Chicago River Travel Guide

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.