Dennis McClendon
EXPERIENCE AMBASSADOR

Dennis McClendon is a Chicago historian and geographer. As a certified Chicago Tour-Guide Professional, he often leads bus, boat, and walking tours of the city's architecture and built environment. He is well known as an expert on the city’s built environment and transportation, quoted regularly on WTTW’s “Ask Geoffrey” and WBEZ’s Curious City. He’s passionate about Chicago: its architecture, its transportation, its history, its ethnic neighborhoods, the economic and geographic threads from which the city is woven.

His design firm, Chicago CartoGraphics, creates a wide variety of maps for the tourism industry and real estate firms, for books such as the AIA Guide to Chicago Architecture and the Encyclopedia of Chicago, and the region’s CTA and Pace transit maps.

Certified Tour Guide (CTG), Chicago Tour Guide Professional Association

Dennis McClendon

Provenance

Chicago

Aisle or Window

Window; I want to see the world!

Hidden Gem

Ping Tom Memorial Park, near Chicago's Chinatown. Having Pork BBQ or chicken curry buns while watching the trains, the bridges, the geese, the skyline.

Ideal Sunday

Bicycling the neighborhoods of Chicago

Travel Item

A paper map—to get the big picture

You Must Know

That the lake is always east...

Bucket List

I always enjoy a week in Tokyo or Paris.

My Role

Talking with interesting people from all over about the city I love