Toledo to Minneapolis
674 miles, five days
Click the buttons below to view detailed maps for each day's itinerary.
Map All Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5Day 1: Toledo to Chicago, 245 miles
It's no secret anymore: The Midwest is home to some of the most innovative contemporary architecture in America. Start your survey of Midwest Modern in Toledo, Ohio, the latest rusty industrial town to pin its hopes of economic revival on a design-forward new museum. Forgoing the splashiness of Frank Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim, the avant-garde Tokyo architects SANAA opted for subtlety in constructing the (1) Toledo Museum of Art's Glass Pavilion (2445 Monroe St.; 419/255-8000; www.toledomuseum.org), a sublime single-story glass box containing galleries and glass-making rooms, across the street from the museum's original Neoclassical building. From Toledo, it's a nearly straight shot west on I-80 across the top of Indiana and onto I-90 around the curve of Lake Michigan into downtown Chicago.
Day 2: Chicago
The Windy City takes its rich architectural history very seriously. And it should: Chicago pioneered the skyscraper, nurtured the careers of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mies van der Rohe, and was home to the world's tallest building—the Sears Tower—until Malaysia's Petronas Towers snatched the title away in 1998. The (2) Chicago Architecture Foundation (312/922-3432; www.architecture.org) runs dozens of tours of the city's famous and lesser-known landmarks, from walking tours of Wright's Oak Park houses to happy-hour visits of Art Deco buildings and modern skyscrapers. Go on your own to the city's newest landmark, (3) Millennium Park (201 E. Randolph St.; 312/742-1168; www.millenniumpark.org), with its Frank Gehry–designed band shell and installations by sculptor Anish Kapoor and Spanish artist Jaume Plensa—whose high-tech fountain turns 50-foot-tall LED portraits into modern-day water-spouting gargoyles.
>See our hotel picks for Chicago.
Day 3: Chicago to Milwaukee, 92 miles
Hop on northbound I-94 to Milwaukee—hardly a design destination until the (4) Milwaukee Art Museum (700 N. Art Museum Dr.; 414/224-3200; www.mam.org) unveiled its Quadracci Pavilion in 2001. International superstar Santiago Calatrava's first building in the United States is actually an extension of the bland, blocky 1957 structure created by Eero Saarinen. With its wing-like features crowning light-filled galleries, the addition soars above the Lake Michigan shoreline like a giant prehistoric bird poised for flight.
>See our hotel picks for Milwaukee.
Day 4: Milwaukee to Minneapolis, 337 miles
It's a long haul across the Dairy State to the Twin Cities. Heading west on I-94, take a quick detour through Madison and west on Route 14 to Spring Green, the site of Frank Lloyd Wright's home, studio, and school, (5) Taliesin (877/588-7900; www.taliesinpreservation.org). Wright made his home on the rolling 600-acre estate (named for a Welsh poet, in honor of his family heritage) for nearly 50 years; he also refined his Prairie School aesthetic there and established a still-functioning architecture school. Tours run May through October and range from a one-hour visit of Wright's residence, filled with custom-designed furniture and the architect's extensive collection of Asian art and antiques, to a four-hour walkabout of the larger estate. Get back on I-94, heading westbound across the Mississippi River and into Minneapolis.
>See our hotel picks for Minneapolis.
Day 5: Minneapolis
Minneapolis has a well-earned reputation as a bastion of hipness and high culture in the Heartland. In the last two years, several of the city's top institutions unveiled major additions and renovations by world-class architects. The new home of the venerable (6) Guthrie Theater, Jean Nouvel's first building in the United States, is a sublime fun house of color above the banks of the Mississippi (818 S. 2nd St.; 612/377-2224; www.guthrietheater.org). For eight decades, the (7) Walker Art Center (1750 Hennepin Ave.; 612/375-7600; www.walkerart.org) has been among America's leading hubs of modern and contemporary art. In 2005 Pritzker Prize winners Herzog & de Meuron added a new wing to the existing 1970's brick museum, an energetic jumble of sharply angled blocks sheathed in a grid of crumpled, icy aluminum and milky translucent glass. Last summer, the (8) Minneapolis Institute of Arts (2400 3rd Ave. S.; 612/870-3200; www.artsmia.org), one of the greatest encyclopedic museums in the world, appended a new wing by Michael Graves to its Neoclassical McKim, Mead & White original. The new Target Wing, a solid limestone block that echoes the stately original, added 27 new galleries to house the modern art, photography, and textile collections.
>See our hotel picks for Minneapolis.
