Linden Park Place-Belle Avenue Historic District

This roughly 50-acre neighborhood in Highland Park, Illinois, centers on Linden Park Place and Belle Avenue and extends along parts of Linden Avenue, Park Avenue, Park Lane and Elm Place. It holds some of the city's oldest houses, beginning in the late 1860s. Four Italianate and Victorian Gothic houses on Linden Park Place were built by the Highland Park Building Company, and Jonas Steers, the company's chief contractor, built his own distinctive home on Belle Avenue around 1875. Later decades added Prairie School houses by George Maher, Tallmadge and Watson, and John Van Bergen, along with Colonial Revival homes by Robert Seyfarth and Tudor houses by William D. Mann. A 1954 steel-and-glass house on Park Lane, designed by Crombie Taylor with Mies van der Rohe as consultant, represents the Miesian International Style. The district was listed because it shows the range of Highland Park architecture from early Victorian houses through mid-century modern design.