Rush Street is a narrow street stretching from the Chicago River (400 North) to Cedar Street (1138 North). Rush was named after Dr. Benjamin Rush, a famous Revolutionary War doctor. In the mid-twentieth century, Rush Street meant nightclubs.
Chicago: Confidential! describes Rush Street in 1950:
East of Clark Street is Rush Street. Clark gets the dregs, Rush gets the cream. The richest gangsters, the best-kept mistresses and the more prosperous of the show people drink and play there in hotels and the converted residences where uniformed butlers once swung open the portals to the best people. All around them in apartment and transient hotels are gamblers and their women and all the other colorful folk of the new world, the half-world and the underworld.
Although there are still nightclubs on Rush, the intense evening action has moved elsewhere and Rush Street now features tall office and residential buildings.
Rush Street long predates the City of Chicago. According to Chicago's Highways, Old and New, it was the original Native American and fur trading trail to Green Bay, Wisconsin. Therefore parts of Rush Street and Clark Street, its northerly continuation, were originally called “Green Bay Road” until 1867. The various Rush Street bridges carried most of the vehicle traffic over the Chicago River until the completion of the Michigan Avenue Bridge in 1920.
As Let's Walk Along Rush Street explains, Rush Street was a very desirable residential street even in its earliest days. William Ogden, Chicago’s first mayor and prominent businessman, built a house there in 1836.
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