In 1882, millionaire Potter Palmer moved to the area from the Prairie Avenue neighborhood on the city's south side.

He filled in a swampy area which later became Lake Shore Drive, and built the Palmer Mansion, a forty-two room castle-like structure designed by Henry Ives Cobb and Charles Sumner Frost.

In the late 1980s, the Gold Coast and neighboring Streeterville comprised the second most-affluent neighborhood in the United States, behind Manhattan's Upper East Side.

[4] The mayor's office map extends the Gold Coast south to the area of Northwestern University's Chicago campus.

As of 2011, Gold Coast ranks as the seventh-richest urban neighborhood in the United States with a median household income of $153,358.