Unusual Things To Do In Chicago

An Overview of Chicago

Found on the windy shores of Lake Michigan, Chicago is among the United States’ largest cities with a long history of industrial development, trade development and mobster history. The city is home to world-renowned sites for artwork, as well as a bold skyline with buildings like the Willis Tower (formerly the Sears Tower) and Tribune Tower. With some of the most compelling clubs, bars, restaurants, public venues and museums in the United States, there are many unusual things to do in Chicago.

Unusual Things To Do In Chicago

Atomic Cake

The Atomic Cake is a monstrous dessert made from Bavarian cream custard, fresh bananas, and glazed strawberries. The concoction is then layered with fudge, whipped cream and in some recipes, buttercream. The dessert has been a iconic South Side treat of the city’s since the 1950s.

Tiffany Dome in the Chicago Cultural Center

Found on the south side of the Chicago Cultural Center, American artist Louis Comfort Tiffany created the largest Tiffany glass dome in the world. The massive, 38-foot translucent structure of colored glass filters light through small fish-scale-shaped pieces of glass for astonishing effects.

Wicker Park Secret Agent Supply Co.

This nonprofit creative writing center sells offbeat and quirky spy-related gadgets, gizmos and gifts.

Garfield Park Conservatory

This enormous indoor conservatory park is filled with a swimming pool, fishing lagoon, athletic fields and stunning botanical spaces, often further accented with exhibits. The garden spaces are filled with palm trees, waterfalls, koi ponds and other miniture biospheres, including a desert room.

The Bean (Cloud Gate) in Millennium Park

The Cloud Gate public sculpture, affectionally known as “The Bean” is one of the most iconic and popular sites in Chicago. The monumental artwork is entirely reflective, giving the impression of a curved Chicago skyline all around it. The Bean is located in Millennium Park, one of the most popular public spaces in the city. The park space hosts the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, the Crown Fountain, the urban Lurie Garden and Wrigley Square.

Green Mill Jazz Club

The Green Mill is one of Chicago’s potent institutions with nightly performances showcasing local musicians to big-name artists. The club was famous as a popular spot for some of Chicago’s most notorious mobsters, including Al Capone. Enjoying old-school Chicago-style jazz is one of the most iconic and unusual things to do in Chicago. The excellent jazz club is a cash-only venue and operates on a first-come, first-serve basis. No reservations are available.

Shedd Aquarium

This is an indoor public aquarium with over 30,000 aquatic animals and impressive views overlooking Lake Michigan.

The Chicago Botanical Garden

The Chicago Botanical Gardens are an impressive living plant museum created from nine islands within the Cook County Forest Preserves. The gardens, which are open thorughout the year, contain unique themes, such as the Skokie River Corridor, the Dixon Prairie, a Japanese Garden, a small Model Railroad Garden, the Waterfall Garden and extended walking trails in the Mary Mix McDonald Woods.

Navy Pier

Navy Pier is one of Chicago’s most popular historical landmarks and recreation centers. The Pier is a 3,300 foot-long pier jutting into Lake Michigan with outdoor and indoor attractions. The Pier is free to enter and open to the public year-round. The site is especially well-known for the Centennial Ferris Wheel, the Observation Deck, the famed indoor The Crystal Gardens and numerous restaurants.

The 606 Elevated Park and Trail

The 606, otherwise known as Bloomingdale Trail, is a extended biking and running trail passing art installations, park spaces, landscape designs and winding routes. The trail, which is elevated above street level, once served as a rail line that connected four neighborhoods in northwest Chicago. The route extends for roughly three miles.

Deep Dish Pizza

No list of Chicago would be complete without their signiture deep dish pizza, a pan-baked pizza with high edges and ample amounts of cheese, tomato sauce and toppings.

The International Museum of Surgical Science

Found in Lincoln Park, this museum is filled with a wide range of medical machines and artifacts, including X-ray machines, apothecary tools, uniforms and many portrays of famed historical medical figures. The museum also hosts extensive old medical tomes, unique statues and some rather macabre details about the history of surgery. This creepy museums is one of the most unusual things to do in Chicago.

Oz Park

This small park, created to improve run-down neighborhoods, follows the iconic themes from the Wizard of Oz. There are statues throughout the park, including Scarecrow, Tin Man, Toto, Cowardly Lion, and Dorothy.

The Chicago Riverwalk

The Chicago Riverwalk is a public space following the main branch of the Chicago River. The path is filled with some of the city’s entertainment and culinary venues, including outdoor bars, several museums, sites for pier fishing, kayaking routes, public artworks and access to the city’s harbors.

Busy Beaver Button Museum

This is a surprisingly extensive museum with an enormous collection dating back to the 1800s. The collection includes buttons, ban pins, political slogan buttons, holiday badges and more.

Graceland Cemetery

Graceland Cemetery is one of the great historic cemeteries of America. There’s a vast variety of tombs, serving as the final resting place for many famed and compelling figures in Chicago’s tumultuous history.

Lucent

Lucent is a stunning sculpture found in the lobby of Chicago’s John Hancock Building. The massive structure contains 3,115 lights on a scale-map matching the night skies in the northern hemisphere. The lights utalize glass bulbs, fed through illuminated fiber-optic lines.

Dave’s Down to Earth Rock Shop

This excellent little curiosity rock shop sells geodes, gemstones, fossils, jewlery and other archaeological trinkets. The shop eventually expanded with enough rare pieces to open the David and Sandra Douglass Prehistoric Life Museum, which contains fossils across all geological periods extending back to the Pre-Cambrian era over three billion years ago. The museum includes amber-encased insects, a rare cave-bear skull and much more.

Willis Tower Glass Platform

The Willis Tower Glass Platform, otherwise known as the Skydeck Chicago, is a glass-floor observation on the 103rd floor of the Willis tower providing commanding views across four states.

Cave-In-Rock

This is a large, rather squat-looking cave cut into a cliff wall in Cave-in-rock state park. The rather peaceful setting was once used as a popular site for smugglings, gambling, prostitution, murders and high-lake piracy.

Oriental Institute Museum

This is a surprisingly well-designed and beautifully filled museum displaying over 400,000 artifacts from ancient civilizations and cultures, including Mesopotamia, Sumer, Egypt, Assyria, Israel, Iran, Nubia, and more. This hidden gem is one of the most unusual things to do in Chicago. Despite being relatively unknown, the museum has some exceptionally rare pieces, including the ancient Temple of Sargon, mathematical proofs from Babylonian times and large walls of Egyptian art.

Tsavo Man Eaters

Found in the Field Museum of Natural History, there are a pair of maneless male Tsavo Lions taxidermized behind a glass case. These lions, native to Kenya, once stalled a 1898 construction project during a long and concentrated killing spree. Over the nine month project, somewhere between 35 and 135 construction workers were stalked and eaten by these two lions, named by natives “Ghost” and “Darkness.”

The Lincoln Tomb

There are few American Presidents who will ever command the same fame as Abraham Lincoln. His final resting place following is near a 117-foot-tall obelisk and bright granite tomb surrounded by bronze statues of the Great Emancipator. Rubbing the nose of Lincoln’s statue is considered good luck, so the President’s nose is far brighter than the rest of his statue.

Galloping Ghost Arcade

The Galloping Ghost Arcade is an old-school arcade venue filled with retro and new game systems. The modestly-sized building is fairly crammed with game systems, including defining classics like Donkey Kong, Pac Man, and Q*Bert. Visitors pay a cover fee and are allowed to play unlimited within.

Rockmen Guardians

Found within Sinnissippi Park, there are a series of stoic stone statues holding a long and quiet vigil near Rock River. The large guardians are 12-feet tall and comprised entirely of bulky boulders. All figures look prepped for combat in strong poses, suits of armor and the occasional sword.

Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park

This large campus park has 29 large-scale sculptures dotting the landscape.

The American Toby Jug Museum

Toby Jugs are strange pieces of drinking pottery loosely defined as “figures” or “jug characters” with heads, faces or likenesses of bodies used as a drinking vessel. The American Toby Jug Museum is well-stocked with entire shelves of these unique forms of sipping cups.

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