Web Resources

There are many online resources containing materials about Chicago's built
environment. The following is a selected list:

The Chicago Landmarks Commission inventory. The city of Chicago has compiled
a large listing of buildings of note in the Chicago area. This can be
accessed online at:
http://w7.ci.chi.il.us/landmarks/SilverStream/Pages/landmarks.html

Chicago Imagebase
http://www.uic.edu/depts/ahaa/imagebase/
This site, being developed by the City Design Center at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, has a good deal of information about certain parts of
the city, notably the North Lawndale area. It also has a large collection of
aerial photos of the city and the suburbs by Alex MacLean

The Cook County assessor's office has put up a web site which apparently
contains valuable information about construction dates. To access the site
go to http://www.cookcountyassessor.com/ Click assessment search. You will
be able to search for any property in the County. The dates given appear to
be the dates of construction. Unlike many other sources, these dates appear
to be accurate in most cases.

A related Web site, which gives information in
the city of Chicago's Harris file, is the Neighborhood Early Warning System
site maintained by the Center for Neighborhood Technology at
http://www.cnt.org/news/.The information about building dates on this site
often seems to be faulty.

Building permits: although it can take a good deal of time, a search of
building permits is sometimes a very valuable source of information. Most
municipalities in the Chicago area claim that they have thrown out old
permits. Some, however, have kept old permits in one form or another. The
city of Chicago threw out its permit records before 1954 but microfilmed
them before throwing them out. A copy of the microfilm of permits issued by
the city before 1954 can be consulted at the library at the University of
Illinois at Chicago, 3rd floor. To use these permits it is usually necessary
to consult the index to streets first to get an indication of the date or
the ledger book and page number that will actually contain the permit
itself. The Library has a good set of instruction sheets that you can
consult there or you can find at
http://www.uic.edu/depts/lib/collections/maps/guides.html

Recent aerial photographs: A place to start on air photos is Microsoft's
Terraserver site with aerial images from around the world including the
Chicago area. You can find it at
http://terraserver.microsoft.com/default.asp

Old aerial views of parts of Chicago can be found at a site maintained by
the maps library of the University of Illinois at Urban Champaign at
http://images.library.uiuc.edu/projects/aerial_photos/

UIC library: This library has some very valuable tools for doing research on
Chicago buildings notably a microfilm copy of the city building permits to
1954 and the Chadwyck Healey microfilms of Sanborn fire insurance atlases.
Chicago Historical Society: Among the collections at the CHS there are the
city directories. You will be able to find regular, alphabetical
directories, classified directories (a list organized like the yellow pages
according to what professional people, companies and organizations do) and
criss-cross directories that allow you to look up buildings by address and
see who was in them. The CHS library also has many original fire insurance
atlases and an enormously rich collection of printed materials.
http://www.uic.edu/depts/lib/

Chicago Historical Society: Clark St. at North Avenue, Chicago 60614. This
is probably the single best place to study the built environment of the
Chicago area. In the printed collections of the library are the city
directories. You will be able to find regular, alphabetical directories,
classified directories (a list organized like the yellow pages according to
what professional people, companies and organizations do) and criss-cross
directories that allow you to look up buildings by address and see who was
in them. The CHS library also has many original fire insurance atlases and
an enormously rich collection of printed materials. The photographic
collection, where views of the city are arranged primarily by location, is
the most comprehensive in the area. In the Architectural Collections are
many drawings, photographs and other documents related to buildings.
http://www.chicagohs.org/chshome.html

Chicago Public Library, Harold Washington Library Center: 400 S. State
Street, Chicago 60602. Among the most important collections at this library
are the Chicago neighborhood historical collections with documents and
photographs of a number of Chicago's neighborhoods as well as the contents
of the Municipal Reference Library.
http://www.chipublib.org/CPL.html

Ilinois Regional Archives Depository, Northeastern Illinois University
Archives. 5500 St. Louis, Chicago, 60625. Among many documents relating to
northeastern Illinois, Cook County and the City of Chicago is a nearly
complete set of Sanborn Fire Insurance maps.
http://orion.neiu.edu/~neiulib/about/libcollections/irad.html

National Archives- Chicago Branch. 7358 S. Pulaski Road, Chicago, 60629.
This branch of the National Archives contains many records created by
federal agencies operating in the Midwest, for example circuit and district
courts and local offices of the Army Corps of Engineers, the Bureau of
Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Public Roads.
http://www.archives.gov/facilities/il/chicago.html

Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton Street, Chicago 60610. The Modern Manuscript
Division contains a large number of documents relating to the history of the
Midwest. The maps collection is particularly rich and includes county
atlases as well as the archives of the Rand McNally Company.
http://www.newberry.org/nl/newberryhome.html

University of Chicago. 5701 S. University, Chicago, 60637. In addition to a
superb general collection, the Special Collections division has extensive
materials on Chicago including the papers of Robert Park, Ernest Burgess and
other members of the Chicago School of Sociology.
http://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/index.html

Other Archives: Among the other, more specialized, archives are those of the
Archdiocese of Chicago, 5050 Northwest Highway, Chicago; the Chicago Jewish
Archives at the Spertus College of Judaica, 618 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago,
and the Dusable Museum of African American History, 740 E. 56th Place,
Chicago
Cicero Public Library--includes Town of Cicero Historical Collection
http://www2.sls.lib.il.us/CIS/

Elgin Public Library--this includes the Historical and Genealogical
Collections and the Elgin PHotographic Heritage Society
http://www.library.elgin-county.on.ca/

Evanston Public Library--includes a special collection of local history
called "Evanstoniana"
http://www.evanston.lib.il.us/

Naperville Public Library
Naperville Public Libraries' Nichols Library houses a Local History
Collection, which is devoted exclusively to Naperville and DuPage County
sources. The collection includes materials that are rare and/or out of
print, as well as reference and circulating materials.
http://www.naperville-lib.org/

Schaumburg Public Library
This library includes the Illinois Collection, which includes books, maps,
pamphlets, and pictures, local government documents, Chicago and Illinois
travel books, descriptive histories of towns
and counties and a newspaper clipping file of Hoffman Estates and
Schaumburg-related articles.
http://www.stdl.org

Waukegan Public Library includes several collections pertaining to local
history including local newspapers, city directories and telephone books,
high school yearbooks, Superseded plat books and atlases, Local history file
(news articles, reports, and other documents about people, places, events,
and organizations)
Genealogy databases and research aids on CD-ROM
Genealogy index books
Local census indexes for the mid-to-late 19th Century
Local cemetery listings and death registers
Listings of early Lake County settlers and marriages
A small selection of published family genealogies
Genealogy guidebooks
www.waukeganpl.org