The Street Astor Never Saw

The street ahead is named for a man who never once set foot in Chicago. John Jacob Astor built his fortune in New York fur trading and Manhattan real estate, and by the time he died in eighteen forty eight his estate was worth roughly twenty million dollars, making him one of the wealthiest people in the country. Chicago's city fathers borrowed his name anyway, decades after his death, simply to lend a swampy, lightly settled stretch of the near north side some borrowed East Coast prestige.

The street's grandest early resident built something stranger than a name plate. Potter Palmer, a department store and real estate magnate, bought up land near the lake after the eighteen seventy one fire and began building a turreted, castle like mansion on Lake Shore Drive in the early eighteen eighties. Its most talked about detail was not visible from the street at all: the Palmers had the exterior doors built without any locks or outside doorknobs, so the only way in was to be let in from inside by staff who were always watching for arrivals. Guests simply did not let themselves into a Palmer party.

That mansion helped anchor what became known as Chicago's Gold Coast, drawing other wealthy families to build along the same blocks, which is why the district around the street still reads today like a catalog of nineteenth century high society architecture, limestone row houses and mansions built by people trying to live near the Palmers without quite matching them. The original Palmer mansion itself did not survive; it was torn down in nineteen fifty and replaced by apartment buildings. But the street named for a man who never visited still carries the neighborhood's reputation forward.