The heart of the Loop is Chicago's business center, where you'll find such finance fascinations as the Chicago Board of Trade, the world's largest commodities, futures, and options exchange, and some of the city's most famous early skyscrapers (not to mention the Sears Tower). If you're looking to soak in a real big-city experience, wander the area on a bustling weekday (just make sure you don't get knocked down by a commuter rushing to catch the train). The Loop is also home to one of the city's top museums, the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as a number of cultural institutions: Symphony Center (home of the world-class Chicago Symphony Orchestra), the Auditorium Theatre, the Civic Opera House, the Goodman Theatre, and two fabulously restored historic theaters along Randolph Street. On the eastern edge of the Loop in Grant Park, three popular museums are conveniently located within a quick stroll of each other on a landscaped Museum Campus. Busy Lake Shore Drive, which brings cars zipping past the Museum Campus, was actually rerouted a few years ago to make the area easier to navigate for pedestrians (talk about a visitor-friendly city!)
The Loop Sculpture Tour--Downtown Chicago is a veritable "museum without walls." Examples of public art -- in the form of traditional monuments, murals, and monumental contemporary sculpture -- are located widely throughout the city, but their concentration within the Loop and nearby Grant Park is worth noting. The best known of these works are by 20th-century artists, including Picasso, Chagall, Miró, Calder, Moore, and Oldenburg.
With the help of a very comprehensive booklet, Loop Sculpture Guide ($3.95 at the gift shop in the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St.), you can steer yourself through Grant Park and much of the Loop to view some 100 examples of Chicago's monumental public art. It provides locations and descriptions of 37 major works, including photographs, plus about 60 other nearby sites.
The single-most-famous sculpture is Pablo Picasso's Untitled, located in Daley Plaza and constructed out of Cor-Ten steel, the same gracefully rusting material used on the exterior of the Daley Center behind it. Viewed from various perspectives, its enigmatic shape alternately suggests that of a woman, bird, or dog. Perhaps because it was the button-down Loop's first monumental modern sculpture, its installation in 1967 was met with hoots and heckles, but today "The Picasso" enjoys semiofficial status as the logo of modern Chicago. It is by far the city's most popular photo opportunity among visiting tourists. At noon on weekdays during warm-weather months, you'll likely find a dance troupe, musical group, or visual-arts exhibition there as part of the city's long-running "Under the Picasso" multicultural program. Call tel. 312/346-3278 for event information.
Oprah in Person--Oprah Winfrey tapes her phenominally successful talk show at Harpo Studios, 1058 W. Washington Blvd., just west of the Loop. If you'd like to be in her studio audience, you'll have to plan ahead: Reservations are taken by phone only (tel. 312/591-9222), at least one month in advance.
Grant Park--Thanks to architect Daniel Burnham and his coterie of visionary civic planners -- who drafted the revolutionary 1909 Plan of Chicago -- the city boasts a wide-open lakefront park system unrivaled by most major metropolises. Modeled after the gardens at Versailles, Grant Park is Chicago's front yard, composed of giant lawns segmented by allées of trees, plantings, and paths, and pieced together by major roadways and a network of railroad tracks. Covering the greens are a variety of public recreational and cultural facilities (although these are few in number and nicely spread out, a legacy of mail-order magnate Aaron Montgomery Ward's fin de siècle campaign to limit municipal buildings in the park). Incredibly, the entire expanse was created from sandbars, landfill, and Chicago Fire debris; the original shoreline extended all the way to Michigan Avenue.
The immense Buckingham Fountain, accessible along Congress Parkway, is the baroque centerpiece of the park, composed of pink Georgia marble and patterned after -- but twice the size of -- the Latona Fountain at Versailles, with adjoining esplanades beautified by rose gardens in season. From April through October, the fountain spurts columns of water up to 150 feet in the air every hour on the hour; beginning at 4pm, a whirl of colored lights and dramatic music amps up the drama (the fountain shuts down at 11pm). Concession areas and bathrooms are available on the plaza.
The northwest corner of Grant Park (bordered by Michigan Ave. and Randolph St.) is the site of Millennium Park, one of the city's grandest recent public-works projects. Who cares that the park cost hundreds of millions more than it was supposed to, or the fact that it's finally opening a whole four years after the actual millennium? It's a winning combination of beautiful landscaping, elegant architecture (the classically inspired Peristyle), and public entertainment spaces (an ice rink, the music and dance theater). The park's centerpiece is the dramatic, Frank Gehry-designed Music Pavilion, featuring massive curved ribbons of steel. The Grant Park Symphony Orchestra and Chorus stages a popular series of free outdoor classical music concerts here most Wednesday through Sunday evenings in the summer. For a schedule of concert times and dates, contact the Grant Park Music Festival (tel. 312/742-7638).
Through the summer, Grant Park is taken over by a variety of music and food festivals. Annual events that draw big crowds include a blues music festival (in June) and a jazz festival (Labor Day). The Taste of Chicago (tel. 312/744-3315), purportedly the largest food festival in the world (the city estimates its annual attendance at around 3 1/2 million), takes place every summer for 10 days around the July 4th holiday. Local restaurants serve up more ribs, pizza, hot dogs, and beer than you'd ever want to see, let alone eat.
Scattered about the park are a number of sculptures and monuments, including the heroic sculptures of two Native Americans on horseback entitled The Bowman and The Spearman (at Congress Pkwy. and Michigan Ave.), which has become the park's trademark since it was installed in 1928, as well as likenesses of Copernicus, Columbus, and Lincoln, the latter by the great American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, located on Congress Parkway between Michigan Avenue and Columbus Drive. On the western edge of the park, at Adams Street, is the Art Institute , and at the southern tip in the newly redesigned Museum Campus are the Field Museum of Natural History, the Adler Planetarium, and the Shedd Aquarium.
To get to Grant Park, take bus no. 3, 4, 6, 60, 146, or 151. If you want to take the subway or the El, get off at any stop in the Loop along State or Wabash, and walk east.
More Attractions in the Loop--Fashion and glamour might have moved north to the Magnificent Mile, but Chicago's grandest stretch of boulevard is still Michigan Avenue, south of the river. From a little north of the Michigan Avenue bridge all the way down to the Field Museum, South Michigan Avenue runs parallel to Grant Park on one side and the Loop on the other. A stroll along this boulevard in any season offers both visual and cultural treats. Particularly impressive is the great wall of buildings from Randolph Street south to Congress Parkway (beginning with the Chicago Cultural Center and terminating at the Auditorium Building) that architecture buffs refer to as the "Michigan Avenue Cliff."
