Buildings on Astor Street own Chicago’s best addresses. This is true even though currently there is a two-bedroom condo for sale for only $315,000. Single-family townhouses will set you back $3 million to $6 million or more. And it is definitely a street that would not shame a billionaire.
Astor Street is less than a half mile long and is appropriately named after John Jacob Astor, once the wealthiest man in America. It runs behind Lake Shore Drive between Division Street and North Avenue in Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood.
According to the Landmarks Commission's publication The Astor Street District, the street appeared first in an 1880 subdivision by the Catholic Bishop of Chicago (the legal name of the Catholic Church). The first and largest house built was the Archbishop’s residence at Astor Street and North Avenue.
Rapid development continued in the 1880s and '90s. The area began to flourish despite a swampy reputation and its possible previous use as a graveyard. Due to crowded conditions, most houses, although generously sized (5,000 square feet and up), were townhomes sharing a party wall with their neighbors.
This was a bit of a change from the generously sized lots common on Prairie Avenue, the Southside Millionaires Row of the 1880s. There most wealthy people, in addition to the mandatory horses and carriage, kept a cow or two.
Astor Street forms part of a neighborhood known as the Gold Coast because of its wealthy residents. Historically just to the west, on Chicago’s Near North Side, was some of Chicago’s poorest housing. Harvey Zorbaugh’s 1929 classic study The Gold Coast and the Slum became a metaphor for the sharp social contrasts that persisted on the Near North Side.
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