Most distinctive neighborhoods / superblock in Chicago and what makes it distinctive? (Henry: homes, floor)

[OyCrumbler]

Chicago is a massive city that is a collection of many, many neighborhoods. Some of these neighborhoods are much older and more established than others while others have seen massive structural changes. It's also a city laid it on a grid that has large "superblocks" or "superblocs" about 2,600 ft / 800 meters east-west by 2,600 ft / 800 meters north-south where each of these superblocs are subdivided in ways that can vary from one to another. There are often natural features like the rivers or the coastline or diagonal throughfares offset from that grid.


In your opinion, what neighborhoods are the most distinctive in Chicago and why? What superblocs in Chicago are the most distinctive and why? I'm also curious as to whether or not there's a single Chicago superbloc that's completely regularly divided.

[OyCrumbler]

I'll start with one, and that's the northern bit of Bridgeport near the South Branch of the Chicago River:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Ce...9!4d-87.645949

Clockwise from north bounded by the South Branch of the Chicago River, Halstead Street, 31st street, and Bubbly Creek (maybe arguably by Loomis Street), this is one of the rare superblocs / rivers where the street grid is offset by an angle from the general Chicago grid and that includes the inner street grid itself and it seems to be roughly in alignment with the angle of the river. Even its Henry C. Palmisano Park has its western border on that odd tilted angle somewhat perpendicular to the path of the nearby river. The park itself is also unique as its a former quarry that has a deep trough as well as a man-made high point, "Mount Bridgeport", a 33 foot hill which is unique given the general flatness of the land in Chicago.

The homes aren't radically different in style from others of the same era of development, but there aren't many neighborhoods in the city with buildings of that era because many are pre-bovine fire which Bridgeport somehow escaped. Those homes though have had significant alterations, but in a peculiar way as many were raised up a floor so that what was once the ground floor has become the basement instead (as also happened in Pilsen across the river).