Gold Coast Chicago Part 2 (Nov 2023)

In this series of blog posts, I am exploring the sights and scenes of Gold Coast, a luxurious neighborhood of Chicago:

The previous post delineated the boundaries of the Gold Coast neighborhood using Google Maps as a reference:

Source: adapted from Google Maps

This post continues to explore the North-South (N-S) streets (the East-West streets will follow in the next post).

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N-S Street 3: State Street

The importance of State Street to the city of Chicago is at par with the other two iconic streets of Michigan Avenue and Lakeshore Drive. Its geographical significance lies in the fact that it divides the city into east (towards the lake) and west (away from the lake). The eastern side of Chicago is very small since the city terminates at the lakefront. The most popular stretches of State Street, the shopping and theater districts, reside outside the Gold Coast area. However, the Gold Coast stretch packs a punch as well. Even though this stretch of the street is called State Parkway, I prefer to use the more neighborhoody "street".

I began my exploration from the Oak Street side of State, where the street has the same commercial character as its more renowned touristy stretch. But very soon one stumbles across the charming little Mariano Park, which gives an European feeling to an otherwise grotty stretch of State Street:

The park was renamed in 1970 after Louis Mariano, a Chicago-based news reporter who wrote hyperlocal articles about this neighborhood. My understanding of what good local news meant took shape when I started reading the Chicago Tribune after arriving in the U.S. in 2003. In India, there was no concept of city newspapers; instead, we had city editions of national papers. For instance, The Times of India would publish a Delhi edition and a Mumbai edition, with city pages often focused on lurid crime stories. In contrast, the Chicago Tribune offered rich stories about city government scandals, cultural events, acerbic editorials on local issues, and beloved city-based columnists.

Over the years, I drifted away from reading city newspapers and instead became more of a global citizen. My media consumption now centers on outlets like The Wall Street Journal and The Economist, which means I form superficial opinions on global events like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while remaining unaware that newly arrived Latin American refugees are being housed in a hotel just down the street. This shift reflects a broader lack of rootedness—there’s no longer a city I truly belong to. Instead of seeing a place like Delhi or Chicago, I now view my surroundings as a mere collection of physical structures—parks, storefronts, pavements, homes—lacking deeper connection.

This loss of rootedness stems from a decline in community, which itself is linked to the growing difficulty of believing in God as science continues to unravel the mysteries of the universe. Religion has been a powerful tool for building community, a method evolved by humans. In India, I see my neighbors actively participating in cultural events centered around Hindu deities like Lord Krishna, Ganesha, and Ma Durga. I observe these events with a mix of astonishment and mild judgment, despite not being a full-blown atheist myself. Many participants in these rituals might be agnostic or even atheist, but they find joy in the beauty of these shared traditions. The west has tried to evolve secular substitutes for community building like marathons, pride parades and volunteer drives. But I am skeptical of their impact compared to religion. A group of people who have grown up on shared stories repeatedly told through scripture and grandma, share a bond that is difficult to replicate.

I often see the doorman of my building reading the Chicago Tribune, and watching him do so is surprisingly therapeutic. Unlike the constant scrolling on phones to follow events in real time, he immerses himself in the local newspaper. Our doorman is one of the most positive people I know, and everyone stops by to chat with him. I believe his habit of reading the city newspaper reflects his deep sense of rootedness. Inspired by this, I decided to buy the Sunday edition of the Tribune. The old-school charm of the newspaper, with its distinct sections, brought a smile to my face:

One cannot talk about Mariano Park without talking about the infamous Viagra Triangle. The park actually sits inside an isosceles triangle. The name Viagra Triangle comes from the fact (or urban legend?) that older sugar daddies pick up young women in this geography.

The two legs of the triangle are Rush Street and State Street. While both Rush and State Streets are North-South streets and hence run parallel, they intersect at the apex of this triangle, with Rush terminating here (see below):

While everyone agrees that Rush and State are the two legs of the triangle, there are differing opinions on which East-West street constitutes the base of this triangle. Since this post is about Gold Coast, I will take the executive decision of assigning Oak Street (see map at the beginning of this post) as the base.

The area on the State Street side of Mariano Park has a lot going on from a culinary perspective and include:

Lou Malnati's

Chicagoans would recognize Louis Malnati's as the purveyor of the beloved Chicago style deep dish pizza. Some contend that the Chicago deep dish pizza was invented in 1943 at a restaurant called Pizzeria Uno by Rudy Malnati, the father of Lou Malnati, after whom the restaurant is named.The pizza is served piping hot! I once got a burn mark on my dining table from the heat of a Giordano’s pizza box.The Chicago deep dish pizza is dripping with cheese, fat and gluten (no cauliflower crust here!) and is emblematic of the unpretentious nature of the city.

Velvet Taco

While Lou Malnati's is an Illinois born chain, another Dallas based chain outlet located here is very popular with my Indian friends for its Indian themed tacos:

Somerset House

The area also hosts the Somerset House restaurant, which sits attached to the Viceroy Hotel:

The site of the current 18 storied Viceroy Hotel was occupied by the Cedar Hotel (named after the intersecting street Cedar), which was a four-storied hotel built in the 1920s! When the new hotel opened in 2017, they restored the design of the facade of the old hotel at its base:

In the neighborhoods of Chicago, while the old is constantly giving way to the new, real dollars are spent in preserving elements of the past. Had the architects of the Viceroy Hotel stuck to a completely new design, the structure would have cost less. While one supports these restoration efforts at an emotional level, the rational side of the brain wonders what is the benefit to society of preserving designs and buildings. If the new building is aesthetically pleasing, why bother preserving buildings that have history but no historical importance. And what constitutes historical importance? For instance, if Lincoln was assassinated here, then Cedar Hotel would surely have historical importance. But what if it wasn't John Wilkes Booth assassinating Lincoln but Mark Chapman killing John Lennon at the Cedar?

In 2005, Macy's acquired the iconic Marshall Field's at the intersection of State and Madison streets. I felt a personal sense of loss when the store was rebranded. Even though I had lived in the city for less than two years, the change felt like a personal affront. As we navigate life, we encounter the transience of everything, but unlike aging, death, and global crises, the loss of a neighborhood landmark seems preventable. Perhaps preserving the beauty of an old building honors those who came before us and whose lives were as poignantly fleeting as ours.

It was time to bid adieu to the Mariano Park area and walk further on State Street towards North Avenue. Consistent with what I discovered in my Old Town explorations, as one moves towards North Avenue, the vibe becomes less commercial and more European:

The mansion below, built in 1873, predates even the Potter Castle referenced in the prior post and continues to be a single-family home:

Talking of historical significance, the home below (now a condominium building) at 1340 North State Parkway (see below) is the original Playboy Mansion!

Hugh Hefner moved in to the house in 1959 and fitted the home with a bunch of fun features like a bowling alley, steam room and a swimming pool! He lived on the first floor and the top two floors were rented out at discounted rates to the bunnies. When Hefner brought this 1899 built mansion, he hung a brass plate that warned Si Non Oscillas, Noli Tintinnare, Latin for If You Don’t Swing, Don’t Ring. Heffner moved to Los Angeles in the 1970s and rented the building to the Art Institute of Chicago at a token rate. Chicago's status as the origin of a magazine that became a cultural phenomena is commemorated with an exhibit at the Chicago History Museum:

It is worth spending some time observing the beauty of the buildings around this area that represents the last hurrah of the iconic State Street on the north side.

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N-S Street 4: Rush Street

The Gold Coast stretch of Rush Street is barely a block and is centered around the Mariano Park area referenced earlier in this post. Despite being named after a signatory on the United States Declaration of Independence, it's association today for most people is with partying and picking up women (the Viagra Triangle bars). Interestingly, both Dr. Benjamin Rush and the far more famous signatory to the declaration, John Hancock, had no connection with Chicago. Yet Rush Street and the Hancock Building are Chicago landmarks.

The restaurant on the Rush side of Mariano Park is beautiful and while its name has changed in 2023, the restaurant at this corner has always been a Gold Coast landmark:

Across the street on Rush is the famous Gibson's steakhouse:

Many Westerners assume that all Indians are vegetarians, but surveys show that only 30 to 40% of Indians follow a vegetarian diet. I have vivid memories of accompanying my father to the butcher's shop on Sunday mornings—our tradition was to eat fish most days and reserve Sundays for meat. The butcher kept live chickens packed together in a mid-sized cage, and every time he opened the cage, the birds would flutter in sheer terror.

There is a Terry Gross interview with Camas Davis, a restaurant reviewer and food writer, who learnt how to butcher pigs at a farm in France. This fascinating interview can be accessed here. Her description of ethical meat eating is elegant in its simplicity:

I'm interested in a couple of things - how land is used to raise the animals that we eat for meat. I'm interested in whether those animals are allowed to be the animals that they are, they're allowed to eat what they are meant to eat, they're allowed to move around the way their bodies were built to move around, that they're treated humanely.

According to Camas Davis, the most humane method of butchering animals is to stun them at the point of slaughter, so their brains do not process what happens next. However, it's impossible to be certain if this method is entirely effective. Animal cruelty is a broader issue, and it is particularly considered cruel to inflict harm on animals that pass the mirror self-recognition test, such as chimpanzees, certain dolphins, and elephants.

Lest I get more morbid, it is time to move on to the final N-S street within Gold Coast (the N-S boundary street Clark has been covered as part of the Old Town series in this post).

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N-S Street 5: Dearborn Street

I walked on Dearborn Street from the North Avenue side towards the Oak Street boundary of Gold Coast (refer map at the top of this post). Like its more famous sibling State, the Gold Coast segment of the street is suffixed parkway but I will continue with the more affable "street".

Some of the buildings on this stretch of Dearborn Street belong to the elite Latin School:

As per local news, the school now owns eight buildings on this part of Dearborn and like the homes in the surrounding streets (Lakeshore, Astor, State), many date back to the late 1800s. The Latin School itself dates back to 1888.

At some places, the green cover is so thick that the buildings behind the trees are invisible:

Many buildings on the Gold Coast stretch of Dearborn are now condominiums but while the owners have modernized the inside, the facades are historic and beautiful. Interestingly, the Houghton Building below was established as an apartment building from the start (towards the end of the 19th century):

In those times, wealthy people associated multi-family apartment buildings with working class folks. I learnt through this site that real estate professionals marketed these apartments as French Flats to make them seem attractive to wealthy buyers. Back in 2010, while I was searching for a rental in London, every flat was marketed as five minutes away from the tube. The realtors were probably benchmarking to the timing of Kenyan marathoners. Its good to know that while the world is going to hell in a handbasket, the real estate industry was never honest to begin with!

The high-rise 1530 North Dearborn stands out as architecturally incongruent to the neighborhood but retains the exclusivity expected from the Gold Coast, given that there are only two units per floor:

Dearborn Street also hosts the beautiful St. Chrysostom's Episcopal Church:

John Chrysostom lived in the 4th century AD in Constantinople (the site of modern day Istanbul). The Episcopal Church is a progressive institution that has embraced LGBTQ members and has ordained women into the priesthood.

If you have had your fill of spiritual experience at the church, you can walk a block ahead to buy luxury furniture at Restoration Hardware:

Ironically, I always assumed Restoration Hardware was a hardware store like Ace Hardware. Apparently, many others did too, which is why the company rebranded as RH when it went public in 2012 (I missed the memo!). The older name harks back to 1979 when the founder Stephen Gordon found it difficult to find fixtures and hardware required to restore a Victorian era home. The branding of RH on the Chicago building is discreet and the building itself looks non-commercial. For years I walked by this building without realizing it was a furniture store. There is a reason for this. This building began its life in 1914 as the Three Arts Club, a dormitory for women studying the three arts of drama, music and painting. In fact, the central courtyard of the store houses a popular restaurant called the 3 Arts Club Café.

The thought of going inside a store where one piece of furniture possibly costs more than my entire ensemble makes me uncomfortable. Hence, I stepped into the humbler Third Coast Café for lunch:

The chicken soup I ordered was beyond delicious and this has become my go to restaurant now, given the walking distance from my condo:

The expression third coast is often used in the US for cities around water bodies that are not by the two sea coasts. Chicago, by virtue of being next to Lake Michigan, is on one of the third coasts and hence, the name of this restaurant.

Adjacent to the Third Coast Café is the Claridge House hotel, which began its life in 1923 as a residential hotel (an apartment building with hotel like services) for wealthy Chicagoans:

The hotel helpfully makes it clear that CH stands for Claridge House, unlike the furniture store next door that merely displays RH!

I feel a personal connection to The Claridges, as my brother's wedding reception was held there in Delhi, though I'm unsure if there's any link between the many hotels with this name around the world. Growing up in socialist India with modest means, staying in hotels seemed like something only celebrities did. Years later, when I began staying in hotels regularly on company expense, I felt a sense of achievement. Today, I could walk into the world's most luxurious hotel and it would feel like a better mousetrap. Each time we are surprised when a celebrity like Anthony Bourdain, who seemingly has it all, commits suicide, we just need to look inward to our own hedonic adaptation.

Just as I find no novelty in a luxury hotel, I'm certain that Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk don't find much wonder in a billion dollars. Stepping down from the hedonic treadmill is easier said than done. While many spend their lives in delusion, there are many others (myself included), who understand the futility of worldly pleasures intellectually but are constantly undone by our Darwinian impulses.

Just a few steps south to the hotel is 1239 North Dearborn, which incidentally has an active listing (for $2 MM) on Zillow at the time of this writing:

The significance of the above house is that the 22 year old Ernest Hemingway lived with his first wife Hadley, in an apartment within it, in the early 1920s. Being a private space, I could not walk in but the picture below from the Zillow listing shows that the hallway is a homage to Hemingway. The current owner rents out parts of the house to different people.

Opposite the Hemingway landmark is the Chabad House (as per my understanding, a Chabad House is a Jewish community center, sort of equivalent to a YMCA):

While the modern west is very secular, religion still plays an important role, as evidenced by the presence of so many religious buildings in poshest of urban neighborhoods.

While most buildings in the Chicago neighborhoods open into a public street, there are few precious ones (like the one below at 1216-1220 N Dearborn), which open into a private courtyard:

Dearborn Street is also home to the Biggs Mansion:

The Biggs Mansion is a cigar lounge! The mansion was built in 1874, three years after the Great Fire. The owner was John DeKoven, who co-founded the Northern Trust Bank. Interestingly, the infamous O'Leary Barn where the 1871 Chicago fire started was located at DeKoven street, named after the DeKoven family! The name of the mansion comes from Joseph Biggs who resurrected the DeKoven home into a restaurant in the mid 20th century. In 2014, the mansion was renovated again and opened as a cigar lounge. It is fascinating that there always seems to be a market for a niche hobby. In fact, not far from the Biggs Mansion, there is a more plebeian cigar lounge on my street in the Old Town neighborhood:

Some may think of Dearborn Street to be a poor cousin of the more commercial State and the more luxurious Astor. But they would be wrong, given this relatively small Gold Coast stretch of Dearborn contains historical mansions, religious buildings, a hotel, restaurants, luxury retail and Hemingway's first marital home! And if all this was not sufficient, Dearborn Street@Gold Coast also encapsulates the significance Chicago assigns to art. The RH furniture store, as mentioned earlier, was formerly a dormitory for women studying art. It would be wrong to conclude that modern day Chicagoans are philistines relentlessly converting artistic institutions into retail space. Far from it. The street hosts a school of dance named after Ruth Pager, an American ballerina:

There is also the delightfully named Palette and Chisel Academy of Fine Arts, which is a non-profit offering art classes, exhibitions and workshops:

The building, originally a private residence constructed in 1876 (just five years after the Great Fire), was acquired by this art academy in 1921. The innate desire to create art connects people across millennia and cultures. Even those of us who might never visit an art gallery can still appreciate art through the visuals of a Pixar movie. Art touches everyone, even those who don’t consider themselves particularly "artsy." It’s ironic that the proverbial starving artist, who seeks not worldly riches but creative fulfillment, often relies on the super-wealthy to achieve success. For instance, Da Vinci's patrons included Giuliano de' Medici and the King of France.

I will sign off this installment of the Gold Coast series with a beautiful medieval castle like building on State. The next post, describes the East-West streets of Gold Coast.