Prairie Avenue: The Rise and Fall of Chicago's Millionaires' Row

In October 1897, Chicago buried George Pullman, the sleeping car king, in a pit eight feet deep, floored with eighteen inches of concrete. Across his lead-lined mahogany casket went eight steel railroad rails, bolted together, and then more concrete. This is a documentary history of Prairie Avenue, Chicago's Millionaires' Row, told house by house: the Widow Clarke's farmhouse on the open prairie, the 1871 fire that missed the street, George Pullman, Marshall Field and Philip Armour living a few doors and a few blocks apart, H. H. Richardson's Glessner House and the servants who ran it, where the money came from, from the stockyards to the 1894 Pullman strike, the smoke, the Levee and the death of Marshall Field Jr., and the printers and factories that swallowed the street. And we walk it lot by lot to show what stands there today. Prairie Avenue was never only its millionaires. The cooks, maids, laundresses and coachmen who ran these houses, the Pullman porters, and the workers at the stockyards and the Pullman factory are part of this story too. If your family worked in one of these houses, or in the print shops and factories that replaced them, tell us in the comments. Chapters 0:00 Buried under steel rails, 1897 1:58 A battle, a tree and a widow's house 4:41 The fire that missed them 7:37 Six houses away 10:40 The Glessner House fortress 13:42 Where the money came from 17:24 The Mecca of Mammon 20:31 Smoke, sin and a gunshot 23:58 The printer that ate Millionaires' Row 26:38 The last ones out 29:09 What stands there now Sources include: Chicago Daily Tribune (1893–1929); William T. Stead, If Christ Came to Chicago! (1894); U.S. Strike Commission, Report on the Chicago Strike of June–July 1894 (1895); A. T. Andreas, History of Chicago (1884–86); The Land Owner (1874); Gilbert & Bryson, Chicago and Its Makers (1929); Historic American Buildings Survey; Sanborn Map Company, Insurance Maps of Chicago (1911); Rand McNally map of Chicago (1893); Encyclopedia of Chicago; Glessner House, Prairie Avenue walking tour (William Tyre, 2022). Archive images are public domain or carry no known copyright, via the Library of Congress (Historic American Buildings Survey and the Detroit Publishing Co.), the Chicago Daily News, the Newberry Library, Harper's Weekly, Cornell University Library and Wikimedia Commons. Rijksmuseum and National Portrait Gallery images: CC0. Modern photo credits (cropped/animated), all via Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licences: Henry B. Clarke House, 2004 · David Wilson · CC BY 2.0 Prairie Avenue near 18th Street, 2004 · David Wilson · CC BY 2.0 18th Street, Prairie Avenue Historic District, 2006 · Reading Tom · CC BY 2.0 Glessner House, 2022 · w_lemay · CC BY-SA 2.0 Glessner House, 2024 · w_lemay · CC BY-SA 2.0 Glessner House courtyard, 2024 · w_lemay · CC BY-SA 2.0 Glessner House kitchen, 2024 · w_lemay · CC BY-SA 2.0 Glessner House servants' hallway, 2024 · w_lemay · CC BY-SA 2.0 Glessner House service stair, 2024 · w_lemay · CC BY-SA 2.0 William W. Kimball House, 2013 · Teemu008 · CC BY-SA 2.0 R. R. Donnelley Lakeside Press plant, Cermak Road, 2013 · Teemu008 · CC BY-SA 2.0 Kimball House (U.S. Soccer headquarters), 2020 · Shruti Kansara · CC BY-SA 4.0 Rees House ready to move, 2014 · Steven Vance · CC BY 2.0 Prairie Avenue, 2023 · Haha169 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Houses on Prairie Avenue, 2023 · Haha169 · CC BY-SA 4.0 Scenes marked ILLUSTRATION are AI-generated reconstructions with no real people; all other images are archival or credited photographs. Narration is AI-generated. People live on Prairie Avenue today, in the old houses, the condominiums and the new townhouses. Please respect the residents and their privacy. The Glessner House and the Clarke-Ford House are museums you can visit. #Chicago #ChicagoHistory #PrairieAvenue #GildedAge #GlessnerHouse