When I was visiting my brother in Chicago last week, we did this somewhat touristy but seriously cool thing: a boat tour of the architecture and architectural history of downtown Chicago. Chicago architecture is world-renown for its beauty and innovation: it’s been that way ever since the Chicago Fire of 1871, when architects zoomed in for the chance to rebuild the great city from scratch, and it’s lived up to that reputation ever since. (Well, except for the same bad stretch of boring glass boxes that every other city went through…)

I grew up in Chicago, but have never been on this tour before. Here are a few of my favorite pictures.

(More after the jump.)

These little bridge houses were some of my favorite things on the tour. There were lots of them: I’m only including a few of my favorites here.

More in the next post. I’m splitting this up into three posts, so as to not have one post be super image-heavy and hard to load.