Things to Do

Local MTNA members offer the following suggestions when visiting Chicago:

• For those interested in Chicago architecture, the Chicago Architecture Center, 111 E. Wacker Drive, is steps from Michigan Avenue and near the Marriott. They have tours, books and maps, etc.
• Consider a tour of the Fine Arts Building which is just south of the hotel and an easy one mile walk or quick bus ride. Wait Wait Don't Tell Me records there on Thursday nights.
• Things to see within walking distance of the hotel:
  • Old Watertower and Pumping Station on North Michigan Ave.,John Hancock Center, tour Oak Street (between Michigan Avenue and Rush Street), Wrigley Building and the Tribune Tower.
  • Just a short block or away the Chicago River with its towers and bridges.
  • Further south a couple of blocks on Michigan Avenue is the old Main Library (1893), which has one of the best interiors in the Loop, including two Tiffany domes on the upper (interior) floors. Across the street is Grant Park. Another two blocks and you are at the Art Institute, with over 100 years of buildings on its campus.
  • You can take in the famous buildings that represent the birth of the skyscraper (in the whole world), including the Monadnock Building, the Fisher Building, and further to LaSalle Street the greatest 19th-Century survivor, the Rookery (209 S LaSalle). The Rookery is at the south end of the LaSalle Street “corridor,” which ends in the 1930 Board of Trade Building, representing the peak of Art Deco in Chicago.
• While not walkable, 10 miles west of the hotel is Oak Park, which has the largest collection of Frank Lloyd Wright houses in the world.