Picture a pier that has been almost everything a city could ask of it. Opened in 1916 as Municipal Pier, this 3,300-foot finger of concrete reaching into Lake Michigan was built for shipping and for public recreation both, with a streetcar line running its length. Renamed Navy Pier in 1927 to honor World War I veterans, it served as a Navy training center in World War II, where thousands of pilots, including a young George H. W. Bush, qualified for carrier landings on two paddle-wheel ships moored offshore.
For a time it even housed a branch of the University of Illinois. By the 1970s it was nearly derelict, then reborn in 1995 as a lakefront playground. Look toward the Ferris wheel, inspired by the original built for Chicago's 1893 world's fair, and out at the open lake horizon beyond.