On warm days, Yvonne Pen often sits in the small garden hidden behind her three-story home on the western edge of the Gold Coast neighborhood.
There are finer homes in the area and larger gardens. But Pen has loved this house and lovingly tended its garden for the nearly half-century she has lived here.
“It is a special place in a special part of the city,” she says.
Though she was born and raised in the Hubbard Woods section of Winnetka, she fell in love with the city as a child.
“I was taken into the city for a weekend when I was 5 and that did it,” she says. “The lights, the activity, the people.”
Later, as a student at the Goodman School of Drama, she lived in the Three Arts Club, the residence for female art students that had opened at Goethe Street and Dearborn Parkway in 1914. She next lived in an apartment at 35 E. Division St., and she was living in the Tree Studios buildings when she met an artist named Rudolph Pen, the man who would become her husband.
“Rudolph and I fell in love and were married in 1946,” she says. “In 1948, when he became a member of the faculty of the School of the Art Institute, he was teaching classes in the morning and then again in the evening and it was important to him that he not lose time commuting.
“We were so lucky to find this house,” she says now. “It was 70 years old in 1950, which means it was one of the oldest buildings in the neighborhood but it was perfect for us.”
In this home the Pens raised two children: Ronald, now a professor of music at the University of Kentucky, and Polly, a composer-playwright-actress in New York City.
“It was a wonderful neighborhood for the children,” says Pen. “They went to school at the nearby Latin School. They played music at the church and took dancing lessons not far away. The city was at their fingertips and I never had to worry.”
The area just to the west of Pens’ home, the stretch of Clark Street from North Avenue to Division Street, was a strip of cheap lodgings, restaurants, nightclubs and honky-tonks. Though some will tell you they felt this area threatening, the Pens found it anything but.
“There were a number of unsavory places on the street,” she recalls. “And I suppose it was sliding downhill. But it was never dangerous. It was filled with action and lights and people. We could look out our windows and see everything — and I do mean everything. It was shabby, but it was filled with character . . . and characters.”
One of the Pens’ favorite Clark Street establishments was the Red Star Inn, a German-American restaurant a block south of North Avenue.
“I still miss it,” says Pen. “That is where we would go whenever Rudolph sold a painting. We would go there to celebrate the sale. And when he didn’t sell a painting, that’s where we would go to commiserate.”
The Red Star Inn would eventually fall to the wrecker’s ball as another part of the sprawling Sandburg Village complex that would change the character (and the characters) of the Gold Coast’s western edge.
Pen has seen many changes in the neighborhood in which she has lived for five decades. But she remains ever in love with her home, her garden, her small slice of the Gold Coast, of the city. The kids are long gone from the house, but they visit frequently. Friends are always dropping by. Rudolph Pen died in January 1989 while taking a walk on the street where he lived. But the house is still alive with memories of him and his work. Canvases — oils of horses, chorus girls, fighters — pack every wall and even take up what used to be a hallway on the second floor.
“The garden is still my joy,” says Pen. “And the neighborhood is still the most wonderful place. Why, just the other day I was out walking my dog. It was a lovely day and a man was walking down the street toward me. I didn’t know him but recognized his face. He stopped and he said, `It’s so nice to see an old-timer.’
“I wasn’t at all offended. I turned 80 on Halloween, but I thought the man’s remark was just delightful.
“I am an old-timer. Sometimes I feel like a landmark myself.”
The Gold Coast may be the wealthiest of Chicago’s neighborhoods. But it’s still a neighborhood — a city neighborhood.
“We rarely go to our local grocery store without running into someone we know,” says Thomas Begel, former CEO of the Pullman Co. “You’ve got a special kind of neighborhood feel here.”
Begel, who now heads TMB Industries, an investment firm, moved to the Gold Coast with his wife, Sarah, in 1991 when he returned to Chicago after several years in New York.
“We did look in the suburbs, but you’re either a city mouse or a country mouse. And we love living in the city,” says Begel.
The Gold Coast is a neighborhood of hundreds of century-old redstones, brownstones and other single-family homes — some, former mansions; others, humble row houses. And it’s a neighborhood of mid-rise and high-rise structures with dozens, perhaps hundreds of apartments, clustered not only along the lakefront but also sprinkled here and there in the community’s interior.
The neighborhood is densely populated, but the presence of so many two- and three-story homes gives the Gold Coast a human scale that’s missing amid the gaggle of skyscrapers just to the south in Streeterville. It feels like a neighborhood — and an interesting one at that, with its attractive mix of architectural styles and the historical significance of many of its homes. And then there’s the neighborhood’s closeness to Lincoln Park and the lakefront.
Some residents will quietly complain about the “hordes of strangers who fill the park and beaches,” and others don’t much like the lively nightlife areas nearby. But they know, as 18th District Police Cmdr. Joseph Griffin says, “This is as safe a neighborhood as there is in the city. There is the night-life area on Division Street where some people will over-indulge and we do have to arrest people who act foolish. But the Gold Coast is an area without a lot of crime. I would describe it as tranquil.”
The Begels purchased a 2 1/2-story redstone home on Burton Place at Dearborn Parkway that dates back to the 1890s. Their 4-year-old son, Michael, attends the Latin School, a half-block to the north. And the whole family attends St. Chrysostom’s Episcopal Church a half-block to the south. They have a two-car garage but rarely need to drive anywhere.
“As far as day-to-day living, it’s very pleasant to walk to virtually everything you do,” Begel says. “I walk to work (at One Magnificent Mile) in the morning and walk home at night.”
Of course, the people Begel passes on his walks, or nods to in the store, are people like him — successful people, very successful people. The Gold Coast counts among its 20,000 residents such well-known names as former Illinois Gov. James Thompson, Fruit of the Loom Chairman William Farley and Cardinal Francis George, Roman Catholic archbishop of Chicago, as well as hundreds of lesser-known power brokers, millionaires and captains of industry.
Begel, who grew up in a modest home in Peoria, says, “The thing that surprised us is how friendly a neighborhood it is. There are a lot of wealthy people, and neither of us is from a wealthy family. But there’s a great community spirit.”
It’s easy to get the sense that the Gold Coast is a world unto itself and that those who live there are interested only in insulating themselves from some of the harsh realities of the contemporary city.
“But I don’t think that is true,” says Rev. Raymond Webster, rector of St. Chrysostom’s on North Dearborn Parkway. “I like to say we are at the heart of a great city but very much a part of it too. So many of our parishioners volunteer for our charitable endeavors, our adult education programs.”
Indeed, the membership lists of the area’s charitable and cultural institutions are filled with the names of Gold Coast residents.
You don’t have to be hugely wealthy to devote your time and money to charity — or to live in the Gold Coast. But it helps.
There’s a house for sale right now on the Gold Coast for which the asking price is $8.9 million. And there’s a rumor circulating through the neighborhood that one homeowner is spending $25 million — $25 million! — to remodel his home’s interior.
Parking is so scarce that spaces sell for the price of luxury cars. If you want to rent a space, you can expect to spend, say, $3,000 a year. Or maybe you want to buy it outright. Probable cost: $30,000.
Not only is the Gold Coast the most affluent of Chicago neighborhoods, it’s more than twice as wealthy as the richest suburb of similar population, Highland Park, in terms of capital income. Indeed, a study of 1990 census data found that, except for Central Park East in Manhattan, the Gold Coast has the greatest concentration of wealth in the nation.
Consider this: Based on a study of building permits, it is estimated that, since 1978, Gold Coast property owners have spent more than $100 million to restore, renovate and rehabilitate homes and buildings in the neighborhood’s 28 blocks.
In fact, the Gold Coast is so affluent that it has been a catalyst for the development of much of the rest of the North Side lakefront and of the neighborhoods around the Loop.
It has been a neighborhood to aspire to. If you couldn’t afford the Gold Coast quite yet or simply couldn’t find a suitable home or apartment in the relatively small community, you’d turn your sights to other nearby communities, such as Lincoln Park, Lake View and the Near North Side.
The Gold Coast is one of the oldest parts of Chicago. When the city was incorporated in 1837, the area, not yet known as the Gold Coast, formed the northeastern corner of Chicago. Today its eastern boundary is Lake Michigan. Its northern border is North Avenue and Lincoln Park.
To the west looms the giant Sandburg Village development. Some people, particularly real estate agents and residents of that mix of high- and low-rises, like to consider Sandburg Village as a part of the Gold Coast. But it’s really a neighborhood unto itself with a character of its own.
The Gold Coast has a ragged western border. In some places the neighborhood ends at Clark Street. At others, State Street. At others, Rush Street.
The southern border is Oak Street (for the one block between Rush and Michigan Avenue) and Walton Street (for the one block between Michigan and the lake). To the south is the Magnificent Mile and the ever-more-crowded high-rises of Streeterville, another distinctly different world.
While this is the area where Gold Coast people have their homes, it does not include all of the neighborhood’s institutions.
Inside these borders are the Drake Hotel, the Racquet Club and the Fortnightly Club. But outside, mainly in the area just east and west of Michigan Avenue, are the Woman’s Athletic Club and another private club, the Casino; the St. James Episcopal Cathedral and the Roman Catholic Holy Name Cathedral; and, of course, the shops and stores of the Magnificent Mile.
Although now a shopping mecca for the entire metropolitan region as well as a not-to-be-missed stop for most tourists, the Boul Mich was once the elegant shopping preserve of Gold Coast lords and ladies. Today, most Gold Coasters are glad they’re close enough to shop along Michigan but still able, when they wish, to retreat to their residential enclave.
When you come down to it, the Gold Coast really is pretty close to everything: Symphony Center and the Art Institute; the power centers of the Loop; Oak Street Beach, Grant Park and Lincoln Park; Meigs Field for quick shots in and out of the city; Second City and Steppenwolf Theatre; even Soldier Field and the United Center.
“The location,” says longtime resident and real estate agent Pat Study, “is what made the Gold Coast in the first place, and the location is what will always keep it the most valuable. We will always be No. 1. People move here because it’s the best and the closest.”
Yet, just as any city neighborhood changes and evolves over time, so, too, has the Gold Coast. And, while the community of today seems so settled and solid and certain, it wasn’t always that way.
For much of this century, the Gold Coast has been battered by bad economic times and endangered by good ones. It has never lost its allure, but its character as a neighborhood — and its scale as a street-level community — has been under almost constant threat from social trends, political decisions and developers’ schemes.
In 1958, when Study and her late husband, Robert, bought a three-story row house at 1350 N. Dearborn Pkwy., the Gold Coast was an elderly dowager down on her luck.
“It was slummy,” Study recalls. “Everywhere you see a high-rise that went up in the ’60s, there had been a slum building which an absentee landlord had milked.” One Sunday morning, Study looked out the window and was startled to see a dead body propped up against the wall of the Pink Lady tavern on Clark Street.
Of course, the Gold Coast was never a true slum. But the years had taken their toll.
It had been built as a neighborhood of mansions and homes for the well-to-do. But the land was too valuable, too close to the Loop, to stay that way. And, as early as the 1920s, homes were being taken down and replaced by relatively modest high-rises of 15 floors or so, representing a neat profit for developers and a sharp increase in population density.
Like other Chicago neighborhoods, the Gold Coast was caught in a sort of suspended animation during the Depression and World War II. Not much changed, except that many of the single-family homes, particularly the largest of the mansions, were reconfigured into rooming houses.
The problem was: Those mansions made sense only for a family with a platoon of servants. But, after the turn of the century, it became virtually impossible to find servants. Prospective maids and butlers were working instead in factories and stores where the pay was better and the social status higher.
When the Studys moved into the Gold Coast, a second wave of high-rise construction was starting. Unlike the earlier wave, these new tall buildings were constructed in the boxy, bleak International style. Instead of having elegant first- and second-floor facades that blended into the streetscape (and buttressed the sense of neighborhood), these new towers often brought a starkness to the otherwise quaint community. A particularly egregious example is the two-story, featureless, black-brick wall that takes up the entire middle of one block on Astor Street.
But this was also the beginning of the era of community activism in Chicago neighborhoods, and the Gold Coast was no exception.
Soon after they moved in, the Studys joined the North Dearborn Association, which was leading the fight for neighborhood improvement. (Later, a second community organization, the North State-Astor-Lake Shore Drive Association, was formed.)
One early battle had to do with traffic. Each weekday morning and afternoon, the neighborhood was flooded with automobile commuters — “It was like a river of traffic,” Study recalls — who were using Dearborn Parkway and State Street as shortcuts between Lake Shore Drive and the Loop.
For 10 years, the North Dearborn Association lobbied to have Dearborn and State dead-end at North Avenue instead of linking with the drive. But it wasn’t until 1967, when representatives of the group, including Study, were able to meet with Mayor Richard J. Daley, that the link was cut.
As Study recalls, the group members were polite when speaking to the mayor, and Daley was polite in return. “He said, `We are very aware that we get more taxes from your area than anywhere else in the city.’ “
An unforeseen benefit of the change was a sharpening of the identity of the Gold Coast. No longer did the neighborhood flow into Lincoln Park. Instead, North Avenue was a solid northern border.
Similarly, the construction of Sandburg Village, which started in 1960, gave a sharper definition to the western edge of the community. In fact, some community activists assert that the development, named for poet Carl Sandburg, “saved” the Gold Coast by acting as a barrier between the neighborhood and the much poorer areas to the west.
“Some of us had a frightful time when (Sandburg Village developer Arthur) Rubloff wanted to turn our little stretch of buildings into high-rises, too,” says Yvonne Pen. “We fought a tremendous fight. I even wrote a letter to Mr. Sandburg asking him to intervene. He never wrote back, but we won the battle.”
Another long-running battle was to spruce up the look of the neighborhood.
At mid-century, many Gold Coast back yards were filled with junk and rubble. So, in 1955, the North Dearborn group came up with the idea of a Garden Walk to encourage landscaping improvements and boost community pride. Only five families took part that first year, showing off their back-yard greenery and plantings to visitors, but the idea soon took off. And, more than 40 years later, the annual Garden Walk attracts dozens of participants, including many from other sections of the Gold Coast and from outside the neighborhood as well.
In those early years, community activists were also quick to report building code violations, bringing the wrath of the city’s building department down on lackadaisical owners. But the effort often backfired. Sometimes, owners responded by fixing up their structures. But, at other times, they used the potentially high cost of repairs as an excuse for selling out to a high-rise developer.
It seemed to be a losing battle. There was no legal way for neighbors to block the owner of one of the hundreds of architecturally or historically interesting buildings from tearing it down to make way for a high-rise. And, in the long run, there was no economic reason for the owner to keep the old building up. The handwriting was on the wall, and it appeared, Study says, that the Gold Coast some day would be “just one high-rise after the other.”
But then the neighborhood caught a couple of breaks.
The first was the invention of the condominium. Before 1963, it was possible to own a free-standing home or townhouse or to be a co-owner of a cooperative apartment building. But, with the condominium, it was, for the first time, possible to own a separate and distinct portion of a larger structure.
What this meant for the Gold Coast was a stay of execution for many of the mansions and large homes. Now, it was financially possible — indeed, profitable — for a developer to take over one of these white elephants and transform it into, say, 6 to 12 luxury condos with six- or seven-figure sales prices.
Reuben Hedlund, a prominent Chicago lawyer and former chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission, lives with his wife, Cynthia, in just such a condo, one of nine constructed out of the 91 rooms of the old Patterson-McCormick mansion at 1500 N. Astor St.
“We’re in the upper two floors, in what had been a guest bedroom and the attic, which they called the boxing room — where you kept boxes,” Hedlund says.
He purchased the condo in 1986, and, a year later, he and Cynthia were married in the building’s courtyard.
For a fan of art and architecture, like Hedlund, the condo and its setting are a dream.
“Living there makes every day that much better,” he says. “The building, the stonework, the ornamentation, the main stairwell — it’s beautifully designed.”
And, Hedlund says, there’s an additional pleasure that comes with living in the mansion and living on the Gold Coast: “The inner recognition that you’re not in a new town. It’s not a housing subdivision. It’s a true community with a true sense of place and a sense of neighborhood.”
Yet, just a quarter-century ago, the mansion came ever so close to being razed.
Designed by famed architect Stanford White and completed in 1892, it had originally been the home of Robert W. Patterson, editor of the Tribune from 1899 to 1910. After changing hands several times, the structure came into the possession of Cyrus Hall McCormick II, son of the inventor of the reaper, who, as a bridegroom in 1927, commissioned architect David Adler to double its size.
But the expansion was out of touch with the times, and, soon the home grew too expensive to maintain. It stood empty for more than a decade before being purchased as the site of the Bateman School, a private elementary and high school. The school operated there for nearly a quarter-century until rising costs forced it to close in 1972.
Again, the mansion stood empty — a rundown, frequently vandalized hulk, described by one writer as “a kind of mini-slum in the middle of the Gold Coast.” Many of its windows were broken; garbage was piled against its gates. The roof sagged.
It was no surprise when the school owners went to the city to ask for permission to tear the building down to make way for another high-rise in the neighborhood.
But, for the first time, the city had the power to say no.
A year earlier, in 1975, the City Council had used a new ordinance to designate the mansion, along with most of the rest of the structures along Astor Street, as a Chicago landmark. Under such a designation, no change could be made to the outside of a structure without city approval, and the city’s rejection of the plan to level the Patterson-McCormick mansion was the first exercise of its veto to protect a landmark.
Yet, even after it survived that threat, the building soon faced another: the plan of a new owner, Seymour Goodman, to demolish much of the mansion’s interior to erect a 37-story, 59-unit high-rise behind the city-protected facade.
This was a plan the city couldn’t block. But, when Goodman ran into financial troubles, another developer, Gerald Fogelson, stepped in with a plan to save the entire structure by transforming it into luxury condominiums.
It was a victory for people like Hedlund who could afford to buy a piece of the mansion. Even more, it was a triumph for the neighborhood because it retained a home that provided the streetscape with such character and beauty.
It was also a turning point in Gold Coast history as, buoyed by that success, community activists worked closely with Ald. Burton Natarus (42nd) to change the zoning throughout much of the neighborhood in 1979 to exclude additional high-rises.
And, two decades later, they joined forces again to back new ordinances, approved last July by the City Council, that closed remaining loopholes. “There will be no 400-foot towers built in the neighborhood,” crows Thomas Begel, a leader of the latest anti-high-rise effort.
Yet, even as the high-rise danger seems finally to have been put to rest, Philip Wherry, president of the North Dearborn Association, warns that another threat looms: tear-downs.
“Low-interest mortgages and people willing to spend lots of money — that combination is potentially lethal to the (Gold Coast) brownstones,” he says.
Already, property owners are spending lavish sums to re-do the interiors of their homes and row houses, and there have been instances in which an old structure, usually dilapidated, has been razed to make way, not for a high-rise, but for a new home of similar size but modern design. It’s a way of putting a personal stamp on the property — and the neighborhood.
But Wherry notes, “The question always becomes: Where is the line drawn between what gets torn down and what doesn’t get torn down? And who draws the line?”
According to one survey, the Gold Coast has 321 buildings of architectural or historical significance. These are the brownstones, redstones and other vintage buildings that give the neighborhood its particular character and charm. Yet, few are protected by landmark designation.
“Once they’re gone, they’re gone,” Wherry warns. “When you start over-building, you start losing the treasure you have. You’re not going to have the same neighborhood.”
Amy Koch knows nothing of the history of the Gold Coast, but she knows what she likes.
“I love that the Gold Coast doesn’t feel like a big city,” says Koch, who is moving to the neighborhood from Manhattan in February.
“You’ve got trees and these incredible townhouses. You don’t feel like the walls are closing in on you like New York. I like the fact that you can see women walking their babies. You can see joggers and businessmen. It is a calming place. It has the feel of community.”
Koch, a 32-year-old special-events consultant with offices in New York and West Hollywood, is buying a 19th-floor condominium in a Bellevue Place high-rise with her boyfriend, Peter Gottlieb.
Although the couple looked at homes in Bucktown and Wicker Park, they chose a high-rise condominium on the Gold Coast for its location (“It’s 72 steps from Oak Street Beach,” Koch says) and its amenities, including a rooftop swimming pool (“I do a lot of entertaining,” she says).
In addition, Koch says, “I like the feeling of being young in a sophisticated place.”
Gottlieb, an investment banker who is also 32, grew up in Wilmette but had relatives on the Gold Coast. And he’d love someday to live in one of the neighborhood’s brownstones. “That would be a terrific way to live. The Gold Coast, to me, will always be a really attractive place to live, whether in a high-rise or a low-rise or an individual home.”
The Randalls feel the same way.
Bill and Carolann Randall were married in Chicago in 1984. He was a Chicagoan, raised in the Lake View neighborhood; she was born and raised in New York. Over the next decade they were frequently on the move, pursuing their hotel industry careers; first in Las Vegas, where their son, Billy, was born in 1986, and then in St. Louis and, for seven years, Los Angeles.
The family moved back to Chicago in 1994, and, at the urging of friends who lived in the area, rented an apartment on the 28th floor of a Lake Shore Drive high-rise. It offers spectacular views of the lake and the park. But for the Randalls, the attraction is subtler than prestige or pretty views.
“After living in such places as Las Vegas and L.A., there is something quieting about being in this neighborhood; nature is all over. It’s also so convenient,” says Bill, who frequently walks to and from the offices of his hotel consulting business just south of the river.
“There is a serenity here that seems almost amazing because you’re at the heart of a great, lively city,” says Carolann, who also walks to her job as a head of the Wolfgang Puck catering operation. “You are two steps from the park and the beach but also close to most of the city’s cultural institutions and every conceivable kind of shopping.”
When it came time last year for Billy to contemplate high school — he graduated from Frances Xavier Ward School, next to Holy Name Cathedral at Chicago Avenue and State Street — the Randalls investigated such nearby Gold Coast options as the Latin School before collectively deciding on Loyola Academy in Wilmette.
“We want to stay in the city and the Gold Coast is where we want to live,” says Bill. “It’s no rap against the suburbs, but I think that there are a lot of advantages to growing up in the city. Even though this is a pretty well-heeled neighborhood, it’s still a city neighborhood. Billy will be smart and street-wise, maybe a little more worldly.”
Worldly is a word that easily attaches itself to Abra and Jim Wilkin. A great- granddaughter of John D. Rockefeller, she has spent most of her life living in the Gold Coast — attending the Latin School, marrying Jim in 1986 at St. Chrysostom’s, belonging to all the right boards and clubs. She and Jim share a penthouse apartment that offers what is arguably the greatest view in the world.
It sits on the top floors of a building on East Lake Shore Drive. Purchased in 1958 by Abra’s parents, Abbie and J. Rockefeller Prentice, it is all windows, overlooking most of the Gold Coast and points north.
“It is a special view,” Jim said one night as the city sparkled below. “There is no view like it in the world.”
And no neighborhood.
“It’s changed, of course,” says Abra. “When I first moved in, there were no young people in the building, few in the area. Now you see babies in strollers and every morning the action below: the cars, the joggers, the occasional message written large in the sand on Oak Street Beach. . . . It tells you you are in a vibrant city.”
She and her husband can get wistful when remembering some of the mom-and-pop stores that once dotted the area and gave it a smaller, more intimate scale. They, like many of their Gold Coast neighbors, can get a bit put off by the increasingly large crowds that throng the nearby Michigan Avenue shopping district.
“I miss some of the quiet and intimacy that used to exist here,” says Abra. “And I never liked the name: Gold Coast. It’s dumb. To me this is just where I live and I love it.”
GOLD COAST BY THE NUMBERS.
For more than a century, the Gold Coast has been the epicenter of wealth in Chicago. Not only has the neighborhood been the home of the most affluent of the city’s residents, but it also has functioned as a social magnet, attracting well-to-do Chicagoans to communities along its borders.
Indeed, since World War II, the Gold Coast has been an anchor and catalyst in the transformation of the North Side lakefront and the areas around the Loop into high-income enclaves. Those who couldn’t afford to live on Astor Street or Banks Street turned to other neighborhoods along Lake Michigan, such as Lincoln Park, a community that has evolved into a sort of Gold Coast North.
Housing
Nine single-family homes were on sale this fall on the Gold Coast. Asking price ranged from $799,000 (for a 3-story, 7-room home on Elm Street) to $8.9 million (for a 22-room mansion on Astor Street). The average asking price was $3.4 million.
Sixteen Gold Coast condos were on the market for $1 million or more, including a 12-room penthouse apartment at 1300 N. Lake Shore Drive being offered for $3.95 million. By contrast, an eight-room condo just down the street at 1242 N. Lake Shore Drive was going for a bargain $1.075 million. The average asking price for a Gold Coast condo was $1.7 million.
Income
The combined annual income of the 20,000 people who live in and along the edges of the Gold Coast is an estimated $2 billion this year, which means that a family of four, on average, will have an annual income of about $400,000.
The Gold Coast is the second wealthiest neighborhood in the nation. Only Manhattan’s Central Park East is more affluent. In the Chicago region, the Gold Coast is more than twice as affluent as the wealthiest large suburb, Highland Park, in per capita income.
Source: Tribune analysis of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, urbanologist Pierre de Vise and real estate agents Patricia Study and Louise Study Lefkow of Rubloff Residential Properties.
— Patrick T. Reardon
