1905 postcard view of Lake Shore Drive looking north at Banks Street. The Potter Palmer castle is shown at left. In George Sheldon’s 1886 book, Artistic Country Seats, he wrote:
“It would be difficult to exaggerate the costliness and beauty of the finish of the principal apartments in Mr. Palmer’s house; suffice it to say that few houses in any land can equal it in these respects.”
Palmer began construction on his Lake Shore Drive castle in 1881, when there were almost no houses in the area. He bought half a mile of undeveloped lakefront property, including lots to the west along Astor Street, where he built numerous spec houses and sold lots to friends, establishing Chicago’s “Gold Coast” neighborhood.
For his own home, he hired Henry Ives Cobb and Charles Sumner Frost to design a house that cost more than one million dollars to construct. Lavishly decorated on the interior, an art gallery was later added to house the Palmer’s growing collection of paintings, sculpture, and art objects.
The house stood vacant for years after Bertha Palmer’s death in 1918, and finally succumbed to the wrecker’s ball in 1950. It was replaced by twin high-rise apartment buildings.