Blog

By Emily Clott, Class of 2012

Tours – CAC has lots of them. How do they come about? Who writes them? Who? Docents, of course.  At this 50-year mark, let’s take a look at the history of our tours.

Fifteen years into the 50-year history of the Chicago Architecture Foundation/Center, Tom Drebenstedt became a proud member of the docent class of 1986. In the construction management business, Tom was well aware of the preservation efforts for which CAF was becoming known. After completing docent training, Tom was certified to give the Glessner and Clark House tours and the downtown Loop tour.

Tom joined the Tour Committee, which he soon chaired. At that time, most docents worked full-time jobs and gave tours on the weekends. He remembers people rushing to get to Glessner House for committee meetings after work. With no time for dinner before meetings, members would dine together afterward, creating an opportunity to know their colleagues personally and gauge their level of ability and commitment informally.

Informal, On-the-Fly

In the late ‘80s, the ratio of docents to staff was approximately 99 to 1; most processes were informal, and decisions were made on the fly. If a docent living in Hyde Park proposed a tour of Hyde Park, they appeared before the committee of approximately six docents to explained the route and content of the proposed tour.  In early days, most docents were professionals interested in historic preservation, so they had the background qualifications to create tours. If the committee knew they were capable and knowledgeable, the tour would be approved and added to the catalog.

There might be a tour manual in a three-ring binder, or an outline of notes on the back of an envelope provided to docents who gave these early tours; because CAF was so much smaller in those days, this method worked quite well, and complaints were few. Audiences were different, too. There were fewer out-of-town tourists, and more locals who were interested in preservation.

Ah yes, the catalog. While the core Loop tour and Glessner and Clarke House tours ran year-round, a printed catalog of neighborhood and seasonal tour offerings was mailed to CAF members every spring in advance of the tour season. Tom recalls the biggest challenge was scheduling tours and getting tour directors to submit a synopsis of each tour in time for the print catalog’s deadline.

Pre-Computer Days

In those pre-computer days, scheduling was a free-for all, with working tour directors, holding full-time jobs, deciding when to offer a tour, getting buy-in from their docents, then trying to make the dates work around the larger roster of tours. Balancing the need to offer tours every week with the particular needs of the docents was time-consuming and tricky.

In addition to submitting catalog entries, each tour director ensured that docents showed up for their tours, that they collected the admission fees, and that they offered membership information and collected those fees from the interested public. They were responsible for quality control, and they were charged with accounting for all the monies collected on tours.

Times Change

Today, the organization includes roughly 400 docents and a professional staff. CAC’s tour committee, chaired by Tom Carmichael and Jessica Williams, follows a formal process for vetting tours. A docent proposing a new tour submits a manual tailored to specific criteria, then takes the tour committee members on a demo tour to evaluate readiness.

Ninety minutes has become the standard length of walking tours, and tour directors are encouraged to ensure that docents engage their audience with questions and participation strategies. CAC limits the number of tour offerings to 85, a maximum number that enables tour offerings to be effectively marketed. For each new tour added to the roster, a tour is retired to the vault. Tours tied to historic observances are also created and offered on a limited basis, for example this summer’s neighborhood bus tour exploring the Great Chicago Fire during its150th anniversary year.

Much has changed in the fifty years that docents have created and offered tours for the CAF/CAC, but a high standard of quality in both tour content and presentation has wowed visitors both local, national, and international since day one. There is lots more competition in the tour market today, but CAC remains the gold standard in tour quality. Docents, take a bow!