Chicago's Art Deco buildings
Chicago built most of its Art Deco in a few hurried years either side of the 1929 crash, and much of it still stands within a short walk of the river. This guide picks out the buildings to look for and the walks that take you past them, or better, through the front door.
A style squeezed between boom and crash
Chicago's Art Deco buildings went up in a short window, roughly from the late 1920s to the early 1930s. Money flowed freely before the stock market crash of 1929, and projects already underway kept rising after it, so several of the finest opened just as the money ran out. After the Field Building of 1934, the Loop built very few big towers for about twenty years, so the group feels like a closed chapter.
The look is easy to learn. Towers step back in setbacks as they rise, and strong vertical lines run from the sidewalk to the crown, so the whole mass seems to pull upward. Lobbies swap the carved stone of older banks for polished marble and brass. Metal grilles and lamps are worked into sharp geometric shapes. Plants and human figures turn up in the ornament too, but stiffly stylized, closer to a poster than a painting. Set that beside the heavier Chicago School towers of the 1890s, covered in our guide to where the skyscraper was born, and the difference jumps out within a block.
The Board of Trade at the end of LaSalle Street
If you see one Deco building in Chicago, make it the Chicago Board of Trade Building. Holabird & Root designed it, and when it opened in 1930 it became the tallest building in the city, a title it kept for decades. It stands across the south end of LaSalle Street, and the bank towers on both sides form the narrow LaSalle Street canyon, which Empire Tours' listing names as a Batman film backdrop. On the very top stands Ceres, the Roman goddess of grain, for a building where grain was traded. The aluminum statue is by John Storrs, and by most accounts her face was left plain because nobody on the street would ever make it out.
Inside, the lobby carries the outside lines indoors, with tall walls of polished stone and metal trim under light falling from high up. It is still a working office building, so you enter as a guest of the security desk. Inside Chicago Walking Tours' Dazzling Interiors walk, from ~$35, meets a few steps away in the plaza at 425 S. Financial Place, by a large metal horse sculpture, and the Board of Trade's lobby is usually its first stop indoors. A block north, the Rookery's light court, remodeled by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1905, shows a far older Chicago; our guide to Frank Lloyd Wright in the Loop and Oak Park picks up that story.
Into the Board of Trade lobby
Inside Chicago's two-hour walk usually opens with the Art Deco lobby of the Board of Trade, then works across the Loop to finish under the Tiffany dome of the Cultural Center, from ~$35. Some stops stay a surprise until you reach them, and cancelling costs nothing until a day before.
Green and gold on Michigan Avenue
The Carbide & Carbon Building at 230 N. Michigan Avenue went up in 1929, the work of the Burnham Brothers, two sons of Daniel Burnham. It is clad in dark green terra cotta, with the top picked out in gold leaf, so from a distance the tower reads almost black until the sun catches its crown. A popular story says the shape suggests a champagne bottle, though nobody seems able to prove it. The building is now a hotel, so the lobby belongs to its guests and you should not count on wandering in. The Chicago Architecture Center's Historic Treasures walk, from ~$35, usually pauses outside it on the way along Michigan Avenue, led by a CAC-trained docent.
A few blocks north, where Michigan Avenue meets the river, 333 North Michigan (1928) is a pale stone tower by Holabird & Root that steps back as it climbs. Close by the Michigan Avenue bridge, the London House hotel is one of the Art Deco stops named by Urban Adventures' Chicago in a Day food walk, from ~$99. That walk lasts 4.5 hours with tastings adding up to a full meal, so Deco is one thread among many. The CAC's Must-See Chicago walk, from ~$35, covers the same stretch of Michigan Avenue in 90 minutes, and its listing counts Art Deco among the styles you pass, mostly from the sidewalk.
The giants on the river
Two of the biggest Deco buildings in Chicago face the water rather than a street. The Merchandise Mart opened in 1930 on the north bank, and for years it was the largest building in the world by floor area. On the west bank, the former Chicago Daily News Building of 1929, now part of Riverside Plaza, is another Holabird & Root design, with a broad plaza along the riverbank.
Both are easiest to take in from a boat. The Chicago Architecture Center's First Lady river cruise, from ~$57, passes them with a docent on the microphone for about 90 minutes. The catch is that you see outsides only, never a lobby, from boats that sell out in summer. Our comparison of a river cruise or a walking tour weighs the deck against the sidewalk.
The Field Building, last of the line
Back on LaSalle Street, the Field Building at 135 S. LaSalle opened in 1934 on the site of the Home Insurance Building, the 1885 tower often called the first skyscraper, which came down in 1931. Its long ground-floor lobby is a quieter Deco interior than the Board of Trade's, usually easier to step into on a weekday than a weekend, with no promise of entry either way.
Which walks show the most Deco
None of the six walks on our home page is an Art Deco tour from start to finish, but four of them touch the style.
| Tour | From | Deco on the route | Inside or out |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dazzling Interiors (Inside Chicago, our pick) | ~$35 | Board of Trade lobby, other Loop lobbies kept as a surprise | Inside, when open |
| Historic Treasures (CAC) | ~$35 | Carbide & Carbon Building | Outside |
| Chicago in a Day (Urban Adventures) | ~$99 | London House hotel, among many other stops | Outside |
| Must-See Chicago (CAC) | ~$35 | Michigan Avenue towers | Outside |
| Art Deco interiors (Inside Chicago) | ~$35 | Lobbies of the 1920s and 1930s | Inside, when open |
| First Lady cruise (CAC) | ~$57 | Riverfront towers | From the water |
The one walk built entirely around the style is Inside Chicago's Art Deco interiors tour, from ~$35. It spends two hours and about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) in lobbies of brass and marble. Along the way come stories of flappers and gangsters before the 1929 crash. The catches start with a thin GetYourGuide record, only 10 reviews there (Viator shows 137, averaging 5.0). It is also not wheelchair accessible, and it meets at the same Financial Place plaza as the Dazzling Interiors walk, so booking both means two starts at one horse sculpture and routes that overlap.
For a single walk, the Dazzling Interiors tour is the safer pick, with older Loop interiors in the mix and far more reviews; what a Chicago architecture walk costs sets the prices side by side.
Getting into the lobbies
Art Deco lives indoors as much as out, and lobbies are the part you cannot count on. Office buildings close their doors for events or tighten security at short notice, and some lock up on weekends, while hotel lobbies belong first to their guests. Guides know which doors usually open, the main reason to pay for a walk. Keep your voice down and leave the tripod at home. Our list of the Loop interiors you can walk into goes lobby by lobby, and the best time for an architecture walk explains why a weekday morning tends to open the most doors.