North Shore Communities

"Finally, after a lifetime, I discovered that there is nothing in the world to compare with the North Shore of Chicago. Every big city in the world has its luxurious residential areas, but even New York doesn't have thirty-five continuous miles of old, well-kept houses, minimum traffic, no billboards, minimum population, and good commuter service. No place in the world can match it, and it took me a lifetime to understand this."

— Carl Johann Sterner
— Architect and Author
— (1905-1993)

The North Shore

Between Chicago and the city of Waukegan to the north is one of the nation's most affluent residential areas, a swath of suburbia known as the North Shore. Dotted with idyllic, picture-perfect towns such as Kenilworth, Glencoe, and Winnetka, this area has long attracted filmmakers such as Robert Redford, who filmed Ordinary People in Lake Forest, and the North Shore's own John Hughes, who chose these localities for virtually every one of his popular coming-of-age comedies — Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Home Alone, Sixteen Candles, and so on.