Chicago Fireboat River & Lake Cruise Aboard the Fred A Busse — Architecture & Fire History

The deck smells faintly of diesel and varnished wood as the retired fireboat Fred A Busse slides away from the concrete pier between Monroe and DuSable Harbors. On a clear afternoon, the skyline swivels like a mechanical model: glass and limestone, gothic setbacks, and the low, resolute profile of the Art Deco towers that watched over the city through both boom and crisis. Narration comes steady and human—stories of engines and embankments, of river engineering and the oddity that Chicago's water runs the city as surely as its streets.