Selected landmarks list
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The Washington Square Park, a registered historic landmark that is better known by its nickname Bughouse Square (derived from the slang of bughouse referring to mental health facilities), was the most celebrated open air free-speech center in the country as well as a popular Chicago tourist attraction. It is sometimes referred to as simply Washington Square. It was located across Walton Street from Newberry Library at 901 N. Clark Street in the Near North Side community area of Chicago, Illinois, USA. It is Chicago's oldest existing small park. It is one of 4 Chicago Park District parks named after persons surnamed Washington (Washington Park, Harold Washington Park, Dinah Washington Park). It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 20, 1991 and the neighboring Washington Square Historic District was later added to the register August 21, 2003. The Washington Square District was declared a Chicago Landmark on May 16, 1991 and Washington Square District Extension was declared a Chicago Landmark on July 10, 2002. A second extension was declared a Chicago Landmark on May 11, 2005.
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Hull House was co-founded in 1889, in Chicago, Illinois, by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr and is located in the Near West Side community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It was one of the first settlement houses in the U.S. and eventually grew into one of the largest, with facilities in 13 buildings. Because of the Hull House’s social, educational and artistic programs, it earned a reputation as the best-known settlement house in the U.S. and became the standard bearer for the movement that included almost 500 settlements nationally by 1920. The original building and several subsequent acquisitions were continuously renovated to accommodate the changing demands of the association. The original building and one additional building (which has been moved 200 yards) survive today. The original building was designated a Chicago Landmark on June 12, 1974. It was designated as a U.S. National Historic Landmark on June 23, 1965. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 15, 1966, which is the day that the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 was enacted creating the register.
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The Chicago Board of Trade Building houses the Chicago Board of Trade, the world's largest futures and options exchange. It is located at 141 West Jackson Boulevard, Chicago, Illinois, in the Chicago Loop community area. First designated a Chicago Landmark on May 4, 1977, the building was subsequently listed as a National Historic Landmark on June 2, 1978. The building was then added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 16, 1978. The tallest building in Chicago for over 35 years the structure is known for its art-deco architecture, sculptures and large scale stone carving, as well as large trading floors. A popular sightseeing attraction and motion picture location, the building has won awards for preservation efforts and office management. The Chicago Board of Trade occupies 33 percent of available space, with financial and trading concerns occupying 54 percent of the 3-building complex. The landmark has been the site of a number of visits by dignitaries, including the Prince of Wales in October 1977. Trading operations have been used as scenes in movies such as Ferris Bueller's Day Off, and the streetscape in the LaSalle Street canyon is used in the movies The Untouchables and Road to Perdition.
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The Chicago Theatre is a famous theater landmark located on North State Street in the Loop community area in the city of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The theater is host to stage plays, magic shows, comedy performances, speeches, and concerts. Although it now emphasizes live performances of popular music, it once served as a motion picture theatre. For several decades, it was the city's premier movie theater. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on June 6, 1979, and it was listed as a Chicago Landmark on January 28, 1983. The marquee is a Chicago cultural and physical landmark that commonly appears in film, television, artwork, and photography.
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The Marquette Building, completed in 1895, is a Chicago, Illinois landmark that was built by the George A. Fuller Company and designed by architects Holabird & Roche. The building is currently owned by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. It is located in the community area known as the "Loop" in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The building was one of the early steel frame skyscrapers of its day, and is considered one of the best examples of the Chicago School of architecture. The building originally had a reddish, terra cotta exterior that is now somewhat blackened due to decades of Loop soot. It is noted both for its then cutting edge frame and its ornate interior. Since being built, the building as received numerous awards and honors. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on June 9, 1975, and it is considered an architectural masterpiece. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on August 17, 1973. It was a named a National Historic Landmark on January 7, 1976. The building's preservation has been a major focus of the Landmarks Preservation Council of Illinois. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation completed an extensive four year restoration in 2006.
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The Rookery Building is an historic landmark located in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. Completed by John Wellborn Root and Daniel Burnham of Burnham and Root in 1888, it is considered one of their masterpiece buildings and once housed the office of the famous architects. It measures 181 feet (55 m), is twelve stories tall and is considered the oldest standing high-rise in Chicago. It has a unique style with exterior load-bearing walls and an interior steel frame. The lobby was remodeled in 1907 by Frank Lloyd Wright. Starting in 1989, the lobby was again restored to the original Wright design. The building was designated a Chicago Landmark on July 5, 1972. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 17, 1970 and listed as a National Historic Landmark on May 15, 1975. The name Rookery comes from the previous building on the property which became home to many birds, especially pigeons.
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The Union Stock Yard & Transit Co., or The Yards, operated in the New City community area of Chicago, Illinois for 106 years, helping the city become known as "hog butcher for the world" and the center of the American meat packing industry for decades. From the Civil War until the 1920s and peaking in 1924, more meat was processed in Chicago than in any other place in the world. Construction began in June 1865 with an opening on Christmas Day in 1865. The Yards closed at midnight on Friday, July 30, 1971 after several decades of decline during the decentralization of the meat packing industry. The Union Stock Yard Gate was designated a Chicago Landmark on February 24, 1972 and a National Historic Landmark on May 29, 1981.
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The Isidore H. Heller House is a house located at 5132 Woodlawn Avenue in the Hyde Park community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The house was designed by American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The design is credited as one of the turning points in Wright's shift to geometric, Prairie School architecture, which is defined by horizontal lines, flat or hipped roofs with broad overhanging eaves, windows grouped in horizontal bands, and an integration with the landscape, which is meant to evoke native Prairie surroundings. The work demonstrates Wright's shift away from emulating the style of his mentor, Louis Sullivan. Richard Bock, a Wright collaborator and sculptor, provided some of the ornamentation, including a plaster frieze. The ownership history of this building demonstrates the property's evolution and development in the framework of surrounding Hyde Park buildings, and the building's location in the current community—near other Prairie School architecture—includes this building into the overall body of Lloyd Wright's work. The Heller House was designated a Chicago Landmark on September 15, 1971, and added to the National Register of Historic Places on March 16, 1972. On 18 August 2004, the U.S. Department of the Interior designated the house a National Historic Landmark.
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The Historic Michigan Boulevard District is a historic district in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States encompassing Michigan Avenue between 11th (1100 south in the street numbering system) and Randolph Streets (150 north) and named after the nearby Great Lake. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on February 27, 2002. The district includes numerous significant buildings on Michigan Avenue facing Grant Park. In addition, this section of Michigan Avenue includes the point recognized as the end of U.S. Route 66. This district is one of the world's most well known one-sided streets rivalling Fifth Avenue in New York City and Edinburgh's Princes Street. It lies a quarter of a mile south of the Chicago River, Michigan Avenue Bridge and the Magnificent Mile.
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The Wigwam was a convention center and meeting hall that served as the site of the 1860 Republican National Convention. It was located in Chicago, Illinois at Lake Street and Market (later Wacker Drive) near the Chicago River. This site had previously been the site of the Sauganash Hotel, Chicago's first hotel. This is where supporters ushered Abraham Lincoln to the party nomination and the eventual U.S. Presidency. The location at Lake and Wacker was designated a Chicago Landmark on November 6, 2002. The term Wigwam has also been associated with host locations for both the 1864 Democratic National Convention and the 1892 Democratic National Convention, which were hosted in Chicago.
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The Haymarket affair (also known as the Haymarket riot or Haymarket massacre) on Tuesday 4 May 1886 in Chicago, began as a rally which became violent and was followed later by internationally publicized legal proceedings. An unknown person threw a bomb at police as they marched to disperse a public meeting in support of striking workers. The bomb blast and ensuing gunfire resulted in the deaths of seven police officers and an unknown number of civilians. Eight anarchists were tried for murder. Four were put to death, and one committed suicide in prison. The Haymarket affair is generally considered to have been an important influence on the origin of international May Day observances for workers. The causes of the incident are still controversial, although deeply polarized attitudes separating business and working class people in late 19th century Chicago are generally acknowledged as having precipitated the tragedy and its aftermath. The site of the incident was designated as a Chicago Landmark on 25 March 1992. The Haymarket Martyrs' Monument in nearby Forest Park was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and as a National Historic Landmark on 18 February 1997.
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The Marshall Field and Company Building is a National Historic Landmark retail building on State Street in Chicago, Illinois. Now housing, Macy's State Street, the Beaux-Arts and Commercial style complex was designed by architect Daniel Burnham and built in two stages—north end in 1901–02 (including columned entrance) and south end in 1905–06. It was the flagship location of the Marshall Field and Company and headquarters Marshall Field's chain of department stores. Since 2006, it is the main Chicago mid-western location of the Macy's department stores. The building is located in the Chicago "Loop" area of the downtown central business district and it takes up the entire city block bounded clockwise from the west by North State Street, East Randolph Street, North Wabash Avenue, and East Washington Street. Field and partners founded their Chicago store in 1852, and first built an expansive shopping emporium on this site in 1868. The 1901 building was the fourth for the department store at this site.
Marshall Field's established numerous important business "firsts" in this building and in the series of previous elaborate decorative structures on this site for the last century and a half, and it is regarded as one of the three most influential establishments in the nationwide development of the department store and in the commercial business economic history of the United States. The name of the stores formerly headquartered at this building changed on September 9, 2006, as a result of the merger that produced Macy's, Inc. and led to the integration of the Marshall Field's stores into the Macy's now nationwide retailing network.
The building, which is the third largest store in the world, was both declared a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 2, 1978, and it was designated a Chicago Landmark on November 1, 2005. The building architecture is known for its multiple atria (several balconied atrium - "Great Hall") and for having been built in stages over the course of more than two decades. Its ornamentation includes a mosaic vaulted ceiling designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany and a pair of well-known outdoor street-corner clocks at State and Washington, and later at State and Randolph Streets, which serve as symbols of the store since 1897. (Full article...)
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The Blackstone Hotel is located on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Balbo Street in the Michigan Boulevard Historic District in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. This 290 feet (88 m) 21-story hotel was built from 1908 to 1910 and designed by Marshall and Fox. On May 29, 1998, the Blackstone Hotel was designated as a Chicago Landmark. The hotel was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 8, 1986. It is also a historic district contributing property for the Chicago Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District. The hotel was named for Timothy Blackstone, a notable Chicago business executive and politician, who served as the founding president of the Union Stock Yards, president of the Chicago and Alton Railroad and mayor of La Salle, Illinois. The hotel is famous for celebrity guests including numerous U.S. Presidents, for which it was known as the "Hotel of Presidents" for much of the 20th century. The hotel known for contributing the term "smoke-filled room" to political parlance. The hotel fell disrepair that necessitated closure and renovation. It reopened on March 6, 2008 after a $128 million renovation under the Marriott International Renaissance Hotels brand still using the Blackstone name.
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11 South LaSalle Street Building or Eleven South LaSalle Street Building (formerly Roanoke Building and Tower and originally Lumber Exchange Building and Tower Addition or simply the Roanoke Building and Lumber Exchange Building) is a Chicago Landmark building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and that is located at 11 South LaSalle Street in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States. This address is located on the southeast corner of LaSalle and Madison Street in Cook County, Illinois across the Madison Street from the One North LaSalle Building. The building sits on a site of a former Roanoke building (once known as Major Block 2) that once served as a National Weather Service Weather Forecast official climate site and replaced Major Block 1 after the Great Chicago Fire. The current building has incorporated the frontage of other buildings east of the original site of Major Block 1. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places (under the name Lumber Exchange Building and Tower Addition) on December 6, 2007, and named a Chicago Landmark on December 12, 2007. It incorporates the lands of the former DeSoto Building and former Farewell Hall.
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The Fabyan Windmill is an authentic, working Dutch windmill dating from the 1850s located in Geneva, Illinois. The 68 feet (21 m), five-story wooden smock mill sits upon the onetime estate of Colonel George Fabyan, but is now part of the Kane County Forest Preserve District. In 1979, the windmill was listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The following year, the windmill was selected to be on a U.S. postage stamp as part of a series of five American windmills included in a stamp booklet called "WINDMILLS USA". It originally operated as a custom grinding mill
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Schulze Baking Company Plant is a factory building located on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. It is located in the Washington Park community area. Built in 1914, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on November 12, 1982. Originally built for the Schulze Baking Company, it is now the home of the Butternut Bread Company. The building features a terra cotta exterior with ornamentation that pays tribute to Louis Sullivan. In the early 21st Century, the building fell into a state of disrepair.
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Washington Park Court District is a Grand Boulevard community area neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois. It was designated a Chicago Landmark on October 2, 1991. Despite its name, it is not located within either the Washington Park community area or the Washington Park park, but is one block north of both. The district was named for the Park. The district includes row houses built between 1895 and 1905, with addresses of 4900–4959 South Washington Park Court and 417–439 East 50th Street. Many of the houses share architectural features. The neighborhood was part of the early twentieth century segregationist racial covenant wave that swept Chicago following the Great Migration. The community area has continued to be almost exclusively African American since the 1930s.
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The DeKalb County Courthouse is located in the county seat of DeKalb County, Illinois, U.S.A., the city of Sycamore. The Classical Revival structure sits on a square facing Illinois Route 64 as it passes through the city. The current courthouse was constructed in 1905 amid controversy over where the courthouse and thus, ultimately, the county seat would be located. The current building is the third structure to bear the name "DeKalb County Courthouse." DeKalb County's Courthouse still serves as the county's primary judicial center and is a contributing property to the Sycamore Historic District. The district joined the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. As the county's primary courthouse for over 100 years, the site has been host to many trials, including prominent murder cases. The building is cast in the Classical Revival architectural style and contains elements common to that style. Stained glass, columns and a pediment are among the more noticeable features at a glance. The rear facade of the building is designed to resemble a temple and also features stained glass windows. A stone porte-cochere covers the rear driveway. Inside the building's third floor courtroom is more stained glass, in the form of a skylight. During the early 1980s a made for television movie had scenes filmed in the DeKalb County Courthouse's courtroom.
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The Michigan Avenue Bridge (officially DuSable Bridge) is a bascule bridge that carries Michigan Avenue across the main stem of the Chicago River in downtown Chicago, Illinois, United States. The bridge was planned in the early 20th century as part of a scheme to link Chicago's south side and north side parks with a grand boulevard. Construction of the bridge started in 1918, it opened to traffic in 1920, and work on the decoration of the bridge was completed in 1928. The bridge provides passage for vehicles and pedestrians on two levels; it is an example of a fixed trunnion bascule bridge, which later became widely known as a "Chicago style bascule". The bridge is included in the Michigan–Wacker Historic District and has been designated as a Chicago Landmark. The location of the bridge is significant in the early history of Chicago and events in the city's history are commemorated with sculptures and plaques on the bridge. The bridge also houses the McCormick Bridgehouse & Chicago River Museum in one of the bridge tender houses.
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The Monadnock Building (historically the Monadnock Block), is a skyscraper located in the south Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. The north half of the building was designed by the firm of Burnham & Root and built in 1891. The tallest commercial load-bearing masonry building ever constructed, it employed the first portal system of wind bracing in America. Its decorative staircases represent the first use of aluminum in building construction. The south half, constructed in 1893, was designed by Holabird & Roche and is similar in color and profile to the original, but the design is more traditionally ornate. When completed, it was the largest office building in the world. The building was remodelled in 1938 in one of the first major skyscraper renovations ever undertaken—a bid, in part, to revolutionize how building maintenance was done and halt the demolition of Chicago's aging skyscrapers. It was sold in 1979 to owners who restored the building to its original condition. The north half is an unornamented vertical mass of purple-brown brick, flaring gently out at the base and top, with vertically continuous bay windows projecting out. The south half is vertically divided by brickwork at the base and rises to a large copper cornice at the roof. Projecting window bays in both halves allow large exposures of glass, giving the building an open appearance despite its mass. The Monadnock is part of the Printing House Row District. It was one of the first buildings named a Chicago Architectural Landmark in 1958. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, and named as part of the National Historic Landmark South Dearborn Street–Printing House Row North Historic District in 1976.