MORE VIRTUAL TOURS

In winter of 2021 we blazed forward with the design of new virtual tours. Over the years, Marketing Manager Marie had compiled an incredible list of Chicago women that the team had researched for in-person tours, virtual tours, and our hundreds of blog posts. With a list of close to 100 women, we then selected eight women who worked in a range of industries or subjects, came from various eras of history and diverse backgrounds.

Because we chose lesser-known figures of history, our research involved a lot of sleuthing! We then crafted their stories, found and licensed images, and tested interactive elements. We flew by the seat of our pants to bring “Badass Women of History Virtual Event” to life in March, which is of course Women’s History Month.

Guests described the experience as “fun, engaging, informative and inspiring.” The word “inspiring” came up as the biggest theme. It was featured on NBC Chicago, WBEZ, WGN Radio and more. 

Then it was a struggle to come up with the angle for our “Breaking Down Chicago Neighborhoods” virtual tour. How can one fit that into one hour How do you choose which neighborhoods are covered and which are not Do you prioritize the history, the people, or the architecture It was a huge challenge. Ultimately after plenty of dead ends, we decided that the underlying concept is how similar the different areas of the city can be, rather than focus on what makes them all different. We love what we came up with, and local corporate teams that we regularly work with particularly enjoyed it. We booked a ton of both of these virtual events for corporate entities, universities, and non-profits.

IN-PERSON TOURS

Let’s remember that late winter of 2021 was when the COVID vaccine had begun to arrive for many of us. We were all feeling hopeful! While many tour and event companies and cultural organizations were getting ready to reinstate in-person events, we made the decision to only open for private groups. Here’s a picture of the first bus tour we had done in a year and a half! Alex and Amanda were each in a bus, touring Chicago neighborhoods with almost 100 future priests from Loyola University. Everyone was vaccinated. The energy and enthusiasm was indelible. Many hoots and hollers were had as you can see in this picture!

We reopened for in-person public tours in December with a newly redesigned “Downtown Holiday Walking Tour.” It was incredible to experience downtown abuzz again! People bustled about on the sidewalks, a DJ partied inside Macy’s, and we sipped on hot Tom & Jerry holiday cocktails at Millers Pub. It was quite magical to bring perfect strangers together on a public tour again, but alas the Omicron variant arrived…

CUSTOM CONTENT & EVENTS

In 2021, we produced more media that explores Chicago neighborhoods and downtown, from its history to food and design. Here are just a few highlights of our custom projects of 2021:

• The Chicago Detours team custom built “Diverse Cultures of Evanston Virtual Tour” completely from the ground up as a fundraising event for a private client. We researched digital archives, compiled images, and sifted through 360-degree Google Street View images to tell this story.
• We wielded our research in the latest trends in community-based tourism practices to design neighborhood tours for a corporate client. It was a 600-person diversity and inclusion event.
• We hired a video production crew to produce an on-the-streets walking tour of Chicago for a virtual conference.

ADDITIONAL ACCOMPLISHMENT

More awesome things happened to Chicago Detours in 2021:

• For the second year in a row, Chicagoans voted us as “Best Tour of Chicago” runner-up, second only to the largest tour company in the city.

• We got probably our coolest national press feature ever! Entrepreneur Magazine highlighted our pivot from in-person to virtual tours in “When Thinking Outside the Box Pays Off.”

• Inc Magazine included us in “How 5 Small Businesses Reinvented Themselves During Covid.”
• Amanda’s was invited to present on panels for Choose Chicago, the Chicago Tourism Professionals Association, and VRARChicago with her expertise in the tourism industry.
• Chicago Detours was nominated for the 2021 Chicago Innovation Awards for our innovative response to the industry shutdown during the pandemic.

Happy New Year to all. Here’s to 2022! Thank you for keeping up with what we do. More good things to come!

The Chicago Detours Team

I was an independent tour guide during graduate school to make extra money, so Chicago Detours had always been on my radar. Fast forward eight months after graduation and I was still looking for that elusive full-time job in my field. I was attending IndieWed, a wedding trade show, along with my friend and her fiancé. The event showcases quirky and cool vendors from all over Chicagoland, and Chicago Detours had a table to discuss private tours for bachelor/bachelorette parties. I fell into conversation with Amanda, and she mentioned they were looking for tour guides during peak season. When I got home I sent in an application thinking, why not?! Around May 2018 Amanda invited me in for an interview which then led to my becoming the Private Tour Coordinator as well as a tour guide for Chicago Detours.

2. What’s your favorite public tour?

My favorite public tour to lead is the Factories to Calories Fulton Market Food Tour. It definitely keeps me on my toes as a tour guide, because that neighborhood never looks the same week to week. More importantly, I demanded to learn this tour after eating the Mr. G at J.P Graziano’s for the first-time so I could have it every week during the summer.

3. What’s your favorite private tour?

As the Private Tour Coordinator this is like asking me to choose my favorite child, but I have a soft spot for our new Architecture of Money and Power. It’s a brief but comprehensive overview of the history and architecture along LaSalle St and stories of finance history in Chicago, something I didn’t know much about before experiencing the tour. Plus if I was a building I would want to be the Rookery, which is featured on the tour, so there’s that.

4. What downtown building do you most love taking tour guests into And outside of downtown?

I love taking guests to the First United Methodist Church on the Loop Interior Architecture Walking Tour, usually because no one has ever thought to go to that space, even locals, so it’s always fun to take people someplace they never thought they could enter. Outside of downtown, I would have to say Holy Trinity Polish Catholic Church in Noble Square. I have never led the tour that goes there, but I remember the experience of going to this space as a guest and being gobsmacked. Apparently I have a thing for old churches!

5. Is there a Chicago building that’s been demolished that you wish was still around?

I’m sure the original Billy Goat Tavern near what is now the United Center would have been a good time. I’m curious what it would have been like to hang out there!

6. What’s your best memory as a tour guide?

I led a Historic Chicago Walking Bar Tour one Friday night last winter with two couples from New Zealand. When the couples introduced themselves to one another, we soon discovered that they had a common link–their children were engaged to be married! They were planning to meet at another date, but somehow the universe conspired together to have them meet ahead of schedule, completely by coincidence, on my tour. I couldn’t believe the coincidence.

7. A Chicago book or movie to recommend?

If you are a fan of Sandra Bullock, cheesy Christmas movies, and debating with friends over questionable choices made by movie characters, I recommend the seminal rom-com classic “While You Were Sleeping.” Although now that I live in Chicago, any romantic set-up featuring a near death experience on the ‘L is horrifying instead of fodder for a “meet-cute” moment.

For more serious fare, the Frank Lloyd Wright mini-series by Ken Burns is worth a view if you can get your hands on it.

8. What’s next on your Chicago reading list?

I read William Leach’s Land of Desire in graduate school, so I am curious about A Shopper’s Paradise by Emily Remus (as featured on our 2021 Holiday Gift List.)

9. What’s your second-favorite city?

I love London and would find any excuse to visit it, especially around the holidays.

I usually try to make it up to Milwaukee at least once a year to do a major shopping spree of the vintage stores. You can’t beat Chicago for sheer volume, but in Milwaukee you’re competing with fewer people!

10. Neighborhood or suburb you’d like to explore more?

I would like to explore more of the South Side. I live in Rogers Park so it’s hard for me to get the initiative to get down there. I recently went to Bridgeport and had some life-changing ramen at Shinya Ramen House and I can’t wait to go back.

11. Favorite local brewery or distillery?

I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Haymarket Brewery (featured on the Fulton Market Tour).

My favorite place for local spirits is Koval in Ravenswood. Plus the bottles are real purty!

You can meet Ellen on several of our tours, or if you book a private tour, she will help you out.

Private Lines and the World’s Fair

The first section of what would eventually become the ‘L’ opened in 1892. It ran above alleyways from Congress Street downtown to 39th Street on the South Side. Some of this original elevated track is still in use by the Green Line today. By the next year, the system was extended all the way down to the World’s Columbian Exposition in Jackson Park. This route became one of the most popular methods for reaching the fairground.

Like the massive transcontinental railroads of the 1800’s, the Southside ‘L’ was a private enterprise. In fact, most of the ‘L’ system was built by private companies. As our guests on the Loop Interior Architecture Walking Tour have learned, constructing the ‘L’ was a very corrupt business. A shady tycoon named Charles Yerkes used graft and bribery to pave the way for his company to construct downtown’s Loop in the 1890’s.

Centralization and Public Takeover

By the 1920’s, the ‘L’ was a staple of the city’s infrastructure. A Tribune article from 1997 describes the early days of the ‘L’ as a system “…in which discounted fares are not grudgingly offered but enthusiastically marketed, conductors are positioned in each car to assist passengers and service is so frequent that stations are empty for only 15 seconds between rush-hour trains.” Customer service was such a priority that funeral trains could be commissioned. Some stations even had lifts for caskets.

The handful of companies that operated the ‘L’ were under financial strain, and ended up being consolidated in 1924. Samuel Insull, an electricity tycoon, bought out the four separate ‘L’ companies. Their lines and operations became part of a centralized corporation called the Chicago Rapid Transit Company. This cut out the cost of competition. It also made transfers and fare purchases easier for customers.

The arrangement limped along until 1947. The city of Chicago and state of Illinois combined the city’s transit systems into a new public agency: the Chicago Transit Authority. That agency remains the operator the ‘L’ to this day. Many route closures, expansions, and realignments have happened since, but the core of the system has remained largely the same since it was built over a century ago.

-Alex Bean, Office Manager and Tour Guide

Marshall Field’s (111 N. State)

The recent book A Shopper’s Paradise by Emily Remus has shined a light on Chicago women’s history at the end of the Gilded Age. The theaters and sidewalks of the Loop and the department stores of State Street, especially Marshall Field’s, were an active battleground over changing social customs. Women were not an active public presence in pre-fire Chicago. Social custom of the time dictated that genteel American ladies were domestic–the home was their castle. As such, it was incredibly rare for women to be in public without a male escort.

Field’s changed all that. Their famous motto–“Give the lady what she wants!”–obviously catered directly to the female shoppers who began flocking to the Loop. The sudden presence of women in the public sphere unleashed a tempest of controversy. We delve into an interesting story on this topic when we visit Field’s on the Loop Interior Architecture Walking Tour. Remus’s book spells out much more, especially the repeated attempts to ban female fashions like hoop skirts and feathered hats.

Art Institute of Chicago (111 S. Michigan Ave.)

A lot of Chicago women’s history revolves around the Art Institute. Even from its founding, it was an institution that contained strong female voices. That said, many women artists, from the White Rabbits to the Monster Roster, did not find mainstream success because of the AIC’s traditional nature. That didn’t stop one of our favorite women artists, Lee Godie, because she quite literally worked outside the walls of the academy. Godie was most often found outside the Art Institute, selling her artwork on the steps.

Godie rarely talked about her personal life, but her life spirit was unmissable. She unmistakably ruled the roost outside the Art Institute for roughly 30 years. Godie was often dressed in huge swatches of fabric or fur coats and bright orange circles painted on her cheeks. She sold her original paintings (which were inspired by Cezanne) on the steps. She often slept outside merely steps away. Multiple sources state that she was the most collected artist in Chicago in the ’80s. Indeed, Mayor Daley II proclaimed September 1991 to be “Lee Godie Exhibition Month” because her fame and acclaim were so great.

Rush More Mural (78 E. Washington)

The backside of the Chicago Cultural Center is a monument to Chicago’s women. “Rush More” is a gigantic mural which honors 20 of the most influential women in Chicago history. The Detours staff have been huge fans from the drop, since we’re very into badass Chicago women as evidenced from our event for Women’s History Month. A non-profit called Murals of Acceptance commissioned the work from South Side artist Kerry James Marshall.

According to a DNAInfo story, the artist “aim[ed] to brighten up the narrow, alley-like street by adding a ‘parklike view’ with a bright sun and trees.” Visitors will definitely spot recognizable faces like Oprah Winfrey and Maggie Daley. I love that women a little further from the spotlight, like Sandra Cisneros, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Harriet Monroe, also made it onto our Rushmore.

Chess Records (2120 S. Michigan)

At 2120 S. Michigan Avenue is a landmark of Chicago blues history. People often highlight blues greats like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and Willie Dixon. Let’s remember that the queen of Chicago blues, Koko Taylor, recorded there, too! Her performance of “Wang Dang Doodle” took fun to another level. Read more about her in “Three Chicago Musicians of Maxwell Street.”

Fine Arts Building (410 S. Michigan)