Blog

By Brent Hoffmann, 2005

Where’s Joan? She could be leading a tour in Chicago. Or in Colorado. She’s a bi-docental commuter, a docent twice-over. Joan Winstein leads tours in Denver as well as in Chicago. “I moved to Denver two years ago because I love the mountains and hiking,” she said. “I’ve become certified as a trip leader for the Colorado Mountain Club and lead hikes and snowshoe trips. I also lead an architecture and history tour for Historic Denver.”

Before she joined the docent corps in 2012, Joan was a vice president at the First National Bank of Chicago. She grew up in New Jersey and earned a B.A. in Japanese Studies at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Joan then relocated to Japan to serve as a translator for the Sony Corp. After that: Chicago, and the University of Chicago to follow up with an M.A. in Japanese Studies. “Now, in addition to being a docent,” she said, “I’m a part-time literary agent for business authors.”

Joan is certified for six tours, but concentrates on the Chicago Pedway, River Cruise, and the University of Chicago Campus tour, for which she is co-director. For the past two years, she has been co-editor of the River Cruise manual. “I’ve been a reader for four classes of docent trainees, and I learn a lot from them,” she continued. At the 2018 Docent Appreciation Dinner, Joan won an S-O-S Award for frequently volunteering to lead last-minute tours when other docents cancelled or got sick. For several years, she served on the board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and on the Dean’s Council of the Physical Sciences Division at the University of Chicago.

Wife Made Me Do It

She’s co-director of the University of Chicago Campus tour. “We get very engaged people on that tour, and it’s the tour that I give with the most international tourists,” continued Joan. “I love meeting people from all over the world and learning new things. On one of my U-C tours, a 90-year-old man told me that his father had attended the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in nearby Jackson Park. His dad was a little boy at the time, and it was the first time he had seen electricity. After a River Cruise, a man said, ‘My wife made me come on this tour. Originally, I hadn’t wanted to do it at all, but I loved it!’”

3-by-3

On an Elevated Architecture tour, how can you graphically explain the bundled-tube construction of the Willis Tower? Joan does this: “If I have at least nine tourists, I arrange them into a tic-tac-toe board. I explain how the building’s nine bundled tubes are supported at the utility floors and on every adjacent edge. Then I ask two people to step away ‘at the 50th floor,’ two more ‘at the 66th floor,’ and ‘three more at the 90th floor.’ I leave the ‘central tube tourist’ and the ‘tourist to the west’ still standing all the way to the top. It shows how the Tower gets its silhouette and how it stands up to the gravity and wind forces that bear on it. And it shows how the nine-tube construction creates more corner offices.”

When in Denver

“I’m working on developing a tour of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill-designed buildings in Denver” she continued. “I’m focusing on an era when the Denver S-O-M office was headed by a woman, Patricia Swan. She never made partner despite working at S-O-M for more than 30 years. She is not listed as architect of record for any of S-O-M’s buildings — so I want to find out what Swan’s contributions really were.”

Joan serves on the Denver board of College Track, a national organization that helps first-generation students get to, and through, college. “We support these students through landing their first job — changing the trajectory of their lives, their families and communities. It’s very inspiring.” She also volunteers with HistoriCorps, which renovates historic buildings on public lands. She recently helped rebuild a woman homesteader’s cabin near Colorado Springs, Colo.

When not in Chicago or Denver or the mountains of Colorado or hefting a hammer for HistoriCorps, Joan enjoys foreign travel. “In 2019, I spent 15 days trekking in Nepal and reached the base camp for Annapura Peak,” she said. “I’d still like to hike in Argentina and Switzerland, and I look forward to touring Berlin this year. But wherever I go, I get a special thrill when I return to Chicago. It’s a wonderful city. I truly value my docent colleagues and want to continue as a docent for as long as I can. Plus, if I can time my trips to take in a Chicago Symphony or Grant Park Concert, there is nothing better.”