Chicago's Motor Row District

From about nineteen ten through the nineteen thirties, the stretch of Michigan Avenue and South Wabash between roughly Twenty-Second and Twenty-Fifth Streets was the automobile showroom capital of Chicago. Dealers representing every make from Packard to Pierce-Arrow lined up in palatial terra-cotta storefronts designed to make buying a car feel as grand as entering a bank. Motor Row was the place where Chicago's rising middle class first glimpsed the future of personal transportation.

The district went into long decline as dealers moved to suburban lots in the postwar era, and many of the buildings sat vacant for decades. But the bones were extraordinary, and beginning in the two-thousands, Motor Row came back as event venues, restaurants, and a designated Chicago Landmark district. The showroom facades remain, now lit for weddings and concerts rather than gleaming Hudsons.