North West University Chicago
Northwestern University (NU) is a private research university based in Evanston, Illinois, with other campuses located in Chicago and Doha, Qatar, and academic programs/facilities in Washington, D.C., and San Francisco, California. Composed of 12 schools and colleges, Northwestern offers 124 undergraduate degrees and 145 graduate and professional degrees.
Northwestern was founded in 1851 by John Evans, for whom the city of Evanston is named, and eight other lawyers, businessmen and Methodist leaders. Its founding purpose was to serve the Northwest Territory, an area that today includes the states of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota. Instruction began in 1855; women were admitted in 1869. Today, the main campus is a 240-acre (97 ha) parcel in Evanston, along the shores of Lake Michigan 12 miles north of downtown Chicago. The university’s law, medical, and professional schools are located on a 25-acre (10 ha) campus in Chicago’s Streeterville neighborhood. In 2008, the university opened a campus in Education City, Doha, Qatar with programs in journalism and communication.In 2024, Northwestern opened its San Francisco space at 44 Montgomery St., which hosts journalism, engineering, and marketing programs.
Chicago
The Montgomery Ward Memorial Building (1927) at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, America’s first academic skyscraper.
Northwestern’s Chicago campus is located in the city’s Streeterville neighborhood. The Chicago campus is home to the medical school and affiliated hospitals, the law school, the part-time MBA program, and the School of Professional Studies, which offers evening and weekend courses for working adults. Northwestern’s professional schools and affiliated hospitals are about four blocks east of the Chicago station on the CTA Red Line. The Chicago campus is also served by CTA bus routes.
Founded at various times in the university’s history, the professional schools originally were scattered throughout Chicago. In connection with a 1917 master plan for a central Chicago campus and President Walter Dill Scott’s capital campaign, 8.5 acres (3.44 ha) of land were purchased at the corner of Chicago Avenue and Lake Shore Drive for $1.5 million in 1920.The architect James Gamble Rogers was commissioned to create a master plan for the principal buildings on the new campus which he designed in collegiate gothic style. In 1923, Mrs. Montgomery Ward donated $8 million to the campaign to finance the construction of the Montgomery Ward Memorial Building which would house the medical and dental schools and to create endowments for faculty chairs, research grants, scholarships, and building maintenance. The building would become the first university skyscraper in the United States. In addition to the Ward Building, Rogers designed Wieboldt Hall to house facilities for the School of Commerce and Levy Mayer Hall to house the School of Law. The new campus comprising these three new buildings was dedicated during a two-day ceremony in June 1927. The Chicago campus continued to expand with the addition of Thorne Hall in 1931 and Abbott Hall in 1939. In October 2013, Northwestern began the demolition of the architecturally significant Prentice Women’s Hospital. Eric G. Neilson, dean of the medical school, penned an op-ed that equated retaining the building with loss of life.