The Magnificent Mile: A Warehouse Street That Became America's Boulevard in Fifteen Years

Best Time to Visit

Weekday mornings from about nine to eleven, before the shopping crowds thicken on Michigan Avenue. Late afternoon in spring and fall when the low light reaches the white terra cotta of the Wrigley and the Joliet limestone of the Water Tower. Summer evenings are pleasant but the corridor is its busiest then. The Water Tower's interior gallery, the City Gallery in the Historic Water Tower, is free and open most days; check the City of Chicago's posted hours. The Drake Hotel's lobby and Palm Court are open daily. The Wrigley Building lobby is accessible during business hours, weekdays. Tribune Tower converted to residential in two thousand and eighteen, so the lobby is no longer open to the public; the embedded fragments at street level are visible at any hour. Avoid the Magnificent Mile during the Thanksgiving lights festival weekend in late November unless you specifically want the crowd; the corridor is closed to traffic and packed.

Pro Tips

• •Start at the south plaza of the bridge for the cleanest sight line on the Wrigley Building's clock tower. The terra cotta is most striking with the river behind it and the sky to the north. Cross on the upper deck, not the lower level, so you reach the Wrigley plaza at street level.
• •The Tribune Tower fragments are the most accessible interactive element on the tour. Walk slowly along the south and east elevations at street level; most fragments are labelled with the source. The Westminster Abbey, Bunker Hill, and Forbidden City stones are among the most-visited.
• •Stop four anchors on the Water Tower's south face in Jane M. Byrne Plaza. If the City Gallery interior is open, step in (free) for a small contemporary photography exhibition; the gallery rotates. The matching Pumping Station across Michigan Avenue is still operating, so you cannot enter, but you can read the same Joliet limestone from the sidewalk.
• •Stop six (the John Hancock) anchors on the Chestnut Street sidewalk where the exterior X-bracing reads at eye level. If you want the observation deck view, three sixty Chicago on the ninety-fourth floor charges admission and is open day and evening; the lobby is free.
• •The Drake Hotel's Palm Court is the corridor's classic afternoon-tea room; service runs most afternoons, reservations recommended. The Coq d'Or bar on the lower lobby level has been continuously operating since nineteen thirty-three.
• •The Roamer Chicago Loop Architecture tour walks the structural family tree that the John Hancock tube descends from (Sullivan, the Chicago School, the Reliance, the Monadnock, and Mies van der Rohe's IBM Building). The Roamer Chicago River Corridor tour walks the same Michigan Avenue Bridge from the river side and reads the bridgehead pageant from the water. If either thread holds your interest, those are the next two walks.