Day 35 - Self Guided Walking Tour of Chicago

Our hotel room stank of cigarette smoke so we moved to another room. It was worth the trouble of collecting our things together and unpacking again. We also gained a slightly larger room with a bath.

The Hampton Inn Downtown was originally built for the Chicago Motor club in 1929. It is widely regarded as on of the city's finest Art Deco skyscrapers. The Motor Club moved out in 1986 and it was used for rented office space for 10 years. Eventually it was renovated in 2015 as a hotel.

An original 1928 Ford Model A on a mezzanine balcony pays homage to the history of the building.





We followed an architectural self guided walk around the fairly quiet streets to see some new buildings and have a closer look at some we viewed yesterday from the river. Sometimes we were confused by Google map instructions until we realised they were directing us to underground walkways and tunnels known as the pedway.

I had to include the Chicago Theatre as it demonstrates Americans used to be able to spell theatre correctly. Unfortunately this show is sold out or we would have bought tickets.

This is the Rookery Building completed in 1886 as part of the rebuilding of Chicago after the devastating fire of October 1871, when 17,000 buildings were destroyed over a 9 square km area and three hundred people died. European architects moved to the city to help with the rebuild.

The CIBC Theatre opened in 1906 as the Majestic Building. We picked up tickets for the Sunday matinee show Hamilton.