Potter Palmer Houses, Schiller Street, Chicago
[Potter Palmer Houses (1886-89) /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
If you've been reading along with us as we've been posting about Chicago and it's architectural wonders over the past two years, you've seen the name Potter Palmer mentioned every now and then. He owned one of the city's swankiest hotels but made his fortune in real estate. Often credited with creating the Gold Coast neighborhood out of sand, literally, Palmer built his wife Bertha one of the city's grandest mansions on one of those former sandbars and changed the course of Chicago's elite residential history.
[Palmer Houses, 36-50 E. Schiller Street, Chicago /Image & Artwork: designslinger]
Palmer got started by purchasing a huge section of the archbishop's property along the lakefront and began building his 30,000 sq.ft. castle in 1882. By the time it was finished in 1885, Palmer had been busy grading and subdividing the sandy shoreline and selling large city lots to his friends and acquaintances. But he developed some of his property holdings himself, and in 1886 had this row of houses built on Schiller Street across from his driveway. The houses offered all the latest in modern conveniences - indoor plumbing, electric light, gas stoves, steam heat, and the finest finishes available.
[Potter Palmer, Schiller Street Houses /Images & Artwork: designslinger]
His choice of top craftsmen, cutting-edge home technology, and finding the right people willing to pay for it all, paid-off handsomely for the real estate entrepreneur. He sold lots, built houses, and made an approximate 400% return on his initial investment. He may have needed the money. Bertha's house originally budgeted at $90,000 cost well over a million and-a-half by the time it was done, and that was just the beginning.
See another row of Palmer houses at: Along Cedar Street; A Pan Hellenic Row, and where Bertha spent some of their money at: Mrs. Palmer's Paintings.
Posted by designslinger at 6/20/2011 3:33 AM 
Categories: Architecture, History
Tags: Potter Palmer Bertha Honore Palmer Gold Coast row houses
Categories: Architecture, History
Tags: Potter Palmer Bertha Honore Palmer Gold Coast row houses
Architect(s) ?
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Want to say Charles M. Palmer (no relation) but couldn't find anything to definitively tie him to the row. He'd done a bunch of other work for Potter Palmer, including a group of houses just around the corner on Astor Street, so it seems like Charles would have been the architect, but didn't want to say so without more definitive proof.
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