Magnificent Mile

This guide to the Magnificent Mile in Chicago starts at the base of Tribune Tower, where pieces of the Berlin Wall, the Great Pyramid and the Great Wall of China are set into the stone. It traces the habit behind them to 1914, when Tribune editor Robert McCormick began pocketing fragments of bombed cathedrals on a European battlefield tour, and how that grief became a standing order for foreign correspondents to bring back a piece of wherever they were reporting from.