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Map and Sonic Points of Interest
Featured Pedway Route Overview
1 mile one-way, about 30-45 min
IMAGE: Map of the Chicago Pedway System
Image Credit: City of Chicago
Directions and Parking for HEAR BELOW: My Pedway Soundwalks
The 2025 HEAR BELOW: My Pedway Soundwalks consists of a series of in-person artist-led soundwalks and a self-guided soundwalk path featured on this page. The in-person soundwalks may deviate from the featured path on this page. The self-guided route can be done at your leisure, however, most areas of the path are only open M-F between 9:00am and 5:00pm. This year’s featured path begins at either at 303 East Wacker or City Hall, you can travel in either direction. Or you can enter halfway through and make your own path!
If you are entering via City Hall — enter the building on street level, and staying on street level find two escalators going underground on the east side of the building. You can ask around for the entrance to the pedway. If entering via 303 East Wacker, enter the building from the street-level lobby and take the escalators or stairs down into the pedway.
A NOTE ON WIFI. For the most part, plan for limited WiFi in the pedway. Data should be available throughout the pedway and is dependent on your carrier. Our advice is to plan ahead to load maps before starting your soundwalk. GPS, while not as accurate underground as above ground should be relatively accurate.
Let’s Get Started – Breathing Exercise
When you get to the beginning of the HEAR BELOW soundwalk, take some time to slow down before beginning your walk. Relax your body, feel your feet firmly on the ground, and let your arms hang loosely at your sides. If you are comfortable, close your eyes. Breathe in through your nose for five counts, hold it for five counts, and breathe out of your mouth for five counts. Repeat three to five times until you feel yourself slowing down and relaxing.
Continue breathing and listen to the sounds all around you. Listen to the sounds closest to you. Are they constant or sustained, or are they intermittent? Next, listen for the sounds farther away from you. Again, ask yourself, are they constant or intermittent? Finally, listen for the sounds farthest away from you, ones you can barely hear. Are these sounds constant or intermittent? Are any of the sounds you are hearing unusual? Are you hearing things you don’t expect?
Take a few more breaths as you have been doing. When you are ready, open your eyes and begin the HEAR BELOW soundwalk. As you proceed, it is best to walk in silence. A soundwalk is intended to be a personal listening experience. If you are walking with someone else, save your thoughts to the end of the walk before having a conversation. The sound of your footsteps becomes part of the walk; listen to the leaves, gravel, and pavement under your feet. Pause at each of the following sonic points of interest. Listen to the sound around you, read the description, and listen to the brief recording.
Pedway Soundwalks with Featured Artists
2025 Self-Guided Route
(Map Design Courtesy of Allen Moore)
Audio Recording of Featured Path, Starting at City Hall and ending at 303 East Wacker Dr.
Sonic Points of Interest
The following “Sonic Points of Interests” are selected locations along the featured path curated by the 2025 Hear Below featured artists: Jeanette Dominguez, Allen Moore, and Sam Anthem. You’re invited to listen to the attached recordings done by the artists or visit these spaces [see map above] to listen in-person.
SP 1 — Underneath City Hall
(picked by Sam)
What can you hear below the hall where the government of the city of chicago makes its laws? What is the sonic aftermath of everything spoken in this political nexus? Here you’ll find some revolving doors, two escalators that connect the room to city hall, and four humming vending machines. One of the vending machines pictures a white man eating a double-decker sandwich with white bread, meat, lettuce, tomato, pickles, and peppers. A layer of semi-transparent text plastered sideways on his face reads “Enjoy!” There is, however, no double-decker sandwich with greens and proteins to be found in this vending machine. And if that is disappointing, then you are invited to imagine the hum of that vending machine to be a sonification of that disappointment, a rumbling of false advertisement.
SP 2 — Block 37
(picked by Allen)
Block 37 booms with the energy of the city—distant conversations blend with elevator music, the chime of ringing cell phones and the gentle hum of escalators. Feel the subtle shift in pressure as the doors glide open, welcoming you to the bustle of State Street.
SP 3 — Escalator Corridor between Millennium Station and OneTwoPru
(picked by Jeannette)
As you enter the corridor between Millennium Station and OneTwo Pru, listen for the shift. The air feels different—cooler, more contained. Escalators hum beneath blue light, their rhythmic whirring layering into a mechanical melody.
Notice how the sound builds. One escalator blends into the next, folding into the ambient architecture of the space. The light seems to beam you upward, transporting you toward a more restricted, yet oddly playful zone (yes, there are pickleball courts).
The revolving doors behind you close like portals. Ahead lies a different atmosphere: quiet, secured, privatized. It feels less like a public passage and more like the interior of a controlled vessel.
What are you walking through?
What carries you?
SP 4 — Millennium Station
(picked by Allen)
Millennium Station resonates with the rhythmic sounds of progress—listen for the South Shore Line construction, the sharp precision of saws slicing through metal, the authoritative calls of Metra conductors, and the steady hum of train engines.
SP 5 — Lower Level of Millenium Garage Staircase 9
(picked by Sam)
There are several ways to get from Millenium Garage to Millenium Train Station. Perhaps the least appealing way is to cut through Staircase 9. The air is damp, and varyingly sized puddles accompany the ground. As you descend to the lower level of this staircase room, you find an enclosed space. The quiet is strong. What may be heard are distant echoes, screeches, engines, other sounds hard to name. Look on the walls. Take note of what you see. There you’ll find other kinds of echoes, visual ones — both from passersby and from hired painters, both responding to the other.
SP 6 – 303 East Wacker
(picked by Jeanette)
The sound at 303 East Wacker feels liminal—sharp, echoing, almost too clean. Marble floors reflect footsteps with unsettling precision. Glass walls hold the air in place. Escalators glide in a smooth, mechanical loop, creating a rhythm that feels both repetitive and distant.
Every now and then, a maintenance worker whistles—soft, almost playful. For a moment, it cuts through the sterile quiet like a melody in a forgotten corridor. (heard in the recording)
Music drifts faintly from nearby shops. Traffic echoes from above. If you sit for a moment in the open seating area, listen to how sound behaves in this pocket. Does it travel? Settle? Dissolve?
There’s a hush, not silence, but something curated. The air is conditioned. The HVAC hums, low and steady, like the breath of something unseen. Everything feels contained, maintained, monitored.
The built environment here reflects the care and control it receives—polished, acoustically enclosed, and quietly upheld by invisible systems and hands. At different times of day, the pedway reshapes itself. The sound is always shifting, and you’re always arriving.
Concluding Thoughts
When you get to the end of the HEAR BELOW soundwalk, take a few moments to relax before exiting the pedway. Take a few deep breaths as you did before the soundwalk and think about what you have heard and witnessed. Think about the world of sounds and sights of the pedway. What is unique about each of the spaces below and above the street level and how does the architecture and materials reflect the sound of the different spaces? How is the east part of the walk—through the Milliennium Station and the Chicago Cultural Center—different from west part of the walk—through the shopping centers, train stations and cavernous spaces like those in City Hall. How is the sound different and why?
We welcome your thoughts and reflections on these questions and on your soundwalk experience. Post your images and videos to social media using the hashtag #hearbelow. If you would like to share them with us so we can share them with others, you may comment below, or if you would like to share audio, video, or still images from your soundwalk, please contact us.
