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Lincoln Park Zoo
Lincoln Park Zoo traces back to 1868, when the Lincoln Park Commissioners received a gift of two pairs of swans from Central Park's Board of Commissioners in New York City — a modest, almost accidental beginning for what's grown into one of the oldest zoos in the United States. Additional animals arrived quickly after that initial gift, including a puma, elk, wolves, eagles, and peacocks, before the zoo purchased its first animal outright in 1874: a bear cub from the Philadelphia Zoo. That founding-by-donation origin has stayed relevant to the zoo's identity in an unexpected way: Lincoln Park Zoo remains one of a small number of zoos in the country to offer free admission, a policy that traces directly back to its civic, publicly funded origins rather than a private, ticket-driven model. Free admission at a zoo of this scale and quality is genuinely rare, and it's shaped the zoo's role in the city — less a single-visit tourist attraction and more a place Chicago families return to repeatedly across a year without the cost consideration most zoos require, embedded directly inside Lincoln Park on the North Side rather than set apart as a standalone destination. For a Chicago attractions list, Lincoln Park Zoo is the essential "free, historic, and genuinely excellent" entry — a zoo that started with two pairs of donated swans in 1868 and never started charging admission, even as it grew into one of the most respected zoos 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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