West Argyle Street Historic District

The West Argyle Street Historic District is a historic district in the northern Uptown, a commercial district of Chicago, Illinois. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on June 3, 2010. The community covers an area of about 41 acres ; its rough boundaries are N. Glenwood Ave to the west, Winona Street to the north, Sheridan Road to the east, and Ainslie Street to the south. It was home to the Essenay Studios in the 1920s founded by Charlie Chaplain, a producer of silent movies before relocating to Southern California in Hollywood. Essenay Studios now is home to St. Augustine College.

The area covered by the historic district originally developed in the 1880s as a suburb called Argyle Park. The suburb had been named by Chicago Alderman and developer James A. Campbell for his ancestors the Dukes of Argyll in Scotland. Development was centered on a station on the new Chicago & Evanston line of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway that opened in May 1885. The village, along with the rest of the Lake View Township, was annexed into Chicago in 1889. In 1908 the Northwestern Elevated Railroad was extended north from Wilson Avenue, using the tracks of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad, This linked the suburb into Chicago's 'L' network, and the area became popular with people of limited means who wanted to live on the Lake Michigan shore. The railroad tracks were elevated onto an embankment between 1914 and 1922.

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