Plateau Strategy
The story
Come down to river level and let the street disappear. Chicago's towers are familiar in photographs, but the Riverwalk changes their proportions. From here the buildings rise without a foreground, the bridges become moving machines and the river reflects a second, wavering skyline.
The path did not arrive all at once. Reconstruction of Wacker Drive created an early section, and later phases extended the walk west as a chain of places with different names and uses. The Marina, Cove and other rooms make the river edge more than a corridor. They give people reasons to pause, sit close to the water and see the city from below.
The river itself is part of Chicago's engineering story. Work completed in 1900 reversed its flow away from Lake Michigan to protect the drinking-water supply. The city once treated this water as a back door. The Riverwalk turns it into a front room. Watch one bridge open if you are lucky, then follow the south bank a short distance to the Chicago Architecture Center.