On four nights this October and November, the towering glass room at the west end of Navy Pier will be full of folding chairs and picnic blankets. It will host free family movies at 5:30 p.m. and horror classics at 8. In 2021 the same room was signed over on a 10-year lease for a $30 million paid attraction. The programming is cheerful. The history is a little more involved. For anyone in Streeterville who remembers Crystal Gardens as a free indoor garden of palms, the movie nights are the first fall test of what the space becomes next. Navy Pier has stripped the room and is programming it on its own. In May it said a new name was in the works.

A Free Acre Under Glass

Crystal Gardens was part of the Pier's 1990s redevelopment. Plans unveiled in 1992 called for a glass-walled indoor park with palms, gazebos, and fountains, and the rebuilt Navy Pier officially opened on July 12, 1995. The result was a one-acre indoor garden, free and open to the public. It had more than 80 palms, tropical plants, and fountains, and it doubled as a rental venue for weddings, proms, quinceañeras, and performances. WTTW reported in 2021 that it was one of the city's only indoor green spaces.

That double life explains a lot of what came after. Some people knew the room as a free place to warm up in January. Others knew it as a ballroom with palm trees. When the plan to replace the garden was announced, Navy Pier described the change as turning the "one-acre, hardscape Crystal Gardens from an underused garden and high-end private event space to a year-round anchor destination."

Five Years of Trying to Make It Pay

The detour went through several stages, and the dates matter because each one changed what the room was.

1. 2020 and 2021. The Pier closed during COVID-19. The garden's operators canceled their lease during the pandemic. In 2021 a visitor was told the garden was closing and no longer booking events.
2. Fall 2021. Navy Pier announced Illuminarium, a paid immersive venue built around projected images, sound, scent, and vibration. It was planned as a 32,000-square-foot experience. A Pier spokesperson said it would support the Pier's tenant businesses, and residents circulated a petition to keep the garden.
3. November 2023. As the room was being dismantled, the remaining plants went out the door. Navy Pier is a nonprofit and had no full-time plant staff during the pandemic. It said the largest palms were too big to move without significant expense. The Insect Asylum at 2870 N. Milwaukee Ave. took in roughly 700 to 1,000 of them, including the garden's well-known elephant ears.
4. June 2024. Illuminarium opened a temporary safari and outer-space exhibit in the room, as the Chicago Sun-Times reported.
5. September 2024 to January 2025. According to a lawsuit later filed by Navy Pier, the exhibit closed in September, reopened in November, and closed again on Jan. 5, 2025.
6. March 2025. Navy Pier sued in Cook County circuit court. The suit says Illuminarium told the Pier on Jan. 9 that it planned a walk-around virtual reality experience in place of the full attraction it had proposed.

The Sun-Times account of the suit says Illuminarium had attributed its changed plans to pandemic-era finances. It had said it would need to raise money to build the $30 million attraction, and it began paying rent in March 2024. Navy Pier asked a judge to order the full attraction built and alleged unpaid rent. A hearing was set for May 19, 2025. These are allegations from one side of a lawsuit, and none of the reporting we reviewed shows how the case was resolved.

What the 2026 Renovation Chose

When the room came back this year, it came back bare. Block Club Chicago reported in May that the Crystal Gardens renovation removed the palm trees, planters, and fountains. Navy Pier's chief marketing and experience officer said the goal was "to better serve the city with events like Summer Skate," and added that a name change was in the works.

Summer Skate gave the stripped room its first job. It ran from June 18 through Labor Day as a lakefront roller rink produced with Bucket Listers. Tickets started at $17.50, and the rink held about 100 skaters at a time. The rink covered 7,200 square feet, about a sixth of the acre the garden once filled and well under a quarter of the 32,000 square feet Illuminarium had planned. Navy Pier presented the rink as part of its largest summer of Pier-produced programming and called the space the "former Crystal Gardens." It did not announce a new tenant.

So the room has changed hands twice in five years. It went from a garden run by an outside operator to a tenant with a decade-long lease, and now to an open floor the Pier fills one season at a time. In May, Navy Pier said a name change was still in the works, and the October movie listings still call the room Crystal Gardens. None of the Pier announcements we reviewed name a permanent use.

Four Free Nights Inside

Slightly Spooky Movies at the Pier is the room's fall program. Screenings are free and indoors on Oct. 17, 24, and 31, and Nov. 1, with the event listed from 5 to 9 p.m. Each night starts with short films at 5 p.m., followed by a family feature at 5:30 and a spooky pick at 8. Navy Pier suggests bringing a blanket or chair and buying food from the Pier's shops and restaurants.

The lineup is posted as four double bills:

The short-film block is easy to miss and arguably the most local part of the evening. The shorts come from a Free Spirit Media high school cohort, Columbia College Chicago students, and Chicago media collectives.

The movies are one piece of a larger free program. Slightly Spooky runs on the same four dates with hands-on activities, and Oct. 31 includes a trick-or-treating session. Navy Pier's Día de los Muertos event follows on Nov. 1, with activities from 1 to 5 p.m. and evening films. Its community ofrenda opens for contributions on Oct. 24.

The Rest of a Streeterville October

Crystal Gardens is the newest part of a fall calendar that is otherwise familiar. The free summer fireworks ended Sept. 5. Through Dec. 31, the Pier is open 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and it closes on Thanksgiving and Christmas. Nearby options this month:

• SOAR Farmers Market at the MCA: 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Oct. 13, 20, and 27, the last dates on the museum's October calendar.
• MCA performance: Jlin and Third Coast Percussion perform Vernacular on Oct. 15 at 7:30 p.m.
• Chicago Shakespeare Theater:The Winter's Tale opens Oct. 13 and runs through Dec. 12, and Play On! closes Oct. 18.

The next major Pier event doesn't use the glass room. Wintrust Winter WonderFest runs Nov. 27, 2026, through Jan. 3, 2027, with ice skating included in admission, and it is listed at Festival Hall. None of the Pier listings we reviewed show what Crystal Gardens will hold after the last movie on Nov. 1.

A room that has gone from free garden to pending attraction to open floor is the kind of story Gillman Group follows closely, because the way a building is reused shapes daily life on the streets around it. If you'd like to talk about what Streeterville's changing spaces mean for your own plans, we'd be glad to hear from you. Let's Connect.