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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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Navy Pier
Navy Pier opened on July 15, 1916, originally called Municipal Pier, designed by architect Charles Sumner Frost with inspiration drawn from Daniel Burnham and Edward H. Bennett's 1909 Plan of Chicago. Its original purpose was genuinely utilitarian rather than recreational — a working dock for freighters and passenger ships — though the plan always included space for public recreation and civic events like expositions and pageants alongside the shipping operations. The construction itself involved a detail most visitors never think about: the pier sits on roughly 20,000 logs imported from Oregon and driven directly into the bed of Lake Michigan, a foundation that's supported the structure for well over a century since. The pier's current name dates to 1927, when it was renamed Navy Pier specifically to honor naval veterans of World War I. Over the following century, Navy Pier's identity shifted gradually from working dock to entertainment destination — a transformation that's left it holding both histories at once, evident in a footprint built for freighters that now hosts a Ferris wheel, restaurants, an IMAX theater, and event space rather than cargo operations. For a Chicago attractions list, Navy Pier is the essential "more than a century old, built for ships, now built for everyone" entry — a working 1916 dock that quietly became one of the most-visited entertainment destinations in the Midwest.
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