Chicago History Museum

About this audio guide

This guide to the Chicago History Museum follows a team of German artisans who, in the early 1930s, carved seven miniature scenes of a vanished Chicago from wood, plaster and paint, though none of them had witnessed the events they depicted. You'll hear how they worked from old maps, letters and newspaper sketches instead of photographs, hand-carving every log of the Sauganash Tavern and every plank of the Rush Street Bridge. The artisans themselves went unrecorded by name, even as their dioramas of the Great Chicago Fire and other scenes outlasted whole additions built around them.