoln
Park. The El goes straight to the stadium, as do several bus lines.
Chicago Historical Society
The Lincolns, Capones, Daleys and other notables are here, but the focus
of this well-funded museum (located in the lower end of Lincoln Park,
south of the zoo) is on the average person. The role of the commoner
in the American Revolution sets the tone for the humanistic exhibits.
One, titled Fort Dearborn and Frontier Chicago, shows how settlers and
Indians changed each other's lives. The Pioneer Court gives hands-on
demonstrations in the intricacies of making candles, weaving blankets
and knitting clothes. None of the work was easy.
Much of the 2nd floor is devoted to Chicago's development and history.
The roles of immigration and industry are addressed, as are the problems
of slums and the lives of the rich. Special exhibitions are the museum's
strong point, covering such diverse topics as how bungalows allowed
almost every family to afford a home, and how WWII affected the average
family. |
