Promontory Point, the man-made peninsula under your feet, gives the city its most beloved skyline view. Promontory Point juts into Lake Michigan on landfill, designed in the late 1930s by landscape architect Alfred Caldwell in the Prairie style, with curving paths, limestone step-stones at the water's edge, and a council ring meant for gathering around a fire. Generations of Hyde Parkers have come here to swim off the rocks, watch fireworks, and marry at the field house.
When the city proposed replacing the natural limestone revetment with concrete in the early 2000s, the neighborhood fought back fiercely to protect it, and the battle still simmers. Walk out to the tip and look north up the curve of the lakeshore; from here the entire downtown skyline rises across the water, six miles off, one of the great free views in Chicago and the reward for coming all the way down the South Side.