Navy Pier (Chicago, IL)

Navy Pier extends 1 km into Lake Michigan from the Streeterville neighbourhood on Chicago’s near north side. It opened in 1916 as a shipping and warehouse facility, served various wartime purposes, and was redeveloped as a public attraction in 1995. Today it is the most-visited attraction in the Midwest by attendance, which tells you something about its draw and also about its limitations.

The pier itself is free to enter. The commercial attractions on it are not.

What’s Actually Worth Doing

The Centennial Wheel, a 60-metre Ferris wheel installed in 2016, gives genuinely good views over Lake Michigan and the Chicago skyline. A gondola ride costs around $18 per person. On a clear day you can see the Willis Tower, the John Hancock Center, and the entire lakefront from Navy Pier north to Evanston. The view from the top looking west over the city with the lake behind you is the best free-ish vantage point on the north side.

The Chicago Children’s Museum is among the better children’s museums in the country for under-12s, with well-designed interactive exhibits. Costs around $17-20 per person; under-1s free. Worth the price on a rainy day with children.

The IMAX Theatre runs mainstream films and documentary presentations. Good for an evening, nothing distinctive.

The Crystal Gardens, an indoor tropical garden on the second floor, is free with pier admission and is a quieter spot to escape summer heat. Palms and ferns in a glass-covered atrium.

What to Skip

The shopping on Navy Pier is indistinguishable from any other mid-range American retail experience. Souvenir shops, candy stores, chain restaurants. None of it requires a visit to a specific pier.

The Better Chicago Experiences Nearby

The Architecture Boat Tour, operated by Chicago Architecture Center, departs from the Chicago River docks (a 15-minute walk southwest from Navy Pier) and is the single best structured introduction to Chicago as a city. The tours cover over 50 buildings along the Chicago River, with explanations of why Chicago’s architecture defines American modernism. Tours cost $45-55 and run for 90 minutes. Book in advance.

Millennium Park, another 15 minutes southwest along the lakefront trail, contains Cloud Gate (the “Bean”), the Crown Fountain, the Pritzker Pavilion (a Frank Gehry-designed outdoor concert venue), and access to the Art Institute of Chicago. This is genuinely worth 2-3 hours and costs nothing for the outdoor spaces.

The Art Institute of Chicago (directly adjacent to Millennium Park) is one of the three or four best art museums in the country. A Sunday through Thursday admission is around $25 for adults; free for Chicago residents. The collection includes Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” (the pointillist painting from the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), Grant Wood’s “American Gothic,” and an exceptional collection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works.

Getting to Navy Pier

Bus 124 runs directly from Michigan Avenue and Randolph Street. Taxi or Uber from the Loop takes about 10 minutes in normal traffic. The Riverwalk, a pedestrian path along the Chicago River from the Loop, connects to the lakefront and is a better approach if the weather is good.

Parking on Navy Pier is available but expensive and unnecessary if using public transit or arriving on foot from nearby hotels on Michigan Avenue.

Garrett Popcorn

Chicago’s famous Garrett Mix (caramel corn and cheese corn combined) is available from the Garrett Popcorn shop on the pier and from multiple locations across the city. The combination sounds wrong and tastes right. The original shop at 26 W. Randolph Street in the Loop has been there since 1949 and is the correct purchase if you are already downtown. Navy Pier’s version is the same product.