Pioneering radio station WTAY (Wireless Tunes Await You) launched in the ballroom of this elegant hotel in 1923 and later became WGES. Newlywed to his sweetheart Ethel, Ray would work all day as a salesman for Lily Paper Cup, and by night play piano live on the air until the station went dark for the night.

When Ray and wife Ethel bought their first home, it was in suburban Arlington Heights, just a stone’s throw from the Rolling Hills Country Club. Ray convinced a number of his golfing buddies to become the first McDonald’s franchisees.

The limestone and granite art deco LaSalle-Wacker Building facing the Chicago River is where Ray first set up shop as franchise agent for Prince Castle Sales, selling five-spindled milkshake machines called Multi-Mixers. Later, he operated McDonald’s and Franchise Realty Corporation out of this location. The elevator operator announced to visitors that they had reached “Hamburger Heaven” when they arrived on the floor.

Before Ray opened Raymond’s, the upscale hamburger place in Chicago and Beverly Hills, he and business associates Harry Sonneborn and June Martino pooled money to buy this old beer garden in suburban Glenwood. There were no hamburgers on the menu here—the Chicago Tribune called the brisket and country fried chicken “hearty and reasonably priced.”

Built in the basement of the Elk Grove McDonald’s in 1961, and later expanded in 1968, this trade school still exists today to train employees in all things Mickey D’s, from operating the fryer to proper milkshake viscosity.

After he divorced Ethel in 1961 and was spurned by Joan, Ray found himself spending time at this Magnificent Mile gem. It was in the dining room where he met Chef Rene Arendt, the Luxembourger whom he later lured to McDonald’s, where he created Chicken McNuggets.

After McDonald’s IPO in 1965 made him a multi-millionaire, Ray Kroc began making strategic philanthropic gifts as criticism of McDonald’s impact on the environment and consumer’s nutrition began to mount. Donations included a theater at the Adler Planetarium, an environmental exhibition at the Field Museum, an ape house and animal hospital at the Lincoln Park Zoo (the Krocs were allowed to name a gorilla as part of their gift), and a three-story wing at Children’s Memorial Hospital dubbed the Joan and Ray A. Kroc Diagnostic Treatment Center.

When the idea for a chain of pet motels on the scale of McDonald’s crossed Ray’s desk, he bit, if only to give his animal-loving wife Joan busy. The prototype was built replete with brass beds for dogs and custom snacks but when the business deal went sour, the chain never took off.

700 of Ray’s friends and associates gathered here to mark his 75th birthday in 1977, including a school chum from Oak Park Elementary and spurned associates Harry Sonneborn and June Martino.