When Chicagoans first began to make serious money after the Civil War the place the wealthy chose to build their mansions was just south of the business district along Prairie Avenue. Names like Marshall Field and George Pullman and Philip Armour all puddled abut in palatial estates there. The area had the advantage of being close to the Loop and did not involve crossing the Chicago River. it was the poshest address in town.
If you wanted to live north of the Chicago River in the mid-1800s you not only had to deal with crossing the river but much of the land near Lake Michigan was swampy and uninviting. It was retailer and hotelier Potter Palmer who changed all that. In the 1880s he set about filling in the swamp and creating building lots. Lake Shore Drive became a popular destination for carriage rides. The first street inland parallel to the lake and north of Division Street was named “Astor Street” after John Jacob Astor. The fur trader Astor never had anything to do with Chicago but as America’s first millionaire his name was synonymous with wealth. In fact, John Jacob Astor had bought up most of the land north of New York City in the 1830s, correctly predicting the rapid growth northward on Manhattan Island. Similar to the scenario hoped for in Chicago.
Palmer and his society wife Bertha selected a spot on Lake Shore Drive to begin building his mansion in 1882. His castle-like residence, since torn down, was the largest house in the city when it was completed. Other wealthy Chicago families followed the Potters into the Astor Street District. Meanwhile the businesses around Prairie Avenue were beginning to make “the most expensive street west of Fifth Avenue” feel sooty and old. By the turn of the 20th century the Gold Coast was where you had to be if you were anybody in Chicago.
As more and more people sought shelter on the Gold Coast there wasn’t much room left for mansions and the newly popular skyscrapers of the early 1900s were adapted to hold apartments instead of offices. A century on, the Gold Coast is regarded as the second-most affluent neighborhood in the United States after Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It is a mixture of mansions, stylish row houses and high-rise apartments.
Our walking tour of the Gold Coast will begin in the great park that adjoins its northern boundary, at the foot, literally, of its immortal namesake...
The Loop, defined by the Chicago River to the west and north, Roosevelt Boulevard to the south and, of course, Lake Michigan to the east, is city’s commercial hub (roughly some 16,000 of Chicago’s nearly three million residents live here). It is the second largest central business district in the country, housing the world’s biggest commodities market.
The Loop initially took its name from the circuitous route 19th century streetcars took but later became defined by the elevated train tracks that lead here from every part of the city. The Center of the Loop, containing the financial district, is where Chicago’s reputation as the “Home of the Skyscraper” lies. The first tall building to be supported, both inside and outside, by a fireproof metal frame was built here in 1884. The oldest surviving skyscraper in the world is here. The tallest building in the United States has been here for almost 40 years. The skyscrapers came so fast and furious here that the building that lorded over the Chicago skyline for 35 years is now hard to see.
Our walking tour of the heart of the Loop will encounter many buildings with a “first” or an “oldest” or a “tallest” but before we descend into the great canyons of Chicago we will start in a treasured open space whose lakefront existence can be attributed to a single man...
It was real estate developer Arthur Rubloff who first called it the Magnificent Mile in the 1940s but it was architect and urban planner Daniel Burnham who envisioned North Michigan Avenue as a “grand avenue” back in 1909. It wasn’t even Michigan Avenue at the time; it was Pine Street and the only people going there were factory workers and warehousemen heading to their jobs.
Burnham saw a link between the town’s business hub in the Loop and the residential area of the Gold Coast that had recently established itself as Chicago’s toniest address, but not any ordinary throroughfare. Burnham wrote in his Plan for Chicago: “Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble and logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with growing intensity. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be ‘order’ and your beacon ‘beauty.’”
The North Central Business District Association (today the Greater North Michigan Avenue Association) was organized in 1912 to provide a unifying vision of the development of Michigan Avenue in 1912. And there was much to be done. The street would need to be much wider to be transformed into a major commercial boulevard. And Lake Michigan, then only a block away, would need to be filled in and tamed. Eventually 125 acres of landfill were created to stabilize the shoreline and control flooding.
But before the Magnificent Mile could become one of the world’s premier urban communities with over 50 hotels, 250 restaurants, 400 retailers and some of the choicest office space on the planet the most important thing to do was to build a bridge. When all the great plans for North Michigan Avenue were being hatched prior to 1920 the only way to breech the Chicago River was with swing bridges. The movable bridges could be open to ship traffic for half the day and a more practical solution was needed to carry traffic from the core of downtown onto North Michigan Avenue. And the solution to that problem is where we will begin our figure-8 walking tour of the Magnificent Mile...
When Illinois became a state in 1818 no one lived in what would become Springfield. A North Carolina man named Elisha Kelly built the first permanent cabin in the beautiful valley of the Sangamon River in 1820. The enthusiastic Kelly recruited family members to join him and the little settlement was designated as the temporary seat for the newly formed Sangamon County in 1821. When the question of a permanent county seat arose in 1825 Springfield found a rival in Sangamo Town, seven miles to the northwest. State legislators from the capital in Vandalia visited both towns and, after being led on a laborious route through swamps and swollen creeks to Sangamo Town by a guide who was a Springfield booster, they made the temporary designation permanent. Not that it was an important call or anything - after all Springfield is now the state capital and no trace of Sangamo Town exists today.
With its future assured, Springfield began to prosper. The town was incorporated, a newspaper started and there were some 1,500 people living in the prairie village in 1837 when a newly minted lawyer from New Salem moved to Springfield. Abraham Lincoln rapidly established a reputation as a formidable advocate during cross-examinations and closing arguments while practicing at the bar. But his true passion was in politics where he represented Sagamon County for four successive terms in the Illinois General Assembly as a member of the Whig Party.
When the State of Illinois began casting about for a new state capital that would be nearer to the influx of settlers from the East, Abraham Lincoln led a contingent of legislatorsin lobbying for Springfield as the new capital. They fancied themselves as “the Long Nine” for their aggregate height of 54 feet. This group so shrewdly traded their votes in favor of various public improvements through the legislative session that Springfield was awarded the prize. Lincoln would live in Springfield for a quarter-century before leaving the capital city for the White House in 1861, never to return to his adopted hometown alive.
Today few towns are as entwined with a single personality as Springfield is to Abraham Lincoln. Our walking tour will happen upon Lincoln landmarks as well but we will start with a building he never saw, although his likeness stands prominently outside...