Living in the Loop means living in Chicago’s downtown: apartments and condos in towers and converted office buildings, loft apartments in Printers Row’s old printing houses, and Grant Park and Millennium Park toward the lake. The City counts 16 L stations in community area 32, and every CTA line stops at least once.
Housing: towers, office conversions and Printers Row lofts
Downtown housing is almost all vertical: apartment and condo towers, converted commercial buildings and lofts. The Encyclopedia of Chicago notes that residential buildings returned downtown after 1950.
The newest homes are in old offices. The City’s LaSalle Street Reimagined program, launched in 2022, puts tax-increment financing into converting largely vacant office buildings into mixed-income housing. The first to open, on September 9, 2026, was Bellwether Residences at 79 W. Monroe St., Jarvis Hunt’s 1905 Rector Building: 117 apartments on floors 7 through 14, 41 of them affordable. As of that date, the Sun-Times counted three more City-backed conversions underway, plus about two dozen private ones.
The older version of the same idea is Printers Row. The Printing House Row District, a Chicago Landmark since May 9, 1996, covers the 500 through 800 blocks of S. Dearborn, S. Federal and S. Plymouth. Its buildings date from 1883 to 1928; after printers began leaving in the 1960s, they were rehabilitated for commercial and residential use.
Getting around: 16 L stations and the tracks overhead
The City counts 16 L stations in the Loop, and every line stops here. The Brown, Green, Orange and Pink lines run around the elevated Loop itself, the inner and outer tracks over Lake, Wabash, Van Buren and Wells. The Red and Blue lines run in subways underneath.
Eight stations are accessible: Clark/Lake, Quincy/Wells, Washington/Wells, Harold Washington Library-State/Van Buren, Washington/Wabash, Jackson on both the Blue and Red lines, and Lake (Red). Eight are not: LaSalle/Van Buren, State/Lake, Adams/Wabash, Washington (Blue), Monroe (Blue), Monroe (Red), LaSalle (Blue) and Harrison (Red). If you need step-free access, plan your stop, not just your nearest one.
Metra’s Rock Island trains end at LaSalle Street Station, 414 S. LaSalle. For Amtrak, Union Station is a short walk west at Canal and Jackson, just across the river in the Near West Side.
State Street, the Pedway and errands
State Street is the Loop’s main street. Streetcars arrived there in 1859, and after the Civil War Potter Palmer pulled the city’s retail trade over from Lake Street. The former Marshall Field’s store fills State between Randolph and Washington in D.H. Burnham and Company buildings from 1902 and about 1907, clocks on the corners.
In 1979 the City closed State to cars and widened the sidewalks to make a pedestrian mall, and buses kept running. It reopened to traffic in 1996 with Victorian-style lighting.
In January, the useful street is the one underneath. The Pedway runs about five miles under more than 40 blocks and connects more than 50 public and private buildings with CTA and commuter rail stations. It began in 1951 with one-block tunnels linking the Red and Blue subways at Washington and Jackson.
The neighborhood library is a big one: Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St., opened in 1991, with a glass-roofed winter garden on the top floor.
Grant Park, Millennium Park and the lakefront
The Loop’s backyard is about 295 acres of Grant Park, run by the Chicago Park District, plus Millennium Park, which the City runs. Grant Park has a dog-friendly area and ice skating. Clarence Buckingham Memorial Fountain was completed in 1927.
Credit Aaron Montgomery Ward, who spent 22 years in court keeping it “forever open, clear and free,” a phrase from 1830s land-sale maps. WBEZ (July 2026) counts four Illinois Supreme Court wins; Ward said in 1909 the court had “thrice upheld” him.
Millennium Park opened July 16, 2004, and is free, 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. daily. Across the BP Pedestrian Bridge, the Park District’s 20-acre Maggie Daley Park opened its skating ribbon, climbing wall and play garden on December 13, 2014, and adds mini golf, tennis and a fieldhouse.
Five more Park District parks center here: Park No. 546 (5.8 acres), Roosevelt, Pritzker, Printers Row and a 1.5-acre Dearborn Park, not to be confused with the Dearborn Park townhouse development, which straddles Roosevelt Road, the line between the Loop and the Near South Side.
The names inside: Loop, Printers Row, Grant Park, Millennium Park
On the City’s approximate neighborhood map, community area 32 holds four names: Loop, Printers Row, Grant Park and Millennium Park, each entirely within it.
Sources disagree on where “the Loop” comes from. The Encyclopedia of Chicago dates the name to 1897, when the elevated Union Loop was completed. The City’s landmarks tour credits an 1882 cable car line that circled the business district. WTTW notes both explanations and doesn’t pick one. Either way, Charles Tyson Yerkes’s 1897 elevated still circles downtown.
Printers Row is the southern end. After Dearborn Street Station opened in 1885, the blocks around it became the Midwest’s printing center. Its core is two blocks of Dearborn between Congress Parkway and Polk Street, including the Duplicator Building (1886) and the Pontiac Building (1891). Rand McNally and R.R. Donnelley were among the publishers here. Developers turned buildings like the Donohue Building into loft apartments in the late 1970s, and WTTW reports the last printer, Palmer Printing, moved out in 2018.
The Loop at a glance
The Loop is official community area 32 of Chicago’s 77. Inside its lines: 16 CTA L stations, 6 Chicago Park District parks, 1 public library branch and 3 Chicago Public Schools buildings. Neighborhood names on the City’s map that fall at least partly inside: Grant Park, Loop, Millennium Park, Printers Row.
L stations
- Adams/Wabash: Green, Brown, Purple, Pink and Orange lines (not accessible)
- Clark/Lake: Blue, Green, Brown, Purple, Pink and Orange lines (accessible)
- Harold Washington Library-State/Van Buren: Brown, Purple, Pink and Orange lines (accessible)
- Harrison: Red Line (not accessible)
- Jackson (Blue): Blue Line (accessible)
- Jackson (Red): Red Line (accessible)
- LaSalle: Blue Line (not accessible)
- LaSalle/Van Buren: Brown, Purple, Pink and Orange lines (not accessible)
- Lake: Red Line (accessible)
- Monroe (Blue): Blue Line (not accessible)
- Monroe (Red): Red Line (not accessible)
- Quincy/Wells: Brown, Purple, Pink and Orange lines (accessible)
- State/Lake: Green, Brown, Purple, Pink and Orange lines (not accessible)
- Washington: Blue Line (not accessible)
- Washington/Wabash: Green, Brown, Purple, Pink and Orange lines (accessible)
- Washington/Wells: Brown, Purple, Pink and Orange lines (accessible)
Purple Line trains stop here only on weekdays during rush periods, when the Purple Line Express runs past Howard to the Loop.
Parks
- Grant Park: 295 acres; playground, dog-friendly area, ice skating, community center
- Park No. 546 (450 E Benton Pl): 5.8 acres; playground, dog-friendly area
- Roosevelt Park: 1.8 acres
- Dearborn Park: 1.5 acres
- Pritzker Park: 1.1 acres
- Printers Row Park: 0.40 acres; community center
Library
- Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St.
Public schools
These are the Chicago Public Schools buildings located inside the community area. Being near a school is not the same as being in its attendance boundary: to see which schools serve a specific address, use the CPS School Locator.
- Noble – Muchin College Prep (grades 9 to 12), 1 N State St
- William Jones College Preparatory High School (grades 9 to 12), 700 S State St
- YCCS- Innovations HS of Arts Integration (grades 9 to 12), 17 N State St
More on the neighborhood
- The ‘L’ Lines Before They Were Colors
- Why the Chicago River Runs Backward (and When It Doesn’t)
- The Grid Is Your Friend: Chicago Address Math, Explained Once
- Our sister site lists apartment buildings in the Loop, building by building.
- All 77 community areas
Sources: Encyclopedia of Chicago: Loop; Encyclopedia of Chicago: Shopping Districts and Malls; Encyclopedia of Chicago: Printer’s Row; Encyclopedia of Chicago: Marshall Field and Company Store; City of Chicago Landmarks: Printing House Row District; City of Chicago Landmarks: Loop tour; City of Chicago: Mayor announces LaSalle Street office-to-residential projects (May 5, 2023); Chicago Sun-Times: Bellwether Residences opening (Sept. 9, 2026); City of Chicago CDOT: Pedway; City of Chicago: Millennium Park; City of Chicago DCASE: Millennium Park 20th anniversary toolkit; WTTW News: Millennium Park 20th anniversary (Jan. 9, 2024); City of Chicago: Maggie Daley Park opening (Dec. 13, 2014); Chicago Park District: Maggie Daley Park; The Cultural Landscape Foundation: Grant Park; WBEZ / Sun-Times: Montgomery Ward, “Watchdog” of the lakefront (July 1, 2026); WTTW Chicago by ‘L’: The Loop; WTTW Chicago by ‘L’: South Loop; CTA: Work on Loop elevated reroutes Green, Brown, Orange and Pink lines; Metra: LaSalle Street Station; Chicago Union Station: Getting here; University of Chicago Press, Chicago’s Famous Buildings: Harold Washington Library Center; Time Out Chicago: State Street pedestrian mall (Feb. 11, 2014); City of Chicago, community area boundaries; City of Chicago, neighborhood boundaries; City of Chicago, CTA ‘L’ stops; Chicago Park District parks; Chicago Public Library locations; CPS school locations, 2025–26. Lists checked October 19, 2026; park features are from Park District data last updated in 2022.