Navy Pier

This guide to Navy Pier in Chicago traces the pier's century of feeding crowds, from its 1916 opening as a working freight dock designed by Charles Sumner Frost, through its 1920s heyday drawing over three million visitors a year to its dining pavilions and dance hall, to its renaming in 1927 and a wartime stint as a training base. Along the way you'll meet the streetcar families who spent whole days here without going hungry. Walk the length of the pier toward the water and picture the picnic groves that once stood where the beer garden is now.