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By Brent Hoffmann, Class of 2005

“I have my WTTW career thanks to CAF and the river tour,” says Geoffrey Baer. He joined WTTW public television in 1989 as associate producer for arts programs — while leading CAF boat tours on the weekends. After a tour in 1995, a man he didn’t know peppered him with questions. That touree turned out to be John McCarter, Jr., the newly appointed board chairman of WTTW-TV. “When I got to the station the next day,” continues Geoffrey, “I found out that he’d called WTTW to say that the river tour should be made into a TV show.” Geoffrey’s first “Chicago By Boat” show became so popular, and so much has continued to change along the river, that the program was remade in 2005 and again in 2011. Both times in collaboration with CAC.

Geoffrey proved to be a skilled on-camera presenter: friendly, confident, and knowledgeable. “It had been prophesized,” Geoffrey says. “As a kid, growing up in Highland Park and Deerfield, I was a bit of a comedian. And one day, my grandmother took my face in her hands and said, ‘Someday, you’re going to be on television’.” I caught the performing bug in high school and was in all the school plays.”

Well-prepared
In addition to his experience as a River Tour docent, Geoffrey had been well-educated for the job. He earned a B.S. in radio, TV, and film at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. And took courses in architectural history at Miami and during his junior year abroad in Luxembourg. After graduation, he worked as a television producer at stations in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Saginaw, Michigan, then became a staff producer of a nightly TV show in Philadelphia. To that point, all his work was behind the scenes.

But Geoffrey wondered what would happen if he’d pursued a career in theater. He quit his TV job in Philadelphia and returned to Chicago. He got an M.A. in theater at Northwestern University. While at NU, he led stage crews and directed scenes with students — including a group that went on to form Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre. In the early years of Lookingglass, Geoffrey became a member of their board and served for many years as the company grew. After Northwestern, he taught theater for five years at a private high school, the Chicago Academy for the Arts. He also studied improvisational theater at Second City. After five years of teaching, he got back into television at WTTW.

On a Tour with Students
In 1986, while still teaching at the high school, Geoffrey took his students on a CAF tour of the Loop. It was Geoffrey’s first experience with CAF, and he found the tour inspiring. He also noticed that, “the docent didn’t breathe properly, and he yelled.” Afterwards, the docent confided that was always hoarse by the end of his tours. So, Geoffrey gave him advice on how to control his breathing and project his voice. But vocal challenges aside, the tour hooked Geoffrey. He joined the docent program in 1987, doing his training at Glessner House.

As a sustaining member of the docent corps, he still leads a few River Cruises every summer. He reminds river docents that “every tour is different” because of variable weather, new construction, and distractions such as bridge-openings, kayakers, even wildlife! “Don’t stay locked into a script ignoring what’s going on around you.” Geoffrey recalls, decades ago, when River Tour creator Bob Irving mentioned that, if a troupe of ducklings paddles by, there is no hope of keeping the group’s attention.

Arm with Anecdotes
“The evolving River Walk is fascinating, but it also has opened up a new time challenge about how to include the story of the River Walk with all the buildings along that stretch of Wacker Drive. As the river becomes more crowded, delays are inevitable. So, arm yourself with anecdotes.” One of Geoffrey’s favorites, when delayed by barges at historic Wolf Point: “The owner of the Sauganash Hotel was Mark Beaubian. He said, ‘I plays de fiddle like de debil, and I keeps hotel like hell.’ That always gets a laugh.” (Source: historian Donald Miller’s book City of the Century). “Conversely, river traffic might require the captain to speed up. If you miss a favorite building or story, let it go rather than trying to talk about something that’s now behind you. The group won’t know the difference, and you’ll stay in sync with your surroundings.”

Geoffrey spends time on the lake as well as the river. He’s been a crew member on 13 of the annual sailboat races from Chicago to Mackinac Island, Mich. But he hasn’t finished all of them. “In 2018, we had very high winds and rough seas at the start, causing most of the crew to become seasick or hypothermic,” he says. “So, after just four hours, we withdrew and returned to Chicago.”

10 That Changed
A multiple Emmy Award-winner, Geoffrey now is recognized nationwide as the host of the popular PBS series 10 That Changed America. Included are the shows “10 Buildings That Changed America,” “10 Homes that Changed America,” and “10 Modern Marvels (Engineering Wonders) that Changed America.” In 2011, he began interviewing the annual winners of the Driehaus Prize for Classical and Traditional Architecture. Through these projects, he has traveled extensively in the U.S. and Europe — and has had the thrill of meeting and interviewing well-known and lesser-known architects, historians, and critics including Frank Gehry, Vincent Scully, Paul Goldberger, Stanley Tigerman, Thomas Beeby, Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Robert A.M. Stern, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. His programs can be seen at www.wttw.com/geoffreybaer and on the PBS app.

Go Ahead, Ask Him
He’s a frequent contributor on WTTW’s news program Chicago Tonight. In the “Ask Geoffrey” part of the show, he answers viewers’ questions about Chicago architecture, history, and happenings. Recently, Geoffrey addressed queries about the Andy Frain ushers, houseboats on the Chicago River, and the Chicago Tribune’s one-time claim as the “World’s Greatest Newspaper.” You, too, can ask Geoffrey about nearly anything related to Chicago. Go to the website https://news.wttw.com/recurring-segments/ask-geoffrey.

What’s next for our peripatetic docent? In March 2019, we’ll see his new WTTW special Chicago on Vacation. He explains, “It’s a combination nostalgia and travel show about iconic road trip destinations for Chicagoans. I travel in a 1975 Chevy Caprice wagon to places like Door County, Lake Geneva, and the Dells in Wisconsin, Starved Rock and Galena in Illinois, the Indiana Dunes, and the coast of Michigan from Harbor Country all the way up to Mackinac Island.”