Chicago Travel
Grant Park
East of the Art Institute toward Lake Michigan, Grant Park provides a welcome but not entirely complete break from the downtown urban grid wide strips of high-speed road and railroad slice through it, so casual rambling can be frustrating. The northern half of the park centers on the immense Buckingham Fountain , which features daily light and water shows from dusk to 11pm. The whole two-hundred-acre swath is sprinkled with sculptures and monuments, from a moping Columbus to a proud Plains Indian on horseback. Nearly every weekend in summer sees a musical festival (be it gospel, blues, country, jazz or classical) held in the area around the Petrillo Music Shell, just behind the Art Institute. The Taste of Chicago in early July attracts more than two million people to a week-long feeding frenzy, garnished with concerts and other live entertainment ( www.tasteofchicago.com ).
The major attractions are gathered in the newly landscaped southern half of Grant Park, known as Museum Campus . The extensive and engaging Field Museum of Natural History , 1200 S Lake Shore Drive at Roosevelt Road (daily 9am5pm; $8, free Wed; www.fmnh.org ), is ten minutes' walk south of the Art Institute, in a huge marble-clad, Daniel Burnhamdesigned Greek temple. "Natural history" here includes anything non-white and non-European: the collection ranges from Egyptian tombs the entire burial chamber of the son of a Fifth Dynasty Pharaoh was brought here in 1908 to the man-eating lions of Tsavo. Folklorists in an earthen lodge in the Native American section tell myths and legends intended for young kids but not overly sentimental or simple-minded. Also kid-oriented is "Underground Adventure," a simulated environment that "shrinks" you to 1/100th your size, giving you an entirely new perspective on the soil.
Just across busy Lake Shore Drive, on the shores of Lake Michigan, the Shedd Aquarium (summer daily 9am6pm, rest of year MonFri 9am5pm, Sat & Sun 9am6pm; $15, $7 on Mon, when Aquarium section only is free; www.sheddnet.org ) proclaims itself the largest indoor aquarium in the world. The 1930s structure is rather old-fashioned, but the lighthearted and often tongue-in-cheek displays some use Far Side cartoons are informative and entertaining. The central exhibit, a 90,000-gallon re-creation of a coral reef complete with sharks (who get fed at 11am and 2pm daily), turtles and thousands of tropical fish, is surrounded by more than a hundred lesser tanks. Highlights include the sluggish and comical South American freckled sideneck turtles, housed across from a 4ft, 250lb alligator snapping turtle, who trundles to the surface to breathe every half-hour. The Oceanarium provides an enormous contrast, with its modern lake-view home for marine mammals such as Pacific dolphins and beluga whales. Designed to replicate a rocky Alaskan coastline, it's a carefully disguised amphitheater for such demonstrations of the animals' "natural behavior" as jumping out of the water and fetching plastic rings. Performances are four times daily and you need a ticket. At other times watch from underwater galleries as the animals cruise around the tank, and listen to the clicks, beeps and whistles they use to communicate with each other. Get to the Shedd early to beat the long lines and school groups.
In summer, Shoreline Marine Sightseeing ($9; tel 312/222-9328, www.shorelinesightseeing.com ) runs hour-long cruises along the lakeshore from a jetty just north of the Aquarium. Nearby, the expanded and renovated Adler Planetarium (daily 9am4:30pm, 1st Fri of month 9:30am10pm; $1015 determined by exhibits entered, free Tues; www.adlerplanetarium.org ) has added an interactive 360-degree movie theater; and offers one of the best views of the city skyline. The small Meigs Field Airport is just to the south, so don't be surprised if low-flying planes seem about to crash into the lake.
Chicago River
The Loop is usually said to end at the "El" tracks, but the blocks beyond this core, to either side of the Chicago River, hold plenty of interest. Broad, double-decked Wacker Drive , parallel to the water, was designed as a sophisticated promenade, lined by benches and obelisk-shaped lanterns, by Daniel Burnham in 1909. It was never completed but, despite the almost constant intrusion of construction works, it makes for a nice extended walk. The river itself had its direction reversed c.1900, in an engineering project more extensive than the digging of the Panama Canal. As a result, rather than letting its sewage and industrial waste flow east into Lake Michigan, Chicago now sends it all south into the Corn Belt.
A boat tour from beneath the Michigan Avenue Bridge gives magnificent views of downtown and a good insight into the city's history. However, half an hour's walk, especially at lunchtime when the office workers are out in force, will do the trick. Burnham's promenade runs along both sides of the river, crossing back and forth over the twenty-odd drawbridges that open and close to let barges and an occasional sailboat pass. The State Street Bridge is a superb vantage point. On the south bank, at 35 E Wacker Drive, the elegant Beaux Arts Jewelers Building was built in 1926 and is capped on the seventeenth floor by a domed rotunda that once housed Al Capone's favorite speakeasy. Across the river stands what's commonly considered the masterpiece of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe the 1971 IBM Building at 330 N Wabash Ave. The gentle play of light and shadow across the detailed bronze and smoked-glass facade has been the model for countless other less considered copies worldwide. The building is so huge that it acts as a funnel for winter winds off Lake Michigan, and heavy ropes sometimes must be tied across the broad plaza at its base to protect people from getting blown away.
Perhaps Chicago's most successful and acclaimed building of recent years stands four blocks west at 333 W Wacker Drive . Towering over a broad bend in the river, and bowed to follow its curve, the green glass facade reflects the almost fluorescent green of the river (recently upgraded from "toxic" to merely "polluted"). On the lower floors, a more classically detailed stone base actively addresses its stalwart elder neighbors.
Farther west, the huge Merchandise Mart , a hulking retail building hugging the river, was the world's largest building when it opened in 1931. Shrewd business tycoon Joseph P. Kennedy snapped up the structure after the war just by paying its back taxes.
Chicago
CHICAGO is in many ways the nation's last great city. Sarah Bernhardt called it "the pulse of America" and, though long eclipsed by Los Angeles as the nation's second most populous city after New York, Chicago really does have it all, with less of the hassle and infrastructural problems of its coastal rivals.
Founded in the early 1800s, Chicago grew up with the country, serving as the main connection between the established east coast cities and the wide open Wild West frontier. This position on the sharp edge between civilization and wilderness made the city into a crucible of innovation. Many aspects of modern life, from skyscrapers to suburbia, had their start, and perhaps their finest expression, here on the shores of Lake Michigan.
Despite burning to the ground in the legendary fire of 1871, Chicago boomed thereafter, doubling in population every decade and reaching two million around 1900, swollen by Irish and eastern European immigrants (Chicago still has the largest Polish population in the world outside Warsaw). In the early years of the twentieth century, it cemented a reputation as a place of apparently limitless opportunity, with jobs aplenty for those willing to work. : from 1900 to 1920 African Americans poured in, with more than 75,000 arriving during the war years of 1916-18 alone. Long hours, poor pay and squalid working conditions were the catalysts that made Chicago the cradle of American trade unions . By around 1900 most workers were organized under the American Federation of Labor, and the 1894 Pullman strike saw workers unite for almost the first time in the US. As hostilities intensified, the city's workers became the driving force behind the left-wing "Wobblies." Chicago has also long been an important center for black organization both the Reverend Jesse Jackson's Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) and the more militant Nation of Islam , founded by Elijah Mohammed in the 1940s, have their national headquarters on the city's South Side.
During the Roaring Twenties, Chicago's self-image as a no-holds-barred free market was pushed to the limit by a new breed of entrepreneur. Criminal syndicates, ruthlessly and brazenly run by the likes of gangsters like Al Capone and Bugsy Moran, took advantage of Prohibition to sell bootleg alcohol. Shootouts in the street between sharp-suited, Tommy-gun-wielding mobsters were not as common as legend would have it, but the backroom dealing and iron-handed control they pioneered was later perfected by politicians such as former mayor Richard Daley father of the present mayor who ran Chicago single-handedly from the 1950s until his death in 1976. His brutal handling of antiwar demonstrators at the 1968 Democratic convention remains notorious. These days, the tourist authorities play down the mobster era; few traces of the hoodlum years exist, and those that do owe more to Hollywood than contemporary Chicago.
Today, Chicago's towering skyline the city has one of the world's best collections of modern architecture , from Frank Lloyd Wright houses to the 110-story Sears Tower dominates the pancake-flat prairies for hundreds of miles around. Chicago's status as the cultural and financial heart of middle America is beyond question. The Loop downtown holds the head offices of many major US companies and some of the nation's most important commodity markets , which together handle the buying and selling of one-third of the world's agricultural and industrial products.
For visitors, Chicago offers the Art Institute of Chicago and a wide range of excellent museums (many of which have one day of free admission per week), restaurants, sports and highbrow cultural activities. However, its strongest suit is live music , with a phenomenal array of jazz and blues clubs packed into the back rooms of its amiable bars and cafs. The rock scene is also one of the healthiest in the country with a prolific number of bands having come out of the city in the 1990s, including Smashing Pumpkins, Material Issue, Veruca Salt and Wilco. And almost everything is noticeably less expensive than in other US cities eating out , for example, costs much less than in New York or LA, but is every bit as good. Though locals might deny it, the city has a surprisingly low-key and generally welcoming population Chicagoans on the whole are proud of their city and usually keen to point out its best features. Two great ways to get a real feel for the city are to head out to ivy-covered Wrigley Field on a sunny summer afternoon to catch baseball's Cubs in action, or take a cruise boat under the bridges of the Chicago River at sunset.