Free Walking Sightseeing Tour #11 in Chicago, United States
Legend
Guided Free Walking Tours
Book free guided walking tours in Chicago.
Guided Sightseeing Tours
Book guided sightseeing tours and activities in Chicago.
Tour Facts
10.5 km
162 m
Explore Chicago in United States with this free self-guided walking tour. The map shows the route of the tour. Below is a list of attractions, including their details.
Individual Sights in ChicagoSight 1: Chinese American Museum of Chicago
The Chinese American Museum of Chicago (CAMOC) seeks to advance the appreciation of Chinese American culture through exhibitions, education, and research and to preserve the past, present, and future of Chinese Americans primarily in the American Midwest. The museum opened in 2005 in Chicago's Chinatown neighborhood. Although it suffered a damaging fire in 2008, it reopened its renovated quarters, the Raymond B. & Jean T. Lee Center, in 2010. CAMOC is governed by the Board of Directors of the Chinatown Museum Foundation (CMF), a 501(C)(3) non-profit corporation located in Chicago, Illinois.
Sight 2: Leonard M. Louie
Ping Tom Memorial Park is a 17.24-acre (6.98 ha) public urban park in Chicago's Chinatown neighborhood, in South Side, Chicago. It is part of the Chicago Park District (CPD).
Sight 3: Second Presbyterian Church
Second Presbyterian Church is a landmark Gothic Revival church located on South Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, United States. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, some of Chicago's most prominent families attended this church. It is renowned for its interior, completely redone in the Arts and Crafts style after a disastrous fire in 1900. The sanctuary is one of America's best examples of an unaltered Arts and Crafts church interior, fully embodying that movement's principles of simplicity, hand craftsmanship, and unity of design. It also boasts nine imposing Tiffany windows. The church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974 and later designated a Chicago Landmark on September 28, 1977. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in March 2013.
Sight 4: Chess Studio
Chess Records was an American record company established in 1950 in Chicago, specializing in blues and rhythm and blues. It was the successor to Aristocrat Records, founded in 1947. It expanded into soul music, gospel music, early rock and roll, and jazz and comedy recordings, released on the Chess and its subsidiary labels Checker and Argo/Cadet. The Chess catalogue is owned by Universal Music Group and managed by Geffen Records and Universal Music Enterprises.
Sight 5: Henry B. Clarke House
The Henry B. and Caroline Clarke/Bishop Louis Henry and Margaret Ford House or Clarke-Ford House is a Greek Revival style home, now serving as a house museum in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Built around 1836, it is considered the oldest existing house built in Chicago. Henry Brown Clarke was a native of New York State who had come to Chicago in 1833 with his wife, Caroline Palmer Clarke, and his family. He was in the hardware business with William Jones and Byram King, establishing King, Jones and Company, and provided building materials to the growing Chicago populace. The house was built by a local contractor, probably John Rye, who later married the Clarkes' housemaid, Betsy.
Sight 6: St. Luke's Hospital
St. Luke's Hospital, in Chicago, Illinois, is a former hospital. Its set of Gothic Revival style buildings, the St. Luke's Hospital Complex, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.
Sight 7: Soka Gakkai International Buddhist Center
Soka Gakkai International (SGI) is an international Nichiren Buddhist organisation founded in 1975 by Daisaku Ikeda, as an umbrella organization of Soka Gakkai, which claims approximately 12 million adherents in 192 countries and territories as of 2017, more than 1.5 million of whom resided outside of Japan as of 2012. It characterizes itself as a support network for practitioners of Nichiren Buddhism and a global Buddhist movement for "peace, education, and cultural exchange."
Sight 8: Coca-Cola Building
The Coca-Cola Building is a building located at 1322–1336 S. Wabash Ave. in the Near South Side community area of Chicago, Illinois, which once served as the Chicago headquarters of The Coca-Cola Company. The building was designed by Frank Abbott in the Commercial style and built from 1903 to 1904. When it opened, the building was eight stories high; two additional stories were added in 1913. The building features limestone with iron ornaments on its first two stories; a cornice with a terra cotta fretwork pattern at the top separates the second and third floors. The top of the building features a terra cotta frieze and a cornice with decorative patterns. The Coca-Cola Company operated out of the building from 1904 until 1928; the building was the company's second office outside of Atlanta. The building was the only Coca-Cola syrup manufacturing plant in the Midwest until 1915; it is now the only surviving Coca-Cola plant from before World War II outside of Atlanta.
Sight 9: Hotel Roosevelt
The Somerset Hotel is a historic hotel building located at 1152-1154 S. Wabash Ave. in downtown Chicago, Illinois. Built in 1892–93, the hotel was originally owned by physician Frank Stringfield. Architect Jules De Horvath designed the hotel in the Romanesque Revival style. De Horvath's design bore similarities to many other Chicago buildings, most notably the 1888 Virginia Hotel at Ohio and Rush Streets. The Somerset Hotel was a significant part of a hotel and commercial district which formed between the 12th Street station on the South Side Elevated Railroad and Central Station. The hotel changed its name to the Mayer Hotel in 1910; in the 1920s, it again changed its name to the Hotel Roosevelt, which it was called until the 1990s.
Sight 10: Field Museum
The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educational and scientific programs, and its extensive scientific specimen and artifact collections. The permanent exhibitions, which attract up to 2 million visitors annually, include fossils, current cultures from around the world, and interactive programming demonstrating today's urgent conservation needs. The museum is named in honor of its first major benefactor, Marshall Field, the department-store magnate. The museum and its collections originated from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and the artifacts displayed at the fair.
Sight 11: Gold Star Families Park
Gold Star Families Memorial and Park is located east of Soldier Field in Chicago, in the U.S. state of Illinois. The memorial is maintained by the Chicago Police Department Honor Guard and is intended to honor 585 CPD officers who died in the line of duty. The memorial was dedicated in 2006 by the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation.
Sight 12: Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island
Huntington Bank Pavilion at Northerly Island is an outdoor amphitheater located on the human-made peninsula Northerly Island, in Chicago, Illinois. The venue is a temporary structure, with the summer concert season running from May or June until September or October. The amphitheater opened in June 2005. It was previously named the FirstMerit Bank Pavilion, and before that the Charter One Pavilion.
Sight 13: Man Enters The Cosmos
Man Enters the Cosmos is a cast bronze sculpture by Henry Moore located on the Lake Michigan lakefront outside the Adler Planetarium in the Museum Campus area of downtown Chicago, Illinois.
Sight 14: Nicolaus Copernicus Monument
The Nicolaus Copernicus Monument is an outdoor sculpture commemorating and depicting Nicolaus Copernicus, installed along Solidarity Drive outside Chicago's Adler Planetarium, in the U.S. state of Illinois. Bronislaw Koniuszy's replica of Bertel Thorvaldsen's original 1830 sculpture in Warsaw, Poland, was created, installed, and dedicated in 1973. Adler Planetarium erected the monument to mark the 500th anniversary of Copernicus' birth.
Sight 15: Karel Havlíček Monument
The Karel Havlíček Monument is an outdoor monument and sculpture by Joseph Strachovsky commemorating Karel Havlíček Borovský, installed in the median of East Solidarity Drive, in Chicago's Northerly Island, in the U.S. state of Illinois. The statue was created in 1911 and installed in 1983.
Sight 16: Shedd Aquarium
Shedd Aquarium is an indoor public aquarium in Chicago. Opened on May 30, 1930, the 5 million US gal aquarium holds about 32,000 animals and is the third largest aquarium in the Western Hemisphere, after the Georgia Aquarium and Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Sight 17: Man with Fish
Man with Fish is an outdoor fountain and sculpture by German artist Stephan Balkenhol, installed outside Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, in the U.S. state of Illinois. It is made from bronze that was then painted, and is 16 feet tall.
Sight 18: Olmec Head
The Olmec colossal heads are stone representations of human heads sculpted from large basalt boulders. They range in height from 1.17 to 3.4 metres. The heads date from at least 900 BC and are a distinctive feature of the Olmec civilization of ancient Mesoamerica. All portray mature individuals with fleshy cheeks, flat noses, and slightly-crossed eyes; their physical characteristics correspond to a type that is still common among the inhabitants of Tabasco and Veracruz. The backs of the monuments often are flat. The boulders were brought from the Sierra de Los Tuxtlas mountains of Veracruz. Given that the extremely large slabs of stone used in their production were transported over large distances, requiring a great deal of human effort and resources, it is thought that the monuments represent portraits of powerful individual Olmec rulers. Each of the known examples has a distinctive headdress. The heads were variously arranged in lines or groups at major Olmec centres, but the method and logistics used to transport the stone to these sites remain unclear. They all display distinctive headgear and one theory is that these were worn as protective helmets, maybe worn for war or to take part in a ceremonial Mesoamerican ballgame.
Sight 19: Grant Park
Grant Park is a large urban park in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. Located within the city's central business district, the 319-acre (1.29 km2) park's features include Millennium Park, Buckingham Fountain, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Museum Campus.
Share
Disclaimer Please be aware of your surroundings and do not enter private property. We are not liable for any damages that occur during the tours.
GPX-Download For navigation apps and GPS devices you can download the tour as a GPX file.