During the Gilded Age, Chicago’s Prairie Avenue was regarded as “Millionaire’s Row.” The wealthy flocked to the area after the Civil War because it was close to the Loop, and it did not require its residents to cross the Chicago River.  

On this walking tour with guide and researcher Tony Szabelski, stroll through the neighborhood that once boasted Second Empire, Queen Anne, and Richardson Romanesque-style homes. Learn about its rise to prominence, decline in the mid twentieth century, and the preservation efforts that led to the Prairie Avenue District to be added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Hear tales of the famous specters that supposedly still linger in the remaining structures, such as the William W. Kimball House and Marshall Field Jr. Mansion.  

Advance registration is required for walking tours.

$25; 22.50 members  

Tour runs approximately 1.5 to 2 hours, meets at Glessner House at 1800 S. Prairie Ave., and ends at The Second Presbyterian Church at 1936 S. Michigan Ave.  

Tour also includes free admission to the Chicago History Museum, good for one week from tour date. 

Masks are optional for our outdoor walking tours. Learn more about our COVID-19 safety policies and procedures.   

Join a CHM History Buff volunteer guide and whisk away to a time when Chicago’s rich and famous caroused on the coast. “Gold Coast” refers to a stretch of expensive lakefront property occupied by the city's wealthiest residents. Before the opening of the Michigan Avenue Bridge (now DuSable Bridge) in 1920, it was isolated from the downtown business district and home to only a few wealthy families, such as the McCormicks, Palmers, and Ryersons.  

The area soon became the heart of the upper crust of Chicago society. Sociologist Harvey Warren Zorbaugh, who claimed that college boys returning from the East Coast dubbed the area the “Gold Coast,” immortalized it in his book The Gold Coast and the Slum: A Sociological Study of Chicago’s Near North Side. The density of wealth in the Gold Coast buffered it against the deterioration that threatened other portions of the North Side in the 1950s.  

Gaze at ornate architecture by Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan, step onto a rare wood-block alleyway, and take in Chicago’s early mansions, including the Archbishop’s Residence. 

Advance registration is required for walking tours.  

$25, $22.50 members  

Tour runs 1.5 to 2 hours. Meet at the Chicago History Museum.  

Tour also includes free admission to the Chicago History Museum, good for one week from tour date. 

The Chicago History Museum sits on the edge of Old Town, a neighborhood rich in history. The Chicago area was home to the Potawatomi, whose villages were built on these lands. After they were forcibly removed, German farmers settled there to make their homes. Since then, it has served as an enclave for Puerto Rican migrants, a home to the first gay rights organization in the US, as well a vibrant arts scene.  

Join CHM volunteer Carol Fitzgibbons to explore stories of recovery from the 1871 Great Chicago Fire and the neighborhood as the center of Chicago bohemianism in the 1960s and ’70s. Highlights include a post-Fire shelter cottage, the Midwest Buddhist Temple, numerous historic residences, and St. Michael’s Church, one of only seven buildings to survive the fire.  

Advance registration is required for walking tours.

$25, $22.50 members  

Tour runs 1.5 to 2 hours. Meet at the Chicago History Museum.  

Tour also includes free admission to the Chicago History Museum, good for one week from tour date. 

The Great Migration, a long-term movement of African Americans from the South to the urban North, transformed Chicago and other northern cities between 1916 and 1970. Chicago attracted slightly more than 500,000 of the approximately 7 million African Americans who left the South during these decades. Before this migration, African Americans constituted 2 percent of Chicago's population; by 1970, they were 33 percent. What had been in the nineteenth century a largely southern and rural African American culture became a culture deeply infused with urban sensibility in the twentieth century. And what had been a marginalized population in Chicago emerged by the mid-twentieth century as a powerful force in the city's political, economic, and cultural life  

Join author and historian Bernard Turner on this walking tour and see the names and contributions of Chicago’s most influential African Americans on the Walk of Fame, landmarks, public art reflecting the histories of the neighborhood, and stories about the ways African Americans shaped the history and culture of this South Side neighborhood.  

Advance registration is required for walking tours.

$25, $22.50 members  

Tour runs 1.5 to 2 hours. Meet at the SE corner of 35th Street and Martin Luther King Drive.  

Tour also includes free admission to the Chicago History Museum, good for one week from tour date. 

Masks are optional for our outdoor walking tours. Learn more about our COVID-19 safety policies and procedures.   

Experience the grandness of Pilsen’s murals with local poet and multidisciplinary artist Luis Tubens. As you walk through Chicago’s capital of Mexican cultures, get the larger meaning behind the public art on railroad viaducts, buildings, and doors, which shows an evolution of the community’s Mexican identity, heritage, and activism. The tour weaves the history of Pilsen with vibrant murals and lived personal experiences.  

Advance registration is required for walking tours.

$25, $22.50 members  

Tour runs 1.5 to 2 hours. Meet outside the National Museum of Mexican Art, 1852 West 19th Street.  

Tour also includes free admission to the Chicago History Museum, good for one week from tour date. =

This tour is presented in partnership with Pilsen Public Art Tours.

Tour runs 3.5 to 4 hours and begins and ends at the Chicago History Museum. 

$55; $45 members 

Members, please log in to see discounts applied at checkout.

Masks are optional on bus tours.

Chicago is known for its public sculpture, though it also has a rich tradition in murals and other forms of decoration of public spaces. The first forms were the panoramas and cycloramas that were painted and exhibited before being sent on the road, a mockup of one is currently on display in City on Fire: Chicago 1871. The fire and the economic depression of the 1870s dampened enthusiasm for public art, but a rash of tombs, statutes, and fountains followed in the next decade. Augustus Saint-Gaudens was the most famous of those who worked here, completing both the naturalistic Abraham Lincoln and Bates Fountain (1887) near the museum itself in Lincoln Park. Hyde Park is no exception.   

Join Artist and Educator Juarez Hawkins for a lively historical tour of the murals along the Metra underpasses linking Hyde Park Boulevard and Cornell Avenue in Hyde Park, one of the city’s most engaging neighborhoods. Take a close look at public art that tells distinctive stories about Chicago and its history, including Astrid Fuller’s Spirit of Hyde Park (1973) and William Walker’s Children of Goodwill (1977). We’ll also touch on the issues surrounding content, restoration, and reinterpretation.  

Advance registration is required for walking tours. 

$25, $22.50 members  

Tour runs 1.5 to 2 hours. Meet at the Pepperland Apartment building at 1509–1517 E. 57th Street, adjacent to the 57th Street Metra Stop.    

Tour also includes free admission to the Chicago History Museum, good for one week from tour date. 

Masks are optional for our outdoor walking tours. Learn more about our COVID-19 safety policies and procedures.   

Join professional guide and local resident Eduardo Arocho on a walk through Humboldt Park. 

Located on the Northwest Side of Chicago, the community has been defined by its strong cultural presence throughout the ages. Humboldt Park was named after naturalist and geographer Alexander von Humboldt (1759–1859) in 1869. Interestingly, the one time that von Humboldt visited the United States, he did not travel to Chicago. The community was annexed into Chicago the same year as its naming, following the creation of the West Park System (which also includes Douglass and Garfield Park). These three parks––connected by the Boulevard Park System––were established to provide Chicago residents with some relief from the congested landscape of the city.   

In a city known for its cultural and ethnic diversity, Humboldt Park stands out as the center of Puerto Rican culture in both Chicago and the American Midwest. Since the 1960s, it has been home to Chicago’s Puerto Rican community. This thought-provoking tour explores the history of the iconic West Side neighborhood through the public art proudly displayed along the six blocks of Division Street (Paseo Boricua) and in Humboldt Park.  

Advance registration is required for walking tours.

$25, $22.50 members  

Tour runs approximately 90 minutes. Meet at Ciclo Urbano, 2459 W. Division Street, Chicago, IL 60622.   

Tour also includes free admission to the Chicago History Museum, good for one week from tour date. 

Masks are optional for our outdoor walking tours. Learn more about our COVID-19 safety policies and procedures.   

Tour presented in partnership with Paseo Boricua Tour Company.  

Séances, slate writing, spirit cabinets—these are a few of the tools and tricks mediums like the notorious Bangs Sisters once used to convince Chicagoans they could speak to the dead. These services, which played upon genuine grief, always came with a price. Seek the truth with CHM director of exhibitions Paul Durica on this journey through the history of spirits and spiritualism in Chicago. 

Advance registration is required for walking tours.

$25, $22.50 members  

Tour runs 75–90 minutes. This tour begins at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington St., Chicago, IL 60602) and ends at Orchestra Hall (Symphony Center, 220 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60604).  

Tour also includes free admission to the Chicago History Museum, good for one week from tour date. 

Masks are optional for our walking tours. Learn more about our COVID-19 safety policies and procedures.