Wells Drive (formerly Congress Parkway) is a major east–west street in downtown Chicago, Illinois, in the United States.

In 2018, the editorial board of The New York Times praised the Chicago City Council's renaming of the street to honor the journalist and civil rights activist Ida B.

Wells Drive begins at the Jane Byrne Interchange, where it intersects the Kennedy, Dan Ryan and Eisenhower expressways.

Wells Drive, formerly called Congress Parkway, was proposed in the 1909 Plan of Chicago as the central axis of the replanned city.

[4] After an extensive study of alternatives, a Congress Street alignment was included in the city's 1940 Comprehensive Superhighway Plan.

The platforms of LaSalle Street Station required new supports for creation of an underpass for Congress Parkway.

East of State Street, arcaded sidewalks were cut into existing buildings, including the Auditorium Theater, to allow six lanes of auto traffic.

[citation needed] Rather than a new central axis for an expanded business district, the wide, heavily trafficked new street came to represent the southern boundary of the Loop.

[9] When Chicago's new Harold Washington Library opened in October 1991 at State Street and Congress Parkway, it turned attention again to Ida B.

A 2012 reconstruction of the south end of Wacker Drive added extensive landscaping around and over the ramps that connect with Congress Parkway at Franklin Street.

[citation needed] On July 25, 2018, the Chicago City Council renamed the street, which had been called Congress Parkway, Ida B.