[5] The one-sided street feature is due in large part to the legal battles of Aaron Montgomery Ward with the city over cleaning up the park and removing most of the structures in it.

[7] Eventually, Ward's ideas were adopted by Daniel Burnham in his Plan of Chicago, which called for "insured light, air, and an agreeable outlook" along the Grant Park street frontage.

The boulevard was widened between 1909 and 1910 causing the Art Institute of Chicago Building to have to move the lions guarding its entrance back 12 feet.

However, several interesting structures have been added to the northern part of the eastern side of Michigan Avenue in Millennium Park such as Crown Fountain and McCormick Tribune Plaza.

Among the current issues today is the trend to redevelop properties by constructing grand towers behind the facades of historic structures along Michigan and Wabash Avenues (the parallel street one block to the west).

This trend is now endangering the Chicago Athletic Association Annex, which has been proposed for demolition to make way for a fifty- to eighty-story condominium tower across from Millennium Park.

[15] The Blackstone has become part of Chicago's history as the city that has hosted more United States presidential nominating conventions (26) than any other two American cities,[16] The Blackstone Hotel has hosted almost every 20th century U.S. president,[17] and it has contributed the phrase "in a smoke-filled room" to American political parlance.

Theodore Roosevelt gave his famous Bull Moose speech in 1912 at the Auditorium and was nominated for President of the United States by the independent National Progressive Party.

The interior includes ornate mosaics, marbles, bronze, and stained-glass domes designed by the Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company.