Evanston, IL - Chicago's fantastic northern neighbor
I headed up to Evanston today to take some photos of my favorite Illinois city other than Chicago. An active downtown, beautiful leafy neighborhoods, picturesque lakefront setting, and a youthful collegiate presence all combine to create an outstanding city.
Near the Main Street purple line station:
Near the Dempster Street purple line station:
Downtown Evanston:
Evanston lakefront:
dog beach
Davis Street purple line station - downtown Evanston:
Northwestern University
Northwestern's lakefront:
I just had to get this guy showing off his hot body. Yum!
Another hot guy!
Lake Michigan is beautiful, isn't it?
And another shot of my hot bodied guy.
Now for some photos of the beautiful homes & leafy green residential areas near Northwestern's campus:
Near the Noyes purple line station:
Another decent body!
The Foster Street purple line station:
Just a few blocks east from all of these beautiful homes is the wonderful lakefront:
Evanston is very leafy green!
Time to head home from the Central Street purple line station:
The purple line express has arrived for a relatively quick commute to Belmont.
I hope you all were able to enjoy Evanston through these photos as much as I enjoyed my visit this afternoon.
Not too shabby, I like it! It was just yesterday I was speaking with "Koth" about the periphery of major cities and certain interesting satellite cities within it. Jersey City, Glendale, Stamford, Long Beach, Bellevue were mention, we seen shots of them before. I was curious about Evanston in particular and the Chicago surroundings. Thanks for posting.
fantastic! probably the best evanston set this forum has ever seen. you really captured the wonderful combination of its urban retail corridors and downtown along with its lush and leafy residential side streets. i work up in evanston and i grew up in neighboring wilmette, so this place has been pretty much my stomping grounds for most of my life, even though i've never technically lived within its borders.
evanston isn't exactly a satellite city so much as it is a city neighborhood that was never successfully annexed by chicago despite several attempts, and as a result it developed a much more pronounced downtown area than other northside city neighborhoods. evanston directly borders the city along howard street and downtown evanston is only ~12 miles north of downtown chicago as the crow flies. the image below gives a pretty good idea of the geographic relationship between evanston and the city (downtown evanston is on the lower left, with northwestern university in the extreme lower left corner)).
source: from a google image search about a year ago, i saved the image but forgot where it came from.
__________________ "every time a strip mall dies, an angel gets its wings"
Great shots of Evanston, OhioGuy. I don't make it up there nearly as often as I should. There are some wonderful neighborhoods around its downtown with some great homes.
Nice city, almost 20 years ago I used to live in Edgewater neighborhood so I was very close to this city. It was one of my favorite areas to explore when I had nothing to do. I will be in Chicago the first week month June for a very brief visit. Hopefully the weather will be nice and Evanston just might be on my agenda to check out once again.
BTW did they finally finish all of upgrades on the Red & Purple line, or would Metra be a better option heading there from downtown Chicago?
BTW did they finally finish all of upgrades on the Red & Purple line, or would Metra be a better option heading there from downtown Chicago?
as i live downtown and work up in evanston, i'm eminently qualified to answer this question.
if you can catch a purple line express train which only run at weekday rush hours, the L trip from downtown to downtown evanston is about 45 minutes, if you're doing a red line to purple line long-haul that will take about an hour. conversely, metra will take you about 20 minutes to go from ogilvie up to downtown evanston. the draw backs to metra being that it's more expensive, the schedules are FAR less flexible, and oglivie train station is all the way over in the west loop, which can be a bit of an annoyance if you're already in the east loop/near north side and just want to hop on the L and get going.
though i've found that the best and most satisfying way to get from downtown up to evanston is to ride my bike
you should definitely try and make it up to evanston if you can, the downtown has certainly changed quite a bit over the last 2 decades.
__________________ "every time a strip mall dies, an angel gets its wings"
Nice city, almost 20 years ago I used to leave very close to this city. It was one of my favorite areas to explore when I had nothing to do. I will be in Chicago next month for a very brief visit, hopefully the weather will be nice and Evanston just might be on my agenda to check out once again.
BTW did they finally finish all of upgrades on the Red & Purple line, or would Metra be a better option heading there from downtown Chicago?
Take Metra. It's a one seat, four stop ride from downtown Chicago to downtown Evanston. It'll definitely be quicker than riding the CTA up to Evanston. Metra gets you there in 25 minutes or less. Even if you caught the purple line express in the morning rush and the return purple line express in the evening rush, it still involves stops between downtown Evanston & the Chicago border, as well as all of the stops between Belmont & the loop. It ends up being 40 minutes (give or take a few minutes). As for the red line, the tracks are vastly improved between downtown and Addison (approximately 18-20 minutes from Jackson to Addison), but it's slow between Addison & Wilson, and of course the red line makes all of the stops up to Howard before you're forced to switch to the purple line at Howard Street (probably about 55-60 minutes total via the red line to the purple line). However if you'd like to be able to enjoy the neighborhood views from downtown Chicago to downtown Evanston, taking the purple line express would be more interesting than riding Metra.
(and now I see Steely already responded while I was typing up my response)
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