The Givins Castle

This guide to the Givins Castle in Chicago starts with Robert Givins, a real estate developer who made his fortune in the 1860s selling working-class families their own homes on small monthly payments. It follows him from founding suburb after suburb around the city to spending part of that fortune on a limestone castle for himself, built between 1886 and 1887 to copy an Irish ruin he had seen on his travels. Givins sketched the design himself, and was also a published novelist, author of The Millionaire Tramp among other books.