"The Gold Coast is probably the wealthiest local neighborhood in Chicago and the only second to the wealthiest neighborhood in the United States. There is only Manhattan's Upper East Side that is more affluent.

"Chicago's Gold Coast consists mostly of high-rise apartment and condo buildings on Lake Shore Drive (LSD), facing Lake Michigan to the east, but also includes low-rise residential blocks further inland. As with many Chicago neighborhoods, its exact borders are subject to dispute, but generally extend south to Oak and west to LaSalle St., excluding the Carl Sandburg Village housing development between LaSalle, Dearborn, Division, and North (located in Old Town and built as a buffer to encroaching blight in the 1960's).

"Chicago's Gold Coast was quite an unexceptional local neighborhood until 1886, when Sir Potter Palmer, former dry goods trader and owner of the Palmer House hotel, built a fanciful castle-like structure on Lake Shore Drive. Over the next few scores of years, Chicago's elite people gradually migrated from Prairie Avenue from the south to their new homes north of the Chicago Loop.

"The "Gold Coast Historic District" was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on January 31, 1978.

"Gold Coast is served by the following Chicago Public Schools schools: Ogden School, the O.A. Thorp Scholastic Academy magnet school and the Lincoln Park High School."

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Gold Coast in the Near North Side, Chicago