More from the Encyclopedia of Chicago (
visit link) : "Industrialists like Philip D. Armour who lived at (2115) and George M. Pullman (1729) created massive corporations providing thousands of jobs and helped to transform Chicago into a global city. Retailer Marshall Field (1905), eventually Chicago's richest man, shaped the city's buying habits by giving "the lady what she wants." Quick-thinking realtor John G. Shortall (1600) saved his careful property records from the flames of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and used them afterwards to help restore order to a property market left in total disarray by the destruction of official real estate records. In the late 1880s, sixteen of the Commercial Club's sixty membfers lived on Prairie Avenue and John W. Doane (1827) served as its president. Daniel H. Burnham, the architect and urban planner whose 1909 Plan of Chicago was, arguably, the Commercial Club's greatest project, designed and lived in the house of his father-in-law, John B. Sherman (2100) who was one of the founders of the Union Stock Yard.
The physical proximity of so many of Chicago's elites helped to create a world that was at the same time isolated from the city around it and a space where Prairie Avenue residents, sometimes with their counterparts from elsewhere in the area, could work to shape the city as they wished it would be. By the mid 1890's, however, Prairie Avenue's influence was in sharp decline. The avenue's titans were dying. Their children, even those who had originally lived on Prairie Avenue, were moving elsewhere, helping to create new elite enclaves. The homes in which they once lived turned into rooming houses. The age of the homes, the expense of modernizing them, the expanding vice district to the west, and the factories and warehouses that had already replaced residences on nearby streets made Prairie Avenue an unattractive residential site for the few families who could afford to buy the houses there. Increasingly, residences gave way to offices, warehouses, and factories. By 1930, the elite world of Prairie Avenue had all but disappeared."
The Prairie Avenue Historic District was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972 and was designated a City of Chicago Landmark District in 1979.
See (
visit link) for a fantastic photo tour of the neighborhood. She also provides this comprehensive listing of houses on the block, both past and extant:
Prairie Avenue District ..
Address: 1800 and 1900-blocks of S. Prairie Ave., 1800-block of S. Indiana, and 211-217 E. Cullerton
Year Built: 1836-1900
Architect: Various ..
The Prairie Avenue Historic District was designated a Chicago Landmark: December 27, 1979 ..
It includes 5 houses on the 1800 and 1900 blocks of Prairie Avenue, along with three rowhouses on Cullerton Street .. Clarke House Museum [on S Indiana Ave], individually designated a Chicago Landmark is also included as a part of the historic district ..
As such the Prairie Avenue Historic Distric includes:
# Clarke House [1827 S Indiana Avenue]- 1836 ..
# Glessner House [1800 S Prairie Avenue]- 1887 ..
# Kimball House [1801 S Prairie Avenue]- 1892 ..
# Coleman House [1811 S Prairie Avenue]- 1886 ..
# G Keith House [1900 S. Prairie Avenue] - 1870 ..
# Marshall Field Jr. House [1919 S. Prairie Avenue]- 1884 ..
# Three rowhouses [213-217 E Cullerton Street] - 1870-92 ..
Outside the district ..
Three additional residences remain outside the formal boundaries of the Historic District .. though in the vicinity and belong to the same era ..
# Wheeler-Kohn Mansion [2018 S Calumet Avenue]- 1870 ..
# William H. Reid House [2013 S Prairie Avenue]- 1894 ..
# Harriet F. Rees House [2110 S. Prairie Avenue]- 1888 ..