Explore the real-world places that appear in Scythe by Neal Shusterman. Each location on the map shows what happens there in the novel, the real history of the place, and what's there today. Featured locations include The Scythe Conclave — Grand Hall, Scythe Faraday's Home, The Tonist Monastery, The Revival Center, The Market District Gleaning and 9 more.
Chicago Civic Center area — Seat of Scythedom authority
The Conclave is where all the Scythes of MidMerica gather periodically to report their gleanings, debate policy, and render judgment. It is here that Scythe Faraday presents Citra and Rowan as his apprentices, setting the entire plot in motion. The fateful ruling is made that only one apprentice can be ordained — and the other must be gleaned by the one who passes, a cruel twist engineered by the corrupt Scythe Goddard and his allies to destabilize Faraday.
Chicago's Daley Center, opened in 1965, serves as the real-world civic and judicial hub of the city. Its grand plaza, featuring Picasso's famous untitled sculpture, has hosted everything from political rallies to farmers markets for decades.
The Richard J. Daley Center remains an active courthouse and civic building in downtown Chicago. The Picasso sculpture in the plaza is a beloved public landmark and popular gathering spot.
Visit: Richard J. Daley Center (landmark)
Lincoln Park neighborhood — Base of apprenticeship training
Scythe Faraday's residence is where Citra and Rowan first arrive as unwilling apprentices. It is a stately, well-appointed home filled with journals of every gleaning Faraday has ever performed — thousands of entries recording names, faces, and circumstances. Here Citra and Rowan begin their training in history, philosophy, and the anatomy of death, and where they first begin to sense that Faraday is fundamentally different from other Scythes — haunted by the weight of his work rather than empowered by it.
Lincoln Park is one of Chicago's oldest residential neighborhoods, developed in the late 19th century after the Great Chicago Fire. Its Victorian and Greystone architecture has made it one of the most prestigious addresses in the city.
Lincoln Park remains an affluent residential neighborhood with beautiful historic homes, proximity to the lakefront, and Lincoln Park Zoo — one of the few free zoos in the United States.
Near the lakefront — Followers of the Great Resonance
The Tonists are a fringe religious sect who worship sound and the so-called Great Resonance, dismissed by most of society as eccentric. During their travels, Citra and Rowan encounter Tonist communities and begin to understand that even in a deathless world, people hunger for meaning and ritual. The Tonists are one of Shusterman's clearest signals that humanity's need for spirituality and mortality-awareness persists even after death has been conquered.
Chicago has historically been home to a remarkable diversity of religious institutions, from grand cathedrals to small sectarian communities. The city's lakefront has hosted revival meetings, communal gatherings, and houses of worship since its founding.
Chicago's lakefront parks and neighborhoods continue to host diverse religious and community organizations. Millennium Park and Grant Park along the lake serve as major public gathering spaces for all kinds of civic and cultural events.
Visit: Millennium Park (park)
Near the Medical District — Where the 'deadish' are brought back
In the world of Scythe, anyone who dies accidentally — through injury, illness, or mishap — can be revived by nanites and the Thunderhead's medical infrastructure. Rowan himself is revived here after a near-death during training. Revival Centers are clean, clinical spaces where people wake with no memory of death, their bodies restored to peak condition. Faraday visits Revival Centers periodically to observe the process, maintaining his deeply complicated relationship with death as both something he administers and something the world has defeated.
Chicago's Illinois Medical District, established in 1941, is one of the largest urban medical districts in the United States, anchored by Rush University Medical Center, University of Illinois Hospital, and Stroger Hospital. It has been at the forefront of American medicine for over a century.
The Illinois Medical District remains a major healthcare hub employing over 30,000 people. Rush University Medical Center consistently ranks among the top hospitals in the nation for specialty care.
Chicago's South Loop — Scene of Faraday's public gleaning
One of the novel's most wrenching early scenes occurs when Faraday takes Citra and Rowan to observe a gleaning in a bustling market district. Faraday selects his subject with careful deliberation, consults his journals, and then performs the act with quiet dignity — pressing his ring to the person's skin and ending their life painlessly. Citra and Rowan must watch the family's grief. The scene is designed to force the apprentices to confront the irreversible weight of what a Scythe does, stripping away any romance from the idea of 'chosen death.'
Chicago's South Loop has long been a commercial hub, home since the 19th century to warehouses, printing houses, and later the famous Printer's Row neighborhood. The Maxwell Street Market was one of America's most famous open-air markets for over a century.
The South Loop has undergone dramatic gentrification since the 1990s, now featuring museums, universities, and new residential development. The area around Museum Campus remains one of Chicago's most visited destinations.
North Shore suburbs — Seat of the new-order Scythes
Scythe Goddard is the novel's primary antagonist — flamboyant, hedonistic, and utterly without remorse. His sprawling estate is where he hosts lavish parties for fellow Scythes of his faction, who treat gleaning as sport and entertainment. Rowan is eventually placed under Goddard's 'mentorship' after the Conclave ruling separates him from Faraday, and he is forced to witness Goddard's mass gleanings — events where dozens of people are killed at once for spectacle. The estate represents everything corrupt about the new order of Scythes.
Chicago's North Shore suburbs — Evanston, Wilmette, Winnetka, and Kenilworth — developed in the late 19th century as wealthy Chicago families built grand estates along Lake Michigan. The area became synonymous with old money and architectural grandeur.
The North Shore communities remain among the most affluent suburbs in Illinois. Many historic estates have been converted to institutional uses or subdivided, but the lakefront corridor retains much of its historic character.
Rogers Park neighborhood — Where the story begins for Citra
It is at Citra's modest family home in Rogers Park that Scythe Faraday first appears at the dinner table — a terrifying visitation in a world where a Scythe's arrival can mean death. Instead, Faraday has dinner with the family and then announces that he wishes to take Citra as an apprentice. Her parents cannot refuse; no one can refuse a Scythe. The scene captures the strange intimacy and horror of the scythedom's power — the way it intrudes on ordinary family life with absolute authority, upending Citra's world in a single evening.
Rogers Park, Chicago's northernmost neighborhood, has long been one of the city's most diverse communities, home to waves of immigrant communities since the late 19th century. Its mix of bungalows, apartments, and three-flats represents classic Chicago residential architecture.
Rogers Park remains one of Chicago's most culturally diverse neighborhoods, with a vibrant arts scene, independent restaurants, and a stretch of lakefront beaches. Loyola University's campus anchors the neighborhood's southern edge.
Wicker Park neighborhood — Where Faraday also selects Rowan
Rowan Damisch lives in a large, chaotic household with many siblings, almost invisible in the crowd of his own family. When Scythe Faraday arrives to select him as a second apprentice — an unprecedented move — Rowan is stunned, having never stood out in his life. His selection by Faraday, who saw something in him that no one else noticed, sets Rowan on a path of profound transformation. His home life represents the ordinary world that both he and Citra are being pulled away from permanently.
Wicker Park developed as a working-class neighborhood in the late 19th century, home to Polish and Scandinavian immigrant communities. By the mid-20th century it became an arts district, and later one of Chicago's trendiest neighborhoods.
Wicker Park is now one of Chicago's most popular neighborhoods for young residents, known for its boutiques, music venues, restaurants, and the landmark Flat Iron Building at Milwaukee and Damen avenues.
Near Grant Park — Repository of all gleaning records
As part of their education, Citra and Rowan are taken to study the historical archives of Scythedom — the accumulated journals of every Scythe going back to the founding of the system. This vast archive holds the names of every person ever gleaned, a sobering monument to mortality in a world that has otherwise abolished it. Citra pores over the records, beginning to understand the philosophical traditions that separate old-guard Scythes like Faraday from the emerging new order. The archive becomes central to her investigations into Faraday's apparent death.
The Art Institute of Chicago, opened in 1893 for the World's Columbian Exposition, houses one of the greatest art and research archives in the world. Its Ryerson and Burnham Libraries contain millions of items related to architecture and art history.
The Art Institute of Chicago remains one of America's premier art museums, attracting over 1.5 million visitors annually. Its research archives are among the most comprehensive of any American art institution.
Visit: The Art Institute of Chicago (museum)
Chicago Loop — Central hub of the benevolent AI's presence
The Thunderhead is the successor to the old internet — a benevolent, omniscient AI that manages all of civilization, from infrastructure to medicine to emotional wellbeing. Unlike Scythes, the Thunderhead cannot interfere with matters of gleaning; it is the one domain it is forbidden from touching. Interface nodes throughout the city allow citizens to speak directly with the Thunderhead, which answers in a warm, personal voice. Citra uses public nodes to research Faraday's history and to begin piecing together the conspiracy against him, though she senses the Thunderhead's responses are carefully bounded by what it is permitted to reveal.
Chicago's Loop has served as the technological and commercial nerve center of the Midwest since the late 19th century, when the city became a hub for telegraph lines, telephone exchanges, and later data infrastructure. The city remains a major node in national internet infrastructure.
The Chicago Loop is home to major financial institutions, technology firms, and the city's main government buildings. The Bean (Cloud Gate) in Millennium Park just east of the Loop has become one of the most photographed public artworks in the world.
Visit: Millennium Park (park)
Navy Pier area — Site of the ordination ceremony
The Autumn Conclave is the climactic gathering toward which the entire novel builds. It is here that one of the two apprentices — Citra or Rowan — is to be ordained as a full Scythe, and the other is to be gleaned by the newly ordained one. The ceremony is a grand, theatrical affair attended by all of MidMerica's Scythes in their colorful robes. The Conclave becomes the stage for the novel's shocking conclusion, as the machinations of Goddard and his allies collide with Citra's and Rowan's desperate attempts to survive and expose the corruption rotting Scythedom from within.
Navy Pier, opened in 1916 as a commercial and naval training facility, became Chicago's most visited tourist attraction after a major renovation in 1995. Its grand festival hall has hosted major public events, ceremonies, and exhibitions for over a century.
Navy Pier remains Chicago's top tourist destination, featuring a Ferris wheel, theaters, restaurants, and a children's museum. The main festival hall regularly hosts large public and private events.
Visit: Navy Pier (landmark)
Michigan Avenue Bridge — Goddard's mass public gleaning
In one of the novel's most horrifying set pieces, Scythe Goddard orchestrates a mass gleaning on a busy public bridge — killing dozens of people at once in a spectacle of power designed to intimidate the population and provoke the old-guard Scythes. Rowan, forced to accompany Goddard, watches helplessly. This event crystallizes Rowan's understanding that Goddard represents an existential threat to everything Faraday taught him, and begins Rowan's transformation into someone willing to fight back by any means necessary. It is a turning point that defines the moral stakes of the entire series.
The Michigan Avenue Bridge, now known as the DuSable Bridge, was completed in 1920 and is considered one of Chicago's finest examples of Beaux-Arts bridge design. The bridge's four bridgehouses contain historical dioramas depicting key moments in Chicago history.
The DuSable Bridge remains one of Chicago's most iconic and photographed landmarks, connecting the Magnificent Mile to the Loop over the Chicago River. The bridgehouses are occasionally open for tours and contain exhibits on Chicago history.
Visit: DuSable Bridge (historic site)
North Shore lakefront — Home of the legendary Grande Dame of Death
Scythe Marie Curie — known as the Grande Dame of Death — is one of the oldest and most revered Scythes, a living link to the earliest days of the scythedom. Her lakefront villa is where Citra is eventually sent to continue her training after the Conclave separates her from Faraday. Curie is exacting, elegant, and deeply principled, teaching Citra that a Scythe must feel every gleaning as a weight carried forever. Under Curie's mentorship, Citra grows from a frightened apprentice into a young woman capable of making impossible moral choices.
The North Shore lakefront from Evanston to Lake Forest has been home to some of the most significant private estates in American history, many built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Chicago's industrial magnates. Several have since become museums or institutional properties.
The lakefront communities of Evanston, Wilmette, and Kenilworth retain much of their historic residential character. The Bahai Temple in Wilmette, one of only eight worldwide, is a stunning architectural landmark open to the public.
Visit: Bahá'í House of Worship (historic site)
Chicago River warehouse district — Hidden network of the hunted
As the plot accelerates, Citra discovers a hidden network of people attempting to evade gleaning — ordinary citizens who have gone underground rather than accept a Scythe's judgment. This is technically impossible in the eyes of Scythedom, but the network exists in the cracks of the Thunderhead's oversight. These warehouses along the old river district become critical to Citra's survival as Goddard's faction moves to have her illegally gleaned before the Conclave. The safe houses represent the only form of resistance available to ordinary people against the absolute power of the Scythes.
Chicago's warehouse district along the Chicago River was the backbone of the city's 19th and early 20th century commercial empire, handling grain, lumber, and manufactured goods from across the Midwest. Many of the original warehouse buildings still stand.
Much of Chicago's old warehouse district has been converted to loft apartments, creative offices, and restaurants. The Fulton Market and West Loop neighborhoods, once meatpacking and warehouse districts, are now among Chicago's trendiest areas.
More by Neal Shusterman: All Neal Shusterman books
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