The Gold Coast Historic District is a historic district in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rock ...

. Part of Chicago's Near North Side community area, it is roughly bounded by North Avenue, Lake Shore Drive, Oak Street, and Clark Street. The Gold Coast neighborhood grew in the wake of the

Great Chicago Fire The Great Chicago Fire was a conflagration that burned in the American city of Chicago during October 8–10, 1871. The fire killed approximately 300 people, destroyed roughly of the city including over 17,000 structures, and left more than 1 ...

. In 1882, millionaire Potter Palmer moved to the area from the Prairie Avenue neighborhood on the city's south side. He filled in a swampy area which later became Lake Shore Drive, and built the Palmer Mansion, a forty-two room castle-like structure designed by Henry Ives Cobb and Charles Sumner Frost. Other wealthy Chicagoans followed Potter into the neighborhood, which became one of the richest in Chicago. In the late 1980s, the Gold Coast and neighboring Streeterville comprised the second most-affluent neighborhood in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

, behind

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the we ...

. Today, the neighborhood is a mixture of

mansion A mansion is a large dwelling house. The word itself derives through Old French from the Latin word ''mansio'' "dwelling", an abstract noun derived from the verb ''manere'' "to dwell". The English word '' manse'' originally defined a property l ...

row house In architecture and city planning, a terrace or terraced house ( UK) or townhouse ( US) is a form of medium-density housing that originated in Europe in the 16th century, whereby a row of attached dwellings share side walls. In the United Sta ...

s, and high-rise apartments. Highlights include the Astor Street District and the

James Charnley House The James Charnley Residence, also known as the Charnley-Persky House, is a historic house museum at 1365 North Astor Street in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. Built in 1892, it is one of the few surviving residential work ...

. The district was added to the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

in 1978. The nearby East Lake Shore Drive District and parts of northern Streeterville and the Magnificent Mile near the lake also may be considered part of the Gold Coast (such as the area around the 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments), even if not technically in the historic designation. The mayor's office map extends the Gold Coast south to the area of Northwestern University's Chicago campus. As of 2011, Gold Coast ranks as the seventh-richest urban neighborhood in the United States with a median household income of $153,358.

Photos

Historical images of Chicago's Gold Coast can be found i
Explore Chicago Collections
a digital repository made available by Chicago Collections archives, libraries and other cultural institutions in the city.

Education

Chicago from North Avenue Beach June 2015 panorama 2

Chicago Public Schools Chicago Public Schools (CPS), officially classified as City of Chicago School District #299 for funding and districting reasons, in Chicago, Illinois, is the third-largest school district in the United States, after New York and Los Angeles. ...

(CPS) operates public schools serving the community.Map
" Gold Coast Neighbors Association. Retrieved on December 21, 2016. Ogden International School of Chicago has its East Campus, which houses elementary school, in the Gold Coast. Residents of the Gold Coast are zoned to Ogden School for grades K-8, while for high school they are zoned to Lincoln Park High School. Any graduate from Ogden's 8th grade program may automatically move on to the 9th grade at Ogden, but students who did not graduate from Ogden's middle school must apply to the high school. The Latin School of Chicago is also located in the Gold Coast and is one of the nation's most prestigious K-12 private schools.

Notable residents

Gold Coast has a long tradition of being home to some of the nation's wealthiest and influential residents. These include: * J.B. Pritzker – businessman, venture capitalist, politician and current Governor of Illinois. *

Lori Greiner Lori Greiner is an American television personality and entrepreneur. She is an investor on the reality ABC TV series ''Shark Tank''. Greiner has hundreds of inventions and holds 120 patents. She became known as the "Queen of QVC" as a result of ...

– inventor, entrepreneur, and television personality * Vince Vaughn – actor * Lee Miglin - real estate developer

References

External links

Gold Coast Neighbors Association
{{Authority control Central Chicago Neighborhoods in Chicago Historic districts in Chicago Residential buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Chicago 1882 establishments in Illinois Populated places established in 1882 Historic districts on the National Register of Historic Places in Illinois