Alta Vista Terrace: Chicago's Block of 40 Row Houses That Mirror Each Other

One block north of Wrigley Field, tucked between Grace and Byron Streets, lies one of the most unusual residential blocks in Chicago: Alta Vista Terrace. Between 1900 and 1904, developer Samuel Eberly Gross built 40 Victorian row houses on a single block and arranged them as mirrored diagonal pairs — so that each house on the east side of the block is an architectural mirror image of its counterpart on the diagonally opposite end of the west side. The effect is intentional and striking: no two adjacent houses are alike, but standing at one corner and looking to the diagonally opposite corner reveals a near-identical twin. Gross was inspired by London row houses. The block was designated Chicago's first historic district in 1971 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. Almost no one outside Lakeview knows it exists. The houses are privately owned and occupied today, looking essentially unchanged from 1904.