"McCormickville": Who named this nabe?


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In my two years working for YoChicago, I’ve never, ever I heard a resident, a Realtor, or a developer refer to the area of River North immediately west of Michigan Avenue as “McCormickville.” But punch the word into Google Maps and there you’ll find it, smack-dab between LaSalle Street and Michigan Avenue. What gives, cartographers?

Knowing our audience’s strong opinions regarding neighborhood names and boundaries, I figured “McCormickville” would pop up somewhere in the Yo archives. It didn’t. Entries in the Encyclopedia of Chicago and on Wikipedia make passing references to the name — the latter’s entry for Rush Street says “McCormickville” was a nickname for the area around Cyrus McCormick’s mansion at Rush and Erie streets back in the post-fire days of the late 1800s, but I honestly don’t recall coming across the name in City of the Century or Nature’s Metropolis.

A Google search doesn’t reveal much — Zillow recognizes it, as does Point2.com (“the best place on Earth to find a home”). Given that both sites relate to real estate, I started wondering whether an enterprising agent out there was engaging in some guerrilla rebranding (re-rebranding?), but according to a text search on Redfin, no home listings feature the word “McCormickville.”

To tell the truth, the name doesn’t bother me, even if I don’t plan on adopting it anytime soon. It doesn’t roll off the tongue, but it does complement Streeterville, both in its construction and its reference to Chicago history. After hearing too many agents gerrymander the Gold Coast‘s boundaries down to Trump, McCormickville might just be all right. Thoughts?

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