Potter Palmer Mansion

For the next three decades, Mrs Palmer reigned here as the undisputed leader of Chicago's Gilded Age society. After she died in 1918, her younger son, Potter Palmer Jr., made it his home for the next ten years. In 1928, he sold it to Vincent Bendix - inventor of the first effective starter motor - for $3 million who remained here for just five years. After the Wall Street Crash, Bendix contemplated razing it so the Palmer brothers stepped in and bought it back for $2 million. They occasionally opened it up for the odd social event, but the mansion effectively stood empty, described as, "a vast echoing shell". Between 1942 and 1943, it was briefly repurposed by the Red Cross as a surgical dressing center for soldiers returning from Europe but by 1950 it stood only as, "a ghost of an era past almost forgotten”. It was demolished in February that year in favor of a 22-story apartment block, four days before the 21st anniversary of another of Chicago's famous massacres.