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2 reviews of Streeterville

A valuable tract of land

Streeterville is the largest of the six neighborhoods that make up the North River district. It is not as selective as the Gold Coast, but it is where you'll find the largest concentrated of attractions, hotels, shops and businesses. In Streeterville you'll find the Magnificent Mile, the John Hancock Center and the Navy Pier, to name just three of the most popular attractions. The enormous value of this land has made this area, previously half-empty, one of the most gentrified parts of the city. Broadly, Streeterville is the area from the Magnificent Mile to the lake. It has a strange and rather turbulent history, which I love.


In the late nineteenth century, Chicago's coastline looked quite different from today. The water came all the way up to Michigan Avenue, and what is now Streeterville was nothing but sandbars. It seems hard to believe today, but it's true, and it has repercussions on the building work today. For example, the Chicago Spire by Santiago Calatrava is still unfinished as the engineers try to work out how to deal with the sandy, wet ground. The fact is that an adventurer named James Streeter, foreseeing that the land value would skyrocket, ran his boat aground on a sandbar and claimed all the land around him as his own. After a series of lawsuits, Streeter went to jail, but the neighborhood still carries its name. The area ended up being a very rich neighborhood, especially after the opening of the Michigan Avenue Bridge. So Streeter had a good eye for real estate, even if his methods were more like Al Capone ...
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