Explore the real-world places that appear in Tintin in America by Hergé. 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 Chicago Union Station, The Fake Taxi Abduction Site, Chicago Police Headquarters (1920s Era), The Boomerang Murder Scene, The High-Speed Car Chase Route and 8 more.
225 S Canal St — Tintin's arrival in Chicago
Tintin and Snowy arrive in Chicago by train, eager to investigate the city's notorious gangster underworld. No sooner does Tintin step off and hail a cab than he realizes the driver is no ordinary taxi man — he has walked straight into a trap laid by the city's criminal networks, who have been tipped off about the young reporter's intentions to expose them.
Chicago Union Station opened in 1925 and was designed by architect Graham, Anderson, Probst & White in the Beaux-Arts style. It served as a major hub during the Prohibition era of the 1920s, the very period Hergé evoked in Tintin in America, when Chicago was synonymous with bootlegging and organized crime.
Union Station remains a fully operational intercity rail terminal, serving Amtrak passengers from across the country. The Great Hall, with its soaring barrel-vaulted ceiling and marble columns, is a landmark open to the public and has been used as a film location numerous times.
Visit: Chicago Union Station (landmark)
Near S Canal St & W Adams St — Tintin kidnapped immediately upon arrival
Moments after leaving the station, Tintin is bundled into a cab driven by one of Al Capone's henchmen. The driver, paid 500 dollars to deliver the young reporter to an undisclosed location, locks the doors and speeds away through Chicago's streets. Tintin, resourceful as ever, manages to slip out of the moving vehicle without alerting the kidnapper, outsmarting him in the process.
The streets around Canal Street and the Loop were the arteries of 1920s Chicago commerce and crime alike. Prohibition-era Chicago saw gangsters operate openly in the city's transport networks, using corrupt taxi drivers and city officials as unwitting or complicit instruments of control.
The area around S Canal Street near Union Station is a busy commercial and transit corridor in downtown Chicago. The streets are lined with office buildings, and Metra rail lines run overhead, making it one of the city's most trafficked zones.
11th & State St — The two motorcycle policemen who aid Tintin
Two motorcycle policemen come to Tintin's aid after he escapes the fake taxi and flags them down. They quickly join the pursuit of the kidnapper, commandeering the very taxi Tintin arrived in. Their partnership with Tintin is short-lived but crucial — it is during this chase that the kidnapper is about to reveal the name of his employer when he is silenced by a boomerang thrown by a fleeing accomplice.
The Chicago Police Department's central headquarters has been located at 3510 S Michigan Avenue since 1928, though in the early 1920s operations were run from the old city hall. The CPD was notoriously corrupt during the Prohibition era, with many officers on Al Capone's payroll.
The Chicago Police Department headquarters at 3510 S Michigan Avenue remains the administrative center of the CPD. It is not generally open to public tours, though the building is a recognized city landmark associated with Chicago's law enforcement history.
West Loop streets — The kidnapper silenced before he can talk
Just as the captured kidnapper — now surrounded by Tintin and the two policemen — is about to reveal the address where he was supposed to deliver Tintin, he is struck dead by a boomerang hurled from a passing figure. The murderer steals one of the policemen's motorcycles and flees into the labyrinthine West Loop streets. The shocking killing underscores the ruthless reach of Al Capone's organization.
The West Loop in the 1920s was a dense industrial and warehouse district crisscrossed by elevated rail lines, making it ideal for criminal flight and clandestine activity. The area's chaotic street grid and numerous alleys provided cover for Prohibition-era crime operations.
The West Loop has been transformed into one of Chicago's trendiest neighborhoods, home to acclaimed restaurants along Restaurant Row on Randolph Street, Google's Chicago offices, and fashionable loft apartments. The gritty industrial past is largely invisible beneath the modern development.
Lake Shore Drive corridor — Police pursuit of the motorcycle thief
With the two policemen, Tintin, and Snowy now crammed into the gangster's abandoned taxi, the group gives chase to the boomerang-throwing assassin who has stolen a police motorcycle. The pursuit tears through Chicago's streets at breakneck speed before ending in a crash that sends the entire group to hospital. The chase is a classic Hergé set-piece of slapstick velocity and rising danger.
Lake Shore Drive was developed through the 1920s and 1930s as a scenic boulevard along Lake Michigan's western shore. During the Prohibition era it connected Chicago's wealthy North Shore neighborhoods with the industrial south, and its long straight stretches were notorious for illegal racing and fast getaways.
Lake Shore Drive — now officially renamed DuSable Lake Shore Drive in honor of Chicago's first non-indigenous settler, Jean Baptiste Point DuSable — remains one of America's most scenic urban highways, carrying tens of thousands of vehicles daily along the Lake Michigan shoreline.
Near the Loop — Tintin recuperates after the car crash
Following the high-speed crash that ends the motorcycle pursuit, Tintin and the policemen are taken to hospital to recover from their injuries. Tintin, characteristically resilient, discharges himself as soon as he is able — only to find that no sooner has he stepped back onto the streets of Chicago than he is kidnapped once again, this time directly by Al Capone's men, who are determined to permanently silence the troublesome young reporter.
Cook County Hospital, one of Chicago's oldest public hospitals founded in 1866, was the primary emergency care facility for the city's working class and crime victims throughout the Prohibition era. Its emergency wards treated countless victims of gangland violence during the 1920s and 1930s.
The original Cook County Hospital building at 1900 W Harrison Street has been renovated into RUSH University Medical Center's administrative facilities and the boutique Donoghue Hotel. The newer Stroger Hospital has taken over Cook County's public hospital functions nearby.
2135 S Michigan Ave — Al Capone's Chicago base of operations
It is to a location controlled by the fearsome Al Capone that Tintin is taken after his second kidnapping. Capone himself — powerful, ruthless, and utterly confident in his dominance over Chicago — confronts Tintin directly, making clear his intention to eliminate the reporter permanently. This confrontation is the dramatic climax of the Chicago section, with Tintin facing the most dangerous criminal in America face to face.
Al Capone ran his criminal empire from suites at the Lexington Hotel from 1928 until his federal tax evasion conviction in 1931. The hotel was his fortress and throne room simultaneously — fortified with armed guards, used for extravagant parties, and the site of countless criminal decisions that shaped American organized crime.
The Lexington Hotel was demolished in 1995 after falling into disrepair. The site at 2135 S Michigan Avenue is now a surface parking lot, though the Prairie District neighborhood around it has seen significant reinvestment. The Chicago History Museum holds extensive archives documenting Capone's use of the building.
1601 N Clark St, Lincoln Park — Context for 1920s gangster Chicago
Though the museum itself does not appear in Tintin in America, it provides essential real-world context for the Chicago that Hergé portrayed: the era of Al Capone, Prohibition speakeasies, diamond smuggling, and a city in the grip of organized crime. Hergé researched his books from press cuttings and photographs, and the imagery he drew of Chicago reflects the sensational international press coverage of Capone's reign that filled European newspapers in the late 1920s.
The Chicago History Museum, originally founded as the Chicago Historical Society in 1856, is one of America's oldest historical institutions. It holds one of the country's most significant collections related to the Prohibition era, Al Capone, and the development of Chicago as a metropolis.
The museum at 1601 N Clark Street in Lincoln Park is fully open to the public and features permanent galleries on Chicago history including dedicated sections on the gangster era, the 1920s, and the city's cultural development. It is a highly rated attraction drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.
Visit: Chicago History Museum (museum)
4802 N Broadway, Uptown — Legendary Capone-era speakeasy
The Green Mill does not appear by name in Tintin in America, but it epitomizes the Chicago underworld Hergé placed Tintin in: a jazz club with direct tunnels to the street used for bootleg liquor deliveries, favored by Al Capone's lieutenant Machine Gun Jack McGurn, and a site where the line between entertainment and organized crime was deliberately blurred. It is precisely the atmosphere of menace beneath glamour that Hergé captured in his depiction of Chicago's nightlife.
The Green Mill opened in 1907 and became one of Chicago's premier jazz venues during Prohibition. Al Capone held a partial stake in the club and used its underground tunnels to move bootleg alcohol. Jazz legends including Al Jolson and Charlie Chaplin performed there during the 1920s.
The Green Mill Cocktail Lounge at 4802 N Broadway remains open as one of Chicago's most storied jazz bars, largely unchanged in décor since the 1930s. It hosts live jazz seven nights a week and is consistently rated one of the best jazz venues in the United States.
Visit: Green Mill Cocktail Lounge (restaurant)
S Michigan Ave & E Monroe Dr — Chicago's iconic lakefront backdrop
Hergé's iconic wide-shot illustrations of Chicago in Tintin in America show a city defined by its dramatic lakefront skyline — tall buildings rising sharply from the edge of Lake Michigan. The Grant Park and Michigan Avenue lakefront corridor represents the visual backdrop against which Tintin's adventures in Chicago unfold, with the elevated train lines, grand avenues, and lake panoramas that Hergé rendered faithfully from newspaper photographs of the era.
Grant Park was formally established in the 1850s on landfill extending into Lake Michigan. By the 1920s the Michigan Avenue 'Magnificent Mile' corridor had become Chicago's most prestigious address, and the lakefront skyline — including the newly completed Wrigley Building and Tribune Tower — was internationally recognized as an emblem of American urban ambition.
Millennium Park, located within Grant Park at 201 E Randolph Street, is one of America's most visited urban parks, attracting over 25 million visitors per year. It is home to Cloud Gate (the Bean), the Crown Fountain, and the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, and offers panoramic views of the Chicago skyline.
Visit: Millennium Park (park)
Wabash Ave & Van Buren St — Chicago's iconic 'L' train system
The rattling elevated train lines of Chicago's Loop appear repeatedly in Hergé's illustrations of Tintin in America, framing chase sequences and street scenes with their distinctive iron lattice structures. The 'L' trains represent both the modernity of American urban infrastructure and the chaotic energy of a city where criminals and police alike use every available route to pursue or evade each other through the city's canyons of steel and brick.
Chicago's elevated rail loop was completed in 1897 when the Union Loop connected four previously separate elevated lines into a unified downtown circuit. By the 1920s it had become the defining feature of Chicago's downtown geography, carrying hundreds of thousands of commuters daily through the heart of the city.
The Chicago 'L' remains one of America's busiest urban rail systems, with eight color-coded lines serving the city and suburbs. The Loop elevated structure itself — still running on the same 1897 circuit in the downtown core — is a National Historic Landmark and a beloved symbol of the city.
Visit: Chicago 'L' Loop Tour (tour)
N Wabash Ave, the Loop — Diamond trafficking backdrop
Tintin's mission in America is rooted in his earlier battle against diamond trafficking from the Congo, and the organized crime networks connecting Chicago's underworld to international smuggling rings. The jewel trade district on Wabash Avenue in Chicago's Loop represents the legitimate face of a diamond market that Tintin has seen corrupted by criminal syndicates extending from Africa to America, with Al Capone's organization serving as one node in a transatlantic criminal network.
Chicago's jewelry district along Wabash Avenue and State Street developed in the late 19th century and became one of the Midwest's most significant centers for the wholesale and retail diamond trade. During Prohibition, the same networks that moved bootleg liquor also provided cover for smuggled gems and other contraband.
The Jewelers Row district along S Wabash Avenue in the Loop remains one of Chicago's distinctive commercial strips, with dozens of independent jewelers operating in historic buildings. The area is a publicly accessible shopping destination, though it has contracted somewhat compared to its mid-20th century peak.
600 N Michigan Ave — Gangster history walking and bus tour
While Eliot Ness and the Untouchables belong to history rather than to Hergé's pages, the gangster Chicago they fought is precisely the world Tintin plunges into in Tintin in America. Capone's empire, the corrupt police, the hired kidnappers, and the boomerang-wielding assassins are all part of the same criminal ecosystem that Ness worked to dismantle — and that Hergé dramatized for young European readers who devoured sensationalized accounts of American gangsterism in the late 1920s press.
Eliot Ness and his team of eleven 'Untouchable' federal agents worked to enforce Prohibition laws against Capone's organization from 1930 to 1931, ultimately contributing evidence used in Capone's tax evasion prosecution. Their story became one of the defining legends of American law enforcement.
The Chicago Gangster Tour and similar operators offer bus and walking tours of Prohibition-era crime sites across Chicago, including Capone's Lexington Hotel site, the St. Valentine's Day Massacre location, and other landmarks connected to the gangster era that Hergé immortalized in Tintin in America.
Visit: Chicago Gangster Tour (tour)
More by Hergé: All Hergé books
More novels set in Chicago: Browse all Chicago books on Map A Story
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