Evanston, Illinois
is an affluent suburban Chicago municipality on Lake
Michigan on the North Shore in Cook County, Illinois
directly north of the City of Chicago, east of Skokie,
and south of Wilmette. Evanston was first settled in
1836 and has a total population of 74,239.[2] It is
part of Chicago's North Shore region. Evanston is concurrently
a city and township, according to state and municipal
charters.
Evanston was created out of the
larger geographic unit which was called "Grosse
Pointe Territory" in the 1830s and retitled Ridgeville
in 1850. After being chosen as the home for Northwestern
University, the city was incorporated in 1863, and named
after John Evans, the University's founder. During the
1960s Northwestern University changed the city's shoreline
with a 74 acre (300,000 m²) lake-fill. In 1939,
Evanston hosted the first NCAA basketball championship
final at Northwestern University's Patten Gymnasium.[2]
Today, the city is home to Northwestern University and
other educational institutions as well as headquarters
of Alpha Phi International women's fraternity, Rotary
International, the National Lekotek Center, the Sigma
Alpha Epsilon fraternity, the Sigma Chi Fraternity and
the Woman's Christian Temperance Union. Evanston is
also the birthplace of Tinkertoys and (along with many
other cities such as Ithaca, New York and Two Rivers,
Wisconsin) claims to have invented the ice cream sundae.
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