Arthur Miller took a tour group, in Chicago for a week from the Vero Beach art museum in Florida, they thought traveling this link in the Lake Michigan Circle tour was an unexpected highlight.
The southern section, through south Winnetka, is mostly straight streets and right-angled turns along flat or very gently changing terrain. This continues the lower Chicago section of Sheridan Rd. at the north end of the 1950s extension of Lincoln Park and DS/LSD.
The road was organized in the 1890s to facilitate military movement to and from the 1887-launched Fort Sheridan. It soon was a pleasure drive through the lakefront suburbs north of the city. See the excellent, still standard Machel H. Ebner, Creating Chicago’s North Shore: A Suburban History (1988).
starting with Chicago and Edward Bennett’s Grant Park. DuSable LSD
Lake Point Tower and Navy Pier
860-880 Mies apt. building, ca. 1950, then 1900-910, 1955, with air conditioning and tinted
Apt. buildings where lake breezes beat back stockyards odors, 1910s-1950s (air cond.)
Apt. buildings, 1920s, 1950s
Carillon tower, Edwin Hill Clark in north Lincoln Park
End of drive at beach, turn right—past post-Depression/War high rise apt. towers, further north with central air S
Interspersed with older mansions--Maher, Flanders & Zimmerman.
Loyola University, with Mundelein incorporated (Jesuit)
7415 Sheridan, Emil Bach house, 1915 by Frank Lloyd Wright
747 N. Sheridan, at Clark Park, Shaw’s 1915 Harry A. Swiggart house originally on the lake, just east of the Main St. stops neighborhood on the water. The house is brick Tudor with a classic segmental arch over the doorway.
1201 N. Sheridan Rd. the Prairie School 1912 Spencer & Powers Nathan Williams house.
Northwestern (Methodist, founded 1851)
Entry to landfill east campus with a visitor center, north to Pick-Steiger Hall and new business
At the corner of Chicago Ave., 1950s Millar Chapel, beautiful modern stained glass.
1867 Randall building in yellow limestone, pre-Chicago Fire
The 1930 Deering Library, east end of the lawn, large collegiate gothic building by James Gamble
Holabird & Roche fraternity houses
Lighthouse and rescued Evanston Art Center building
Site of former Benjamin Marshall studio at waterfront
Bridge over sanitary canal water intake, leading down to Illinois River early 1900s
“No man’s land” unincorporated originally
High rises, including purple 1960s Huzgach & Hill
1925 Plaza del Lago shopping center modeled on LF’s Market Square, original buildings a
classic style, though with Iberian/southwestern flair. But look for echoes of Shaw’s details
Kenilworth Ave. light, on the southeast corner, a large 1930s Hemphill residence with a Charles
Wagstaff landscape originally, by the 1940s home of the DeWitt O’Kieffes, 2nd to
Ad wiz Leo Burnett, book collector.
Mansions along the lake, notably
Tom Beeby’s Ryan estate, a French chateau
Former W. Clement Stone Mediterranean red-tile roofed compound.
Behind a long, thin yellow limestone wall, Robert A. M. Stern’s interpretation of a
Classic, Adler-like North Shore mansion, early 2000s (New Classicism)
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