Downtown Chicago Literary Walking Tour

Our literary walking tour of Chicago's downtown neighborhood was May 20. Mostly because we scheduled the walk in conjunction with the American Literature Association’s conference, we hosted a group that included scholars from France, Denmark, Poland, Japan, England, Italy, India, Canada, China, and many of our states, including Indiana, Wisconsin, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Michigan, California, Washington, Texas, Oklahoma, and Georgia.  The walk provided opportunity for us to create another app, as we did for our Uptown and South Side literary tours last year (and will do again for our Far South Side Bus Tour on July 11). Given the circumstances (a lot of people in town for a short time), we tried to breeze through as many interesting sites as possible. We started at the Palmer House and ended at the Cliff Dwellers. In between, we stopped at major institutions like the Chicago Cultural Center, American Writers Museum, the Chicago Board of Trade Building, the Harold Washington Library, and the Fine Arts Building; we traveled along Jeweler’s Row and Theater Row; we paused in the Daley and Federal Plazas; we talked a bit about businesses like Miller’s Pub and Berghoff’s. There was more. As I said, we covered a lot of ground. As we refine the tours, I think we’ll probably divide Downtown into four parts. Places like the American Writers Museum, Fine Arts Building, and Chicago Cultural Center merit their own tours (and, in fact, have them). This time out, we didn’t even attempt to get to the South Loop, which will be one of the four parts.

This historic Palmer House, where many important writers, including Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, and L. Frank Baum, have stayed, was the logical starting point, because that's where the conference happened. Cliff Dwellers was a logical end stop because of the phenomenal views, a chance to socialize with a drink, and its associations with authors like Hamlin Garland, Henry Kitchell Webster, and others.