South Loop Real Estate

The South Loop’s Location

While not an officially defined Chicago neighborhood, South Loop has come to describe an area bounded by Congress Parkway on the north, Cermak Road (2200 south) on the south, the Chicago River on the west, and Lake Michigan on the east. Conversion of printing and manufacturing buildings to condominiums, as well as construction of townhouse and high-rise apartment structures, has made the South Loop a vibrant residential area. The South Loop also contains many of Chicago’s foremost cultural institutions.

The South Loop’s History

The western part of the South Loop was initially settled in the 1850s by working-class immigrants. Housing here and in the area to the west was modest, and almost always wood construction. Just west of the South Loop is where, on October 8, 1871, the Great Chicago Fire began, destroying a vast section of the growing city. Gradually, this western part of the South Loop was redeveloped for commercial use, printing to the north and manufacturing to the south.

After the Fire, many wealthy Chicagoans chose the east part of the South Loop, close to the lake, to build mansions, primarily on and near Prairie Avenue. Through the 1870s and ‘80s, this area housed some of the richest and most influential people in Chicago. Toward the end of the 1880s, the soot of growing railroad traffic—both to the west and along the Illinois Central right-of-way to east—caused a shift to the north side of the city, goaded by Potter Palmer’s building of his mansion on North Lake Shore Drive. This part of the South Loop fell into residential decline as many of the mansions were replaced by commercial and industrial buildings.

Redevelopment of the abandoned railroad yards in the western portion of the South Loop began in the late 1970s, with the construction of Dearborn Park, producing over 800 housing units in townhouses and high-rise buildings. The existing large, sturdy printing buildings north of Dearborn Park were perfect for conversion to the newly-popular residential lofts.

Court decisions in the early 1900s had insured that the lakefront, including the portion of it in the South Loop, was to be parkland. This led to construction of The Field Museum in 1921, and both the Shedd Aquarium and Adler Planetarium in 1930. That entire lakefront area was reconfigured in 1988 to create the Museum Campus. The new attractiveness of the South Loop’s lakefront has spurred vast development of upper-bracket townhouses as well as high-rise apartments, both condominiums and rental.

Housing in the South Loop

The South Loop today is vast menu of desirable housing choices: loft/condo conversions, new townhouses, and high-rise buildings. All minutes from downtown, Grant Park, and the lake.

South Loop Highlights

High on anyone’s South Loop list are the major institutions of the Museum Campus, plus Soldier Field and McCormick Place. Also of interest is the Prairie Avenue District which contains the remaining early mansions as well as the 1836 Henry B. Clarke House. The Clarke House had been moved to the 4500 block of Wabash Avenue following the Great Fire, but was returned to the current site, near its original location, in 1977. The imposing Second Presbyterian Church, originally built in 1874 but significantly rebuilt following a 1900 fire, is at 1936 S. Michigan Avenue. And music fans revere the Chess Records and Studio Building at 2120 S. Michigan, where the Chess brothers, Leonard and Phil, revolutionized Blues and Rock n’ Roll in the 1950s and ‘60s.

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Other Neighborhood Information
Bronzeville, Hyde Park, Kenwood, South Loop, South Shore and Woodlawn