• Lane Tech College Prep High School (built 1934)
• Riverview Park site (1904–1967)
• Julia C. Lathrop Homes (1937)
• Ravenswood Brown Line elevated corridor

North Center was known first as "Bricktown," for the clay pits and brickyards that lined the North Branch of the Chicago River and supplied much of the material used to rebuild Chicago after the Great Fire of 1871. German, Swedish, and Irish farmers had settled the prairie here earlier in the century, growing celery in some of the country's most productive truck farms, before the postfire building boom turned the riverbank into an industrial corridor. In the early 1920s, local printer Henry Hoberg proposed swapping the "Bricktown" name for the more geographically accurate "Northcenter."

Lane Tech College Prep High School, built in 1934 directly atop the old clay pits, remains one of Chicago's top-ranked schools, while the 76-acre Riverview Park — once billed as the world's largest amusement park — drew crowds to the neighborhood from 1904 until its 1967 closure; the site is now home to a police station, shopping plaza, and DePaul College Prep.

A neighborhood built from its own clay, renamed for its geography, and still shaped by the footprint of a vanished amusement park — North Center's ground has always done more than one job. MY-NHD's collection keeps that layered history visible.