Chicago's Oldest House: The Noble Farmstead

Tucked into Chicago's Norwood Park neighborhood stands what is widely considered the oldest surviving building in the city. In eighteen thirty-three, an English immigrant named Mark Noble claimed land along the top of Union Ridge, a glacial moraine that was once the shoreline of Lake Michigan. Unlike nearly every pioneer settler of the era, Noble built not a log cabin but a proper frame house, using white pine on a brick foundation.

The house changed hands across three families over the following century, each adding to it, and eventually the Norwood Park Historical Society bought it and still operates the museum there today. A southern wing of the original house dates to eighteen thirty-three, making it a survivor from the year Chicago itself was incorporated.