The small, almost indiscernible, point of land that juts into Lake Michigan on the southeast border of Rogers Park is not particularly remarkable from a topographical perspective. This area was once called Cape Hayes and its official boundaries were the lake on the east, Devon Avenue on the south, Sheridan Road on the West and Pratt Boulevard on the north. The Cape was a desolate area that contained little more than windswept sand dunes and scrub oaks until the early 1900s.Prospects for the area were good because the military route north to Fort Sheridan, originally called “Hundred Foot Road” and later “Evanston Avenue,” (now Broadway) became a scenic pleasure drive and major thoroughfare called Sheridan Road. This land was also part of the North Shore Park District created in 1900 and incorporated in Daniel H. Burnham’s and William Bennett’s grandiose 1906-1909 “Plan of Chicago” which predicted that a “Lakeshore Drive” linking the downtown to the northern suburbs would be built on landfill to the east of the existing shoreline.

When the Jesuits from Chicago’s Holy family parish purchased 19.5 acres on Cape Hayes in 1906, there was only a lakeside riding school and stable there and the Winfield M. Macqueen home on Hayes Avenue where the Edward Crown Center for the Humanities now stands. Hayes was later renamed Loyola Avenue. The Jesuits built a frame church in 1907 on the site later occupied by the Granada Theater (1926) and Granada Center today.

The Jesuits had purchased this land from the “Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railway. When the commuter line was extended from Wilson to Howard in 1908, it was still at ground level, but by 1915, the area (now Loyola) had an elevated station that followed the old Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul route. Great transportation was key to the rapid development of Cape Hayes.
On the west side of Sheridan Road, in the area now known as “the Patch,” was the original location of the Edgewater Golf Club, moving to Pratt and Ridge on the present site of Warren Park in West Ridge around 1912.

In 1909, the Jesuits built a Spanish Mission architectural style structure on the east side of Sheridan, known as Dumbach Hall. This was the first building on the new campus of St. Ignatius College (later Loyola University). The following year they established a high school for boys, named Loyola Academy, operating within Dumbach Hall.

Michael Cudahy Science Hall soon followed (1912) in an architectural style similar to Dumback Hall. This was the first Loyola College building. The copper-clad observatory was never actually used for astronomical purposes atop the Science Hal, but a seismological laboratory did function in the basement until the 1980s. Exterior and interior details in both of these buildings are well worth your curiosity.

The pre-World War I population explosion in Rogers Park was more rapid than the gradual development of the university as a seven-fold population increase in this area accompanied the building of residential housing on Cape Hayes. Grand mansions on huge lots were built along Sheridan Road and to the east on Albion, North Shore and Columbia Avenues. Due to escalating land values, many of the homes lasted less than 30 years before they were torn down to build multi-family housing and even a few commercial buildings.

Albion Avenue alone was spared from this ignomimious fate due to a special covenant that dates from 1906 and states that “no apartment building shall be erected on said subdivision and that only one residence shall be erected on every 33-1/3 foot lot and no residence shall be erected of less cost than $5,000.” This was a huge amount of money in 1906 and insured that only substantive single-family homes could line Albion. Consequently, the street has retained its original charm for almost a century without the intrusion of developers or a university desiring to expand to meet its growth.

The construction of the Mundelein College Skyscraper itself, begun in 1929, led to the razing of some homes on the southern boundary of Cape Hayes. For many years the “Green House” stood east of the skyscraper and severallarge apartment/dormitory buildings existed to the west: Spanish Manor, Northland Hall, and Chamberlain Hall–all demolished before 1992. The Albert G. Wheeler mansion was saved because it served as the Mundelein library and later administrative offices.

Significant development by Loyola University occured between 1930and the present. Most of the architectural work was forgettable except for the two Art Deco masterpieces designed by Andrew Rebori–the Elizabeth M. Cudahy Memorial Library and Madonna della Strada Chappel–and the more recent simpson Living and Learning Center. In 1991, Mundelein merged with Loyola and its unique campus was assimilated.

1997 House Tour Booklet