Auditorium Building

The Auditorium Building original configuration combined a theater seating, a four-hundred-room hotel, and 136 offices and stores. The hotel lobby with a notable interior is now Roosevelt University. The Auditorium Building is one of the best-known designs of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan. It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1975 and it was designated a Chicago Landmark on September 15, 1976.

CITY: Chicago

First National Bank of Dwight

Famed architecht Frank Lloyd Wright designed and engineered this bank in 1905, and it is the only one of his three designed banks still standing.

CITY: Dwight

Veterans Affairs Medical Center - Marion

Tours are available at this center, built in 1914, that features an Egyptian architectural motif. It has been serving veterans for 50 years.

CITY: Marion

The Jones House

This Gothic Revival house, built in 1858, it is the oldest brick home in Pontiac.

CITY: Pontiac

Lincoln Courthouse Square Historic Distric

The Lincoln courtroom in Beardstown was the site of the famous Duff Armstrong case, and now features a museum with daily tours.

CITY: Beardstown

The Rookery

John Wellborn Root designed the Rookery in 1885-9, which reflects the development of new structural systems for large urban buildings during that time. It holds one of the most spectacular interior spaces in the state, an elaborate main lobby and light court that were renovated by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) in 1905. The Rookery was named a Chicago Landmark in 1972, listed to the National Register in 1970, and named a National Historic Landmark in 1975. Copy and descriptions courtesy of AIA Illinois and the 150 Great Places in Illinois www.illinoisgreatplaces.com

CITY: Chicago

Pleasant Home

Explore this opulent 30-room mansion designed by prominent Prarie School architect George H. Maher, which today serves as a museum.

CITY: Oak Park

Chicago Union Station

This architectural gem has been featured in many movies over the years, including Derailed. But it's the marble staircase here—featured in the climatic scene from The Untouchables—that still attracts visitors over 20 years later.

CITY: Chicago

McCormick Place

The largest indoor convention exhibit area in the country is 2.2 million square feet, with 8 levels of exhibit halls, restaurants, meeting rooms and audiovisual theaters that provide all the necessary amenities for a successful trade show or convention. McCormick Place is designed by Gene Summers, who worked for Mies van der Rohe. It is derivative of a long-span convention center proposed by Mies van der Rohe. When the earlier version of McCormick was destroyed by fire, the firm C.F. Murphy was retained for the job and hired Summers specifically to design the new structure.

CITY: Chicago

Levere Memorial Temple

Home of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity headquarters, this beautiful Gothic building features stained glass windows by Louis Comfort Tiffany.

CITY: Evanston

Rockefeller Memorial Chapel

Located in Hyde Park, this stunning Gothic chapel (funded by a gift to the University of Chicago by John D. Rockefeller) hosts regular performances by the Rockefeller Chapel Choir and visiting musical artists.

CITY: Chicago

Chicago Board of Trade

The LaSalle Street Financial Corridor is one of the most visually stunning districts in the city. A long canyon of buildings, unlike any other area of Chicago, terminates at the Chicago Board of Trade Building, the 1930 Art Deco masterpiece by Holabird & Root. A sparkling, stainless-steel sculpture of Ceres, the goddess of grain, by John Storrs (1885-1956) caps the composition, visually focusing this whirling financial district on the commodity that enabled so much of Chicago’s growth. The Board of Trade was named a Chicago Landmark in 1977 and listed to the National Register in 1978. Copy and descriptions courtesy of AIA Illinois and the 150 Great Places in Illinois www.illinoisgreatplaces.com

CITY: Chicago

Dole Mansion at the Lakeside Legacy Arts Park

Black walnut doors, detailed wood carvings in the Eastlake style, amazing marble fireplaces: there's so much to see on a tour of the historic Dole Mansion and the original Crystal Lake Country Club (now the Creative Arts Center).

CITY: Crystal Lake

Marina City

This complex, designed by Bertrand Goldberg, includes two corncob-shaped residential towers perched along the Chicago River. Designed to be a “city within a city,” Marina City includes a restaurant, theatre, bowling alley, and a marina for 700 small craft.

CITY: Chicago

Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District

Take a guided or self-guided tour of this historic district that contains the world's greatest concentration of Wright-designed structures built in the Prairie School of Architecture style. Tours are offered daily.

CITY: Oak Park

Crown Hall

Located on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, S.R. Crown Hall is widely regarded as Mies van der Rohe's masterpiece, and is one of the most architecturally significant buildings of the 20th century Modernist Movement.

CITY: Chicago

Oak Park Visitors Center Walking Tour

This PDA guided tour will show you the evolution of architecture in Oak Park, from the Victorian period through to Prairie School and the 1930s Art Deco period. Hear the reflections of the famous people who walked these streets and nurtured their creativity in Oak Park.

CITY: Oak Park

The Ragdale Foundation

Art, architecture, and garden tours of Howard Van Doren Shaw's summer retreat. The house and gardens, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places among examples of the Arts and Crafts movement in the country. It house 12 artists at a time.

CITY: Lake Forest

Aurora Area Architecture

The Aurora area features diverse architectural styles, including designs by Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Bruce Goff and George Grant Elmslie. The area is also home to one of the largest collections of Sears mail order homes.

CITY: Aurora

Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio

This unusual complex served as Wright's private residence and studio from 1889-1909. Here he raised his 6 children. He designed 25 buildings in the neighborhood surrounding the studio.

CITY: Oak Park

Historic Pleasant Home - Oak Park

Explore the opulent 30-room mansion designed by prominent Prairie School architect Geroge H. Maher

CITY: Oak Park

Civic Opera House

The world-renowned Lyric Opera of Chicago performs in one of North America's most beautiful opera houses, the Civic Opera House. The decorative character of the entire building is a hybrid of Art Nouveau and Art Deco styles. Comedy-tragedy masks and cornucopia of instruments abound as playful ornaments around entrances, inspired by the Paris Opera House designed by Jean-Louis-Charles Garnier. The famous painted fire curtain (depicting the parade scene from Aida) and the interior decoration details of the Civic Opera House were created by American artist Jules Guerin in a palette of salmon pinks, roses, olives, golds and bronzes.

CITY: Chicago

Harold Washington Library Center

The creation of Harold Washington Library Center is a product of a widely publicized architectural competition. Designed by Tom Beeby, the red brick, granite, and glass composition uses traditional design motifs to establish itself as a civic structure. A two-story battered granite base supports a five-story brick body punctuated by five arches along State Street and three facing Congress and Van Buren. The Harold Washington Library Center is a hybrid design that reflects the conflicting architectural ideas that characterized the late 1980s.

CITY: Chicago

River Forest Methodist Church

First stop of the Frank Lloyd Wright Preservation Trusts' River Forest Walking Tour.

CITY: River Forest

Cedarville Historical Museum

This museum is located in an 1889 school building and features a permanent exhibit honoring Jane Addams, who was born and raised in Cedarville. Miss Addams was an internationally famous humanitarian and social work pioneer who founded Chicago's Hull House and won the Nobel Peace Prize. Museum exhibits include personal items and memorabilia from her life and the life of her family. There are also changing exhibits on topics of local historical interest and a research center and a research center.

CITY: Cedarville

John Deere Home

John Deere's home still stands with a working replica of his blacksmith shop and a preserved archeological dig that unearthed Deere's original shop.

CITY: Grand Detour

Tribune Tower

Home of the Chicago Tribune newspaper offices, this Gothic-Revival landmark features flying buttresses and gargoyles This is a result of New York architects John Mead Howells and Raymond M. Hood's design that was chosen as a winner out of 263 entries from twenty-three countries during an international architectural competition to immodestly "erect the most beautiful building in the world" in 1922.

CITY: Chicago

Farnsworth House

Master architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe created the ultimate minimalist masterpiece, the Farnsworth House, in pastoral Plano in 1951. The stellar structure of floor-to-ceiling glass seemingly "floats" above the rambling Fox River.

CITY: Plano

St. James Cathedral

The St. James parish, featuring the oldest Episcopal church in Chicago, is one of the oldest in Illinois. The church's plaza is used for a variety of religious and community activities.

CITY: Chicago

Ridgeland Historic District Tour

This self-guided audio tour takes you through one of the "Prettiest Painted Places in America," the Ridgeland Historic District, to view great architecture and hear stories of famous Oak Lawn natives.

CITY: Oak Lawn

English Farm

As you drive by this farm, your eye is drawn upward to a towering brick structure located near the modern home. The structure, erected around 1913, is one of a dozen brick water towers still standing in Illinois.

CITY: Paris

Federal Reserve Bank

A thirty story court house and a forty-five-story office building, the federal building was completed after Mies' death in 1969. The building's sober black and gray exterior expression, the steel mullion and glass model, counterpoints the curving forms and bright red paint of Alexander Calder's sculpture. Photo courtesy of AIA Chicago, Wes Urschel.

CITY: Chicago

Marytown National Religious Shrine of St. Maximillion Kolbe

One of the nation's most beautiful religious sites features beautiful stained glass windows and seven-foot mosaics decorating the chapel, as well as seven types of marble.

CITY: Libertyville