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Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of Chicago traces back to 1866, when a group of 35 artists founded the Chicago Academy of Design with ambitions to run both an art school and a gallery. The Great Chicago Fire destroyed their building in 1871, and the organization struggled financially for years afterward before members regrouped and established the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts in 1879. That reorganized institution adopted its current name in 1882 under the leadership of banker Charles L. Hutchinson, who guided the acquisition of property on Michigan Avenue and oversaw significant expansion through the 1880s. The museum moved into its present home on October 31, 1893, occupying a Beaux-Arts building originally constructed for the World's Columbian Exposition — meaning the museum's building predates most of its own founding-era permanent collection. The official opening reception, held December 8, 1893, featured performances by conductor Theodore Thomas and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, a genuinely grand civic occasion for what had started, less than three decades earlier, as a struggling art school rebuilding from a fire. For a Chicago attractions list, the Art Institute is the essential "world-class collection, in a building built for a World's Fair" entry — an art academy that survived the Great Chicago Fire and grew into one of the most significant art museums in the country.
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Willis Tower Skydeck
Willis Tower topped out on May 3, 1973, and opened that September as the Sears Tower, at the time the tallest building in the world — a title it held for roughly two and a half decades before being surpassed by newer skyscrapers in Asia. The Skydeck observation deck opened the following year, on June 22, 1974, on the 103rd floor, 1,353 feet above the street, and is described as the highest observation deck in the United States. The Skydeck draws roughly 1.7 million visitors annually on its own, but its most talked-about feature came decades later: a major renovation beginning in January 2009 added retractable glass balconies, informally called "The Ledge," that extend visitors out over open air with nothing but glass beneath their feet. The all-glass boxes, rated to hold five short tons, opened to the public on July 2, 2009, with a fifth glass ledge added on the building's west facade in May 2022. The building itself was renamed Willis Tower in 2009 following a lease agreement with Willis Group Holdings, a rebrand that took years for many longtime Chicagoans to actually adopt in casual conversation, where "Sears Tower" stuck around informally for a long time afterward. For a Chicago attractions list, the Willis Tower Skydeck is the essential "step out over the city" entry — a fifty-year-old observation deck whose glass-floored ledges have made it one of the most viscerally memorable single moments on any Chicago visit.
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