Adler Planetarium
1300 S DuSable Lake Shore Dr, Chicago, IL 60605
The Adler Planetarium was the first planetarium in the Western Hemisphere when it opened in 1930, and its location on the tip of a peninsula jutting into Lake Michigan gives it the best skyline view in Chicago — a fact that the architects clearly knew, because the building is positioned so that the city rises directly behind you as you enter.
Field Museum of Natural History
1400 S DuSable Lake Shore Dr, Chicago, IL 60605
The Field Museum is home to SUE — the largest, most complete, and best-preserved Tyrannosaurus rex ever discovered — and 40 million other artifacts spanning 4.
Frank Lloyd Wright's Robie House
5757 S Woodlawn Ave, Chicago, IL 60637
The Robie House is Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpiece — a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the building that defined the Prairie School of architecture with such authority that it's been called one of the ten most significant structures of the 20th century.
Marina City
300 N State St, River North, Chicago, 60654, United States
Marina City's twin cylindrical towers — universally known as the 'corn cobs' — are the buildings that made Chicago's riverfront into a postcard.
Museum of Science and Industry
5700 S DuSable Lake Shore Dr, Chicago, IL 60637
The Museum of Science and Industry is the largest science museum in the Western Hemisphere, housed in the only surviving building from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition — the Palace of Fine Arts, a Beaux-Arts behemoth that was rebuilt in permanent materials after the original plaster-and-staff structure began to crumble.
Old Water Tower
806 N Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
The Old Water Tower is the building that refused to burn.
Pullman National Historical Park
11141 S Cottage Grove Ave, Pullman, Chicago, 60628, United States
Pullman is a planned industrial town built in the 1880s by railroad sleeping car magnate George Pullman, who believed that providing workers with clean housing, parks, a library, and a theatre would make them more productive and less inclined to unionise.
The Rookery
209 S LaSalle St, Chicago, IL 60604
The Rookery is a building that contains two of the greatest achievements in Chicago architecture — and most people who work in it don't know about either.
Tribune Tower
435 N Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
Tribune Tower is a Gothic skyscraper with a secret that most visitors walk past without noticing — embedded in the limestone walls at street level are 149 fragments of famous buildings and landmarks from around the world, collected by Chicago Tribune correspondents over decades: pieces of the Parthenon, the Great Wall of China, Notre-Dame de Paris, the Taj Mahal, the Berlin Wall, the Great Pyramid, Westminster Abbey, and Fort Sumter, among others.
Wrigley Building
400-410 N Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
The Wrigley Building is Chicago's white knight — a gleaming terra-cotta twin tower complex that anchors the Magnificent Mile at the Michigan Avenue Bridge and looks like someone dropped a Seville cathedral bell tower into the middle of a business district.
Explore history in Chicago
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