Jaunted

The tour offers some good information on buildings we’d never heard of. For example, we learned that the building at 35 E. Wacker was one of the sites for Batman Begins. But some buildings are weirdly absent, such as the iconic Tribune Tower. And the tour’s a bit outdated, since it tells you all about the Carson Pirie Scott building’s exterior, but the building is all boarded up and undergoing renovations. Mostly, you’ll get some good deets on the landmarks, with historians and other experts also providing some narration. From the tour, we discovered that Macy’s on State Street, originally called Marshall Field’s, was the first department store to have a money-back guarantee, bridal registry and countdown to Christmas. There’s also a meaty section on the Chicago Theatre, which explains that the architecture was modeled after Paris’ Arc de Triomphe.

The best thing about the tour is that you can tailor it to your liking. You can stop for lunch at the Walnut Room at Macy’s on State Street or to look in a store. And if you don’t really want to hear about the Inland Steel Building, you can skip it. It’ll take you about two hours to visit all 23 sites. Bonus: You won’t look like those tourists who are listening to some guide in front of a building; people will just think you’re a local jamming to your iPod.

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[Photos: Jennifer Kester]