The tour bus is cruising through the South Loop, and Bill Hinchliff’s commentary is barely keeping pace.
As we roll past the original Chinatown at Clark and Van Buren Streets, Chicago’s busiest tour guide has to sprint to get through his description of how the Chinese moved around 1911 to an Italian neighborhood to the south before we turn left and head south ourselves, past Printers Row, whose rich history he must tell and whose subsequent redevelopment he must marvel at before we get to Dearborn Station, which he must describe in its glory 100 years ago as a center of the city, and by the time he can take a breath we’re nearly to the New Maxwell Street and then the Shoenhofen Brewing Company Powerhouse/Warehouse on Canalport Avenue and then the China-themed Ping Tom Memorial Park wedged between the Orange Line tracks and the Chicago River.
Barely 20 minutes have passed since we left the Art Institute, which is sponsoring this tour of the Near Southwest Side. We’re not yet to our first scheduled stop and already Hinchliff has filled our heads to overflowing with a century’s worth of history from what might be regarded as a fairly prosaic part of the city.
Hinchliff is a kind of Pied Piper of Chicago history, art and architecture, having led tens of thousands of Chicagoans and visitors through the city’s colorful past as a Chicago Architecture Foundation docent for three decades, and as a full-time freelance tour guide for the Art Institute and dozens of other organizations for the last 10.
One reason for Hinchliff’s popularity with tour groups is that he’s as fun to watch as he is to listen to. He puts the microphone up to the corner of his mouth as he tells us with a chuckle that the most prominent buildings in Chinatown were designed by two enterprising Swedish architects named Michaelson and Rognstad. He breathes deeply and frowns at his watch when a museum docent goes on too long. And he cringes as he apologizes to his mostly elderly charges for unavoidable walks in the cold to attractions that have too many stairs and too few chairs.
By the time he herds his nearly four dozen Chicago natives into the Phoenix restaurant for lunch on this Friday, he’ll have shepherded them in and out of places in their own city that they wouldn’t likely find by themselves: A new Chinese American Museum, a Catholic Church where Chinese and Italians worship together, a spare upstairs room that serves as the headquarters for the Lee Family Association. And his day is only half over; Little Italy is next, and University Village after that.
The Southwest Side is the latest of 21 “core tours” Hinchliff gives on a dizzying variety of subjects, including downtown architecture, religious art, neighborhood history and old cemeteries, covering the metropolitan area from Northwest Indiana to the Loop to Lake and McHenry counties. (And sometimes beyond: He has taken Chicagoans on cultural tours of Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Omaha, Las Vegas and Los Angeles as well as Milwaukee and Springfield.)
“He’s amazing,” says a fan who has attended Hinchliff tours for eight years. Donna Marie Primas, president of the Chicago Tour-Guide Professionals Association, says he stands out from most of her 180-plus members because his knack for marketing tours to various groups enables him to do the job full-time, a rarity in the business.
It seems the only person unimpressed by Hinchliff’s performance is Hinchliff himself, who says he’s “haunted” by the feeling that, somehow, his knowledge doesn’t measure up and his followers’ admiration isn’t deserved. “It always embarrasses me when people call me a historian,” he says. “But I guess it sounds better than ‘tour guide’ on a brochure.”
He first got interested in Chicago history and culture while taking a class in American architecture at Yale in the 1960s. The course began with Chicago and its early skyscrapers, and Hinchliff wrote a term paper on the new Daley and Federal Centers.
In the intervening years, as he led tours while working day jobs as a teacher and school administrator, appreciation for Chicago grew into a passion for the lifelong bachelor. “There are not many other places I could do what I do, where there is so much-architecture, landscapes, historical sites, neighborhoods, places of interest, museums-around which to build tours,” he says.
As we leave the South Water Street Market and round the last turns through the Loop, the bus and the tour guide are still neck-and-neck. And it strikes you there aren’t many other people who could do what he does, either.
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10 MUST-SEE TOURS
1) Alfred Caldwell’s Lily Pool, corner of Fullerton Avenue and Cannon Drive in Lincoln Park.
This small but important Prairie landscape, created by Caldwell in 1938 and restored a few years ago, is a place of tranquillity in the heart of the city-a refuge for both wild and human life.
2) Sherman Park, 55th Street and Racine Avenue.
Notable for its landscaping by the Olmstead brothers, its buildings (the earliest by Daniel Burnham’s firm), and the 18 murals in the fieldhouse, the park also has a large central field surrounded by a lagoon, with bridges to the “mainland.”
3) Elks Memorial, southwest corner of Diversey Parkway and Lakeview Street.
Originally built in 1926 as a memorial to honor Elks members who died in World War I, the monumental building shows the influence of the great Columbian Exposition of 1893 in its combination of architecture, sculpture, painting and glass.
4) Northerly Island Park fieldhouse, formerly Meigs Field terminal, accessible from Solidarity Drive, the road to Adler Planetarium.
This is worth a visit for its classic 1960s interior, an exhibit of photos from the Century of Progress Exhibition of 1933-34 (part of which was on the site) and the fact that you will probably be the only one there, since this new park has yet to be discovered by most Chicagoans.
5) Dan Ryan Memorial Chapel at St. Joseph Hospital, 2900 N. Lake Shore Dr.
It’s a little hard to find because it’s on the 11th floor of the hospital, but visitors are welcome. This is an amazing artifact of the 1960s, characterized by a decorative exuberance that included curving forms, gold mosaic surfaces and stunning windows done in a Modern style using thick chunks of colored glass.
6) Legler Library , 115 S. Pulaski Rd.
Built in 1920, this was the city’s first regional library, which explains the classical grandeur of the architecture: the fine brickwork and limestone trim; an imposing two-story lobby topped by a skylight; the use of marble, ornamental metalwork and elegant wood paneling. There are two big murals, one of them by African-American artist Kerry James Marshall, showing a group of kids enthralled by the world contained in books.
7) Bartlett Gymnasium lobby at the University of Chicago, 5460 S. University Ave.
This space is memorable for the restoration of its 1904 Gothic details, as well as for the conversion of the old gymnasium to a dining hall. Best of all is the spectacular mural by Frederick Clay Bartlett.
8) Vanderpoel Gallery of Art, Ridge Park fieldhouse, 9625 S. Longwood Ave.
Created in 1914 to honor John Vanderpoel, an instructor at the Art Institute, the gallery boasts one of the finest collections anywhere of paintings by Chicago-area artists-and others of national and world renown-of the early 20th Century. It includes a Grant Wood print, two small works by Mary Cassatt, two by Maxfield Parrish and a tiny ivory figure of a naked Sally Rand.
9) Flower Hall in Douglas Park, southeast corner of Ogden Avenue and Sacramento Boulevard.The 1907 building, a collaboration between landscape architect Jens Jensen and architect Hugh Garden, was restored a few years ago. The best part is the grand entrance on Sacramento, an ensemble of Prairie Style lamps and benches, rectangular lily pool and monumental archway.
10) Earl Langdon Neal Gateway Plaza, southwest corner of Halsted Street and Roosevelt Road.
Named for a prominent Chicago attorney who died last year, the plaza is part of the transformation of the old Maxwell Street Market area south of Roosevelt. The main attraction is the “Skyspace” by artist James Turrell, an open-air observatory with a circular opening at the top that frames the sky. The optical effects are magical, especially during sunsets.
