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By Ellen Shubart, Class of 2006,
Co-Tour Director, Must See Chicago

Common wisdom says that to enjoy a bratwurst or other sausage, you should not dig down deep to see how it is made.  Well, maybe.

I recently worked on updating the manual for the Must-See tour for new docent training. I dug through a whole lot of “back issues” of Must-See tour manuals, from its inception in 2014 to today. Like making sausage, lots of contributions went into this tour, many changes were made over the years, and really, we came out with the best, tastiest possible tour.

This tour was originally a response to a staff-ask for a tour profiling Chicago’s most iconic structures. The Marketing Department had completed research indicating a tour touching on Chicago’s “Top 10” buildings scored very high. We were off!

The original tour started at the old location, 224 S. Michigan, and ended, somewhat surprisingly, at Water Tower Place, now Jane Byrne Plaza. It included the Art Institute, the Willis Tower, and other buildings in the south Loop area. The Water Tower Plaza finish followed a Red Line subway ride up to Chicago Avenue—giving the tourists a taste of Chicago’s transit system.

In 2019, the tour was reconfigured because of our organization’s relocation. That didn’t stop the docents. Now some of the tallest buildings in the city— Aqua Tower, Wrigley Building, and Tribune Tower— could be interpreted in addition to Willis Tower. Riding the L instead of the subway (from Quincy to State-Lake on the Orange Line) allowed including the nascent Riverwalk and Wacker Drive in the narrative. The route offered the option to return to CAC via lower Wacker Drive, with the off chance of seeing rats below the streets. Not many docents did that option, but it was there.

Things were going swimmingly until COVID hit. Not only did we have to stop giving tours for the duration of the pandemic, but afterward we eliminated the L ride due to concerns of lingering infections. That condensed the tour a bit, but it meant instead we walked down State Street and talked about buildings there.

That didn’t work; We were stepping on the feet of other tours that offer State Street buildings. So, it was another regroup. Instead of State Street, we headed to Dearborn Street, where the topic of public art was tackled. Adding that to the public art at Millennium Park, we were giving tourists a fabulous look at an aspect of a large city with excellent public art – all done by world-renowned artists.

Of course, that changed when Millennium Park was enclosed and we couldn’t get in or out without a hassle at a security gate, or not get in at all. Re-route to along Michigan Avenue.

That’s why my most recent manual (the one before the current revision) says on its frontispiece: “Must See Chicago: Reroute: No “L” and/or No Millennium Park; and Re-re-route: Including Dearborn Street Public Art.” Perhaps it was a bit much, but it expressed the sentiment that this tour has been changed over and over the years.

The new route for the new class? Well, truth be told, we slimmed the tour down a bit, making it reasonable to finish in 90 minutes. That meant removing the much-loved Chicago Theatre from the route altogether. Yet another change.

And annually, the Tour Directors recommend to Tour Committee whether to rewrite this all again to include an L ride. So far, that recommendation has been no – we don’t need additional changes.

So that’s the story of Must-See. Like the sausage, perhaps you didn’t need to know how it was made. But I think it is  tastier if you do.

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