Overview
State Street is a large south-north street, also one of the main streets, in Chicago, Illinois, USA and its south suburbs. Its intersection with Madison Street has marked the base point for Chicago's address system since 1909. State begins in the north at North Avenue, the south end of Lincoln Park, runs south through the heart of the Chicago Loop, and ends at the southern city limits, intersecting 127th Street along the bank of the Little Calumet River. It resumes north of 137th Street in Riverdale and runs south intermittently through Chicago's south suburbs until terminating at New Monee Road in Crete, Illinois.
From north to south, State Street traverses the following community areas of Chicago: Near North Side to the Chicago River, Chicago Loop to Roosevelt Road, Near South Side to 26th Street, Douglas to 39th Street, Grand Boulevard to 51st Street, Washington Park to 63rd Street, Grand Crossing to 79th Street, Chatham to 91st Street, Roseland to 115th Street, and West Pullman to 127th Street, where it terminates across from Riverdale Bend Woods. The street runs parallel and adjacent to the Dan Ryan Expressway from 65th Street south to just beyond 95th Street, where State Street crosses the I-94 Bishop Ford Memorial Freeway to enter Roseland.
History
The northern portion of the Vincennes Trace or Vincennes Trail, a buffalo (bison) migration route and a Native American trail which ran some 250 miles to Vincennes, Indiana, was called Hubbard's Trace or Hubbard's Trail since it connected Chicago with Gurdon Saltonstall Hubbard's more southerly trading outposts. It took on the name State Road after some state-funded improvements. Vincennes Avenue, one of Chicago's rare diagonal streets, is a vestige of the Vincennes Trace, and further south the trail eventually became Illinois Route 1. In its early days, State Road was unpaved and known for having mud so deep it was jokingly said that it could suck down a horse and buggy. In the late 1860s, Potter Palmer embarked on efforts to raise the profile and prestige of State Street. He enticed Marshall Field and Levi Leiter to move their prosperous and growing department store, Field, Leiter & Co., to the corner of State and Washington Streets in 1868, and he built his own Palmer House Hotel nearby in 1870. For many years the city's most well-known seafood retailer, Burhop's Seafood, was located on North State Street, as well as the historic Chicago Theatre.
From Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).