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The greenest corner of the city: Sauganash, Edgebrook, Old Edgebrook, Wildwood and Forest Glen itself, on curving streets between the forest preserves and the river’s North Branch, with two golf courses and two Metra stops. Community area 12, about 19,500 people, and houses on lots that feel like a suburb inside the city limits.
Forest Glen is the official name for the corner of the Far Northwest Side wrapped around the North Branch of the Chicago River and the forest preserves, from the Edens Expressway west to the city line and from Devon south toward Foster. It is the city’s least dense community area by feel: single-family houses on lots with real trees, streets that curve with the river, two golf courses (Billy Caldwell and Edgebrook), LaBagh Woods and the preserves along the river.
Sauganash is the name people use for the southern and eastern part, Edgebrook for the northern part along the tracks, and Forest Glen proper for the blocks near the Forest Glen station; our Sauganash and Edgebrook guide covers the two best-known names together.
Sauganash is the largest: brick Georgians, Tudors and colonials from the 1920s through the 1950s on streets that bend around the golf course, with Queen of All Saints Basilica and the Sauganash Park pocket at its west end. Edgebrook lies to the north along the Metra line and Devon, with its own small downtown at Devon and Central. Old Edgebrook is the landmark district of houses from the 1890s on the loop of streets by the golf course, the oldest part of the area; South Edgebrook and Wildwood are the newer pockets along the river toward Caldwell Avenue.
Forest Glen itself is the small original settlement near the station on Forest Glen Avenue, where Civil War captain William Hazelton was the first European American settler.
The land was Caldwell’s Reserve: the 1,600 acres along the river that the federal government granted in 1829 to Billy Caldwell, the Potawatomi leader known as Sauganash, for his part in the treaties of the 1820s and 1830s. The city annexed the area in 1889, the first Old Edgebrook houses went up in the 1890s around the golf course, and the rest filled in between the 1920s and the 1950s as the Milwaukee Road made the commute easy. The forest preserves that surround it were bought by the county in the same decades, which is why it stayed green.
Metra’s Milwaukee District North line stops at Forest Glen and Edgebrook, about twenty minutes to Union Station, and the Union Pacific Northwest line stops at Jefferson Park and Gladstone Park nearby. The Blue Line at Jefferson Park is the CTA rail option, reached by the Peterson (84) or North Central (85A) buses. The Edens Expressway runs along the east edge, and Caldwell and Devon are the driving streets.
Almost entirely single-family: brick Georgians and Tudors from the 1920s and 1930s in Sauganash and Old Edgebrook, ranches and split-levels from the 1950s in the newer pockets, larger custom houses on the golf course streets, and rebuilds on the bigger lots. There are few condos and almost no two-flats, which makes it the part of the city that most resembles the North Shore suburbs next door, with a Chicago address and Chicago schools.
Read the home styles field guide and our roofs guide before touring; the lots are large, the trees are old, and the houses are worth inspecting for what both do over decades.
Yes. Sauganash, Edgebrook, Old Edgebrook, South Edgebrook, Wildwood and Forest Glen are the neighborhoods inside Forest Glen, Chicago’s official community area 12.
On the Far Northwest Side, along the North Branch of the Chicago River and the forest preserves, between the Edens Expressway and the city line, north of Jefferson Park.
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