Upper Michigan Ave. & The Gold Coast

By the 1920s the almost a century old north-of-the-Chicago-River exclusive residential district was already being envisioned by planners as something truly grand. in 1920 the Drake Hotel prophesied this new destiny. This view, looking north to The Gold Coast and beyond, shows the twenty-six-story Drake Hotel and Tower (Marshall & Fox) at the north end of Michigan Avenue. Also shown are the 1871-fire-defying Water Tower, in its own square at Michigan and Chicago Avenues, and the Water Pumping Station across the street (both by architect W.W. Boyington). Some other significant buildings in this photograph are the 1917 Chapel of St. James for Quigley Seminary (architects Gustav Steinbeck and Zachary Taylor Davis) and the 1914 Fourth Presbyterian Church (architects Ralph Adams Cram and Howard Van Doren Shaw).