“Hillary and the tour were dazzling, amazing, and full of wonderful surprises. She has created one of the most enjoyable, beautiful and unique tours we have ever taken.”
We are the FIRST tour company in Chicago that has ARCHITECTURE INTERIORS as the focus of nearly every tour route.
While some tours from other companies might enter a few buildings, and certain newer companies offer cheap copies of our award-winning tour routes, we have made architecture interiors the main focus of all of our regular tour routes for more than a decade, and we have developed professional relationships with the management and security of the buildings we visit. They know us; they trust us; they welcome us. We specialize in showcasing the stunning and most often overlooked interior spaces in downtown Chicago and surrounding neighborhoods. We get locals on our tours all the time who say, “I can’t believe I walked by this building on my way to the train for 25 years, and I never thought to go inside.” And now you can!
It's all about the tour guides, and these guides are simply awesome.
Hillary has a diverse background in teaching, plus years of improv comedy experience (with the iO Chicago and independently). She also has substantial experience in researching, creating, and leading architecture tours of Chicago, both boat tours on the river and lake, and walking tours on land, and was head of product development for a major boat tour company in Chicago. Hillary adds only very specially chosen and highly trained guides to her company's roster each year, seeking out guides specifically based on their skill sets and knowledge of an area to best represent a particular tour route that she researches and creates herself. Hillary and her guides all have theater and/or comedy backgrounds, and as she always says, you can teach content, but you can’t teach personality. Our guides are just awesome.
We provide you with the much-needed “other side” to a boat or bus tour experience.
Though a boat tour is a wonderful way to see Chicago, it has a few drawbacks: big crowds, no personal interaction with your guide, and — especially — you only see the exteriors of buildings! For this reason, on our architecture walking tours, we love to focus on the fantastic and often under-appreciated interiors of buildings throughout downtown Chicago — including many of the buildings along the river. We even provide you with an "insider's scoop" on lots of the exterior architectural elements that most guides won't show you.
We'll tell you real stories, not just a forgettable laundry list of facts.
We know that the best way to get information to "stick" with people — and to be interesting to people — is to convey it like a story, with a logical beginning, middle, and end. Most architecture tours of Chicago present you the city like an overwhelming laundry list of information that you'll likely forget. For us, there is a reason we are exploring a certain area, or following a certain path: the architecture that we explore is like the vocabulary of the larger story we are telling. To that end, each of our tour routes is highly unique, each telling its own story of Chicago in its own way.
We make up our own rules and style.
Our architecture walking tours are created not according to any particular company's existing "style" or parameters, but rather, they are created purely — 100% — according to what we find to be the most interesting and worthwhile things to see in Chicago in a short amount of time. Period. These walking tours showcase what we truly enjoy about this city, and they show you Chicago as only someone who truly knows it and loves it can.
Being a small local business in a city celebrated for its labor history, we strongly believe in good business ethics, and we champion small, local business.
Our tours are not free, and they are not led by unpaid volunteers. We are upfront about our affordable and fair pricing, about our skill sets, about our backgrounds, and about our belief in supporting local, small business. Hillary puts a LOT of work — her time, her research, her creativity, her passion — into creating and leading these tours, and she hires qualified guides who deserve to be paid for their expertise and hard work. You can rest assured that when you book a tour with us, you are not only supporting local, small business, but you also know that your payment goes directly to paying your guides. And we believe that guides should be paid, period. We support fellow small local businesses, and encourage you to always shop small and shop local!