Weird outdoor & roadside things to do in Chicago
Looking for weird outdoor & roadside oddities in Chicago? These 11 are the genuinely strange ones — Eye Care Indian (Muffler Man), Gulliver in Wonderland (Hector Duarte's House), Leaning Tower of Niles and more — each hand-vetted and sourced, not pulled from a top-ten list. Great for an unusual date, a weird afternoon, or showing a visitor the side of Chicago they'd never find on their own.
-
Eye Care Indian (Muffler Man)
A fiberglass 'Indian Brave' muffler man stands on the flat roof of a low storefront, peering down Pulaski Roa…
-
Gulliver in Wonderland (Hector Duarte's House)
Muralist Hector Duarte wrapped his own Pilsen home-studio in a nearly 3,500-square-foot painting that turns t…
-
Leaning Tower of Niles
A half-scale replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa rises 94 feet over a Chicago suburb, complete with a delibe…
-
The Spindle (Car Kebab) at Paisan's
The original 50-foot "Spindle" that impaled eight cars on a spike in a Berwyn parking lot was torn down in 20…
-
Gemini Giant
A helmeted fiberglass astronaut cradling a rocket, the Gemini Giant is one of the original Space-Race-era 'Mu…
-
Shit Fountain
On the corner of a quiet residential block, a bronze coil shaped unmistakably like a mound of dog excrement s…
-
Garden of the Phoenix & Yoko Ono's Sky Landing
On a wooded island in the middle of Jackson Park sits a traditional Japanese garden whose roots trace to the…
-
Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary (The Magic Hedge)
A 150-yard tangle of shrubs and trees on a lakefront point that draws an absurd density of migratory birds, o…
-
Promontory Point
A man-made peninsula jutting into Lake Michigan, ringed by the lakefront's last surviving original limestone-…
-
Bahá'í House of Worship Gardens
A white temple that rises 190 feet over Lake Michigan, its lacework dome looking like carved stone. The concr…
-
Dickeyville Grotto
Between 1924 and 1930 Father Mathias Wernerus encrusted an entire churchyard in broken glass, seashells, colo…