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).

Prologue,

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

windows

Gold Coast

999 E. DS/LSD

Drake Hotel, 1920

Apt. buildings where lake breezes beat back stockyards odors, 1910s-1950s (air cond.)

Lincoln Park

Monroe Harbor

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

Starting in Evanston,

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.

Long lakefront park

Northwestern (Methodist, founded 1851)

Entry to landfill east campus with a visitor center, north to Pick-Steiger Hall and new business

School, etc.

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

Rogers

Technical Institute

Second Patton Gym

Holabird & Roche fraternity houses

Lighthouse and rescued Evanston Art Center building

Wilmette

Behai Temple

Site of former Benjamin Marshall studio at waterfront

Bridge over sanitary canal water intake, leading down to Illinois River early 1900s

Gilson Park

Row of mansions

“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

on tower

Kenilworth

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.

Winnetka

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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