Living in South Loop, Chicago

Printers Row's converted publishing warehouses set the tone for South Loop's residential blocks, tall windows and cast-iron detailing left over from decades as a printing hub. Museum Campus sits at the district's eastern edge, with the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, and Adler Planetarium all within a short walk of each other along the lakefront. Grant Park's southern lawns and formal gardens extend the green space toward the Loop, and Roosevelt station gathers the Red, Green, and Orange Lines, with the rest of downtown's 'L' lines a short walk north. Dearborn Street's former publishing houses give way to residential towers closer to the lake, a mix of nineteenth-century brick and glass construction spanning the neighborhood's blocks.

Field-trip buses and lakefront crowds fill the sidewalks near the museums on the busiest days, though, and street parking close to Museum Campus disappears fast, pushing most residents toward garage spots instead.

Loft ceilings run twelve feet or higher in many of the neighborhood's converted buildings, a holdover from the printing presses that once needed the extra headroom, giving even a one-bedroom apartment here a sense of scale uncommon in typical apartment construction.