Downtown Chicago Literary Tour

Downtown Chicago, with important cultural institutions like the Chicago Cultural Center, Art Institute, and the Fine Arts Building, features a wide array of historic literary sites. In this part of the city, where skyscrapers and other iconic buildings dot the landscape, authors have made deep footprints. Chicago’s finest authors, along with prominent national writers on tour, have frequented the cultural venues and private clubs, and also used the neighborhood as a setting for a large array of stories. Our Chicago Literary Hall of Fame tour guide, Nonna Working, will meet you at the Cultural Center to begin a two-hour walking tour that includes narration about some of downtown Chicago’s literary highlights. Find out how the likes of Margaret Anderson, Theodore Dreiser, Ernest Hemingway, Norman Mailer, and others used downtown Chicago in their lives and literature. Fnd out which famous writers stayed at the Palmer House; learn about streetcar tycoon Charles Tyson Yerkes’s relationship to Dreiser’s Trilogy of Desire; find out how the Impressionist painting collection at AI influenced Hemingway’s career; and much more. The tour will begin at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington) and end at the Fine Arts Building (410 S. Michigan Ave.) Registration is $20. Limited to ten guests. 

For more information, call  (773.414.2603) or email Don Evans. To register, go to the Eventbrite page.

Groups (8 or more walking tour: 40 or more bus tour) can arrange a date and time for any of the available tours.