Est. 1887 · Prairie Avenue Historic District · Glessner House (H. H. Richardson, 1887) · Gilded Age Millionaires' Row · National Historic Landmark
Prairie Avenue between 16th and 22nd Streets was the most exclusive residential street in nineteenth-century Chicago. Marshall Field, Philip Armour, George Pullman, John J. Glessner, and more than seventy additional industrialists, retailers, and shipping figures built mansions there during the 1870s and 1880s. The street was widely known by its contemporary epithet, the Sunny Street That Held the Sifted Few.
The district fell from fashion in the early twentieth century as the wealthy migrated north along Lake Shore Drive, and most Prairie Avenue mansions were demolished as the area transitioned to industrial and printing-trade use. Glessner House — the 1887 H. H. Richardson-designed home of John J. Glessner — survived as one of two original mansions on its block and was preserved through a 1966 grassroots effort. It now operates as a National Historic Landmark museum at 1800 South Prairie Avenue.
Glessner House Museum runs Shadows on the Street as a sixty-minute guided walking tour through what remains of the historic district. Tours are offered on October Saturdays, with multiple departure times. Tickets are $20 per person, with a $16 rate for museum members; the museum's contact line is 312-326-1480, and the booking page is on the events calendar at glessnerhouse.org. The museum has run the tour since at least 2012, and it has been featured in coverage by Choose Chicago, Preservation Chicago, and Horror Obsessive.
Sources
- https://www.glessnerhouse.org/events/saturday/shadows-on-the-street
- https://www.preservationchicago.org/glessner-house-presents-shadows-on-the-street-haunted-tours-of-historic-prairie-avenue-october-28-2022/
- https://horrorobsessive.com/2023/01/01/glessner-house-and-the-ghosts-of-prairie-avenue/
- http://glessnerhouse.blogspot.com/2012/10/shadows-on-street-haunted-tours-of.html
Cold spotsApparitionsObject movementPhantom soundsEquipment malfunctionResidual haunting
The mystery surrounding Marshall Field Jr.'s 1905 death is the tour's most prominent thread. Marshall Field's son was found mortally wounded by a gunshot in the family's Prairie Avenue mansion; the official account was an accidental shooting while he cleaned a rifle for a hunting trip, but persistent rumors connected it to Chicago's Everleigh Club, the city's most exclusive brothel. The house still stands at 1919 S. Prairie Avenue, now divided into condominiums, and the tour discusses the episode there.
The Philander Hanford house is presented through its sequence of family tragedies. The tour's best-known apparition story is the lingering ghost of Edson Keith, and an apparition is reported in the upper windows of the Keith House at 1900 S. Prairie Avenue, seen from the sidewalk.
Reported phenomena collected by Glessner House staff and visiting investigators include cold spots inside Glessner House itself — particularly in the upstairs corridor — and unexplained shutters movement at the Kimball House across Prairie Avenue. The Marshall Field Jr. house is the stop where the tour takes up his death and the rumors that followed it.
The tour is researched, academic in delivery, and avoids theatrical scare effects. Glessner House's published narrative places the supernatural reporting within the broader documentary record of the district — a decision that distinguishes the program from commercial ghost-tour formats and aligns with the museum's preservation mission.
Notable Entities
Marshall Field Jr.Edson KeithPhilander Hanford household figures
