Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
week of Dec), the weekly has a wide distribution downtown and on the North
Side; it is available in many retail stores, in building lobbies, and at the paper's
offices, 11 E. Illinois St. (
&
312/828-0350
), by about noon on Thursday.
Another free weekly,
New City
(
&
312/243-8786
), also publishes excellent
comprehensive listings of entertainment options. Appealing to a slightly
younger audience than the
Reader,
its editorial tone tends toward the edgy and
irreverent. Published every Wednesday, it's available in the same neighborhoods
and locations as the
Reader.
Most Chicago hotels stock their rooms or lobbies with at least one informa-
tional magazine, such as
Where Chicago,
that lists the city's entertainment, shop-
ping, and dining locales.
CITY LAYOUT
The
Chicago River
forms a Y that divides the city into its three geographic
zones: North Side, South Side, and West Side (Lake Michigan is where the East
Side would be). The downtown financial district is called
the Loop.
The city's
key shopping street is
North Michigan Avenue,
also known as the
Magnificent
Mile.
In addition to department stores and vertical malls, this stretch of prop-
erty north of the river houses many of the city's most elegant hotels. North and
south of this downtown zone, Chicago stretches along 29 miles of Lake Michi-
gan shoreline that is, by and large, free of commercial development, reserved for
public use as green space and parkland from one end of town to the other.
Chicago proper today has about three million inhabitants living in an area
about two-thirds the size of New York City; another five million make the sub-
urbs their home. The villages north of Chicago now stretch in an unbroken mass
nearly to the Wisconsin border; the city's western suburbs extend 30 miles to
Naperville, one of the fastest-growing towns in the nation over the past 2
decades. The real signature of Chicago, however, is found between the suburbs
and the Loop, where a colorful patchwork quilt of residential neighborhoods
gives the city a character all its own.
FINDING AN ADDRESS
Having been a part of the Northwest Territory,
Chicago is laid out in a
grid system,
with the streets neatly lined up as if on a
giant piece of graph paper. Because the city itself isn't rectangular (it's rather elon-
gated), the shape is a bit irregular, but the perpendicular pattern remains. Easing
movement through the city are a half-dozen or so major diagonal thoroughfares.
Point zero
is located at the downtown intersection of State and Madison
streets.
State Street
divides east and west addresses, and
Madison Street
divides
north and south addresses. From here, Chicago's highly predictable addressing
system begins. Making use of this grid, it is relatively easy to plot the distance in
miles between any two points in the city.
Virtually all of Chicago's principal north-south and east-west arteries are
spaced by increments of 400 in the addressing system—regardless of the num-
ber of smaller streets nestled between them. And each addition or subtraction of
400 numbers to an address is equivalent to a half mile. Thus, starting at point
zero on Madison Street and traveling north along State Street for 1 mile, you will
come to 800 N. State St., which intersects Chicago Avenue. Continue uptown
for another half mile and you arrive at the 1200 block of North State Street at
Division Street. And so it goes, right to the city line, with suburban Evanston
located at the 7600 block north, 9
1
⁄
2
miles from point zero.
The same rule applies when you're traveling south, or east to west. Thus,
heading west from State Street along Madison Street, Halsted Street—at 800 W.
