This parking spot at 1130-32 Maple Avenue offers secure, convenient off-street parking just steps from your Evanston apartment. Reserve your spot today and skip the hassle of street parking.
1130-32 Maple Avenue, Evanston, IL 60202
Very Walkable
87Walk
55Transit
93Bike
Transit & Commute
Getting downtown without a car is one of the strongest reasons to live at 1130-32 Maple. The CTA Purple Line at the Dempster stop is about an 8-minute walk, and during morning and evening rush it runs express straight into Chicago's Loop in roughly 45 to 55 minutes, with trains every 7 to 10 minutes; outside rush hours you transfer to the Red Line one stop south at Howard. For a seat the whole way, the Main Street Metra station on the Union Pacific North line is around a 15-minute walk and reaches the Ogilvie Transportation Center downtown in about 23 minutes. Between them, Northwestern, Loyola, and the lakefront are all within an easy ride, so a daily commute rarely means touching the car.
What’s Nearby
Everyday errands are just as easy on foot. Jewel-Osco on Chicago Avenue is about an 8-minute walk for a full grocery run, with Valli Produce a bit further west on Dempster for fresh produce and international aisles. The surrounding Main-Dempster Mile packs more than 200 independent shops, cafes, and restaurants into a few blocks, from the long-running Blind Faith Cafe on Dempster, roughly 12 minutes away, to Detroit-style pizza at Union Squared, closer to 10, with coffee shops and bakeries in between. A little over 20 minutes on foot, or a quick drive, brings you to the Robert Crown Community Center on Main Street, a 2020 facility with a branch library, two NHL-sized ice rinks, a fitness center, an indoor track, and turf fields. And when summer arrives, the Lake Michigan shoreline and Lee Street Beach are a short trip east for swimming, biking the lakefront path, or a quiet evening by the water.
Evanston began as Potawatomi land before farmers settled it in the 1830s, and it took its name and momentum from Northwestern University founder John Evans, who purchased 379 acres along the lake in 1853. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 sent a wave of displaced Chicagoans north to rebuild, accelerating Evanston's growth into a true town rather than a bedroom suburb, complete with its own downtown, industry, and civic institutions. For much of the 20th century Evanston was also a center of the American temperance movement, staying legally dry until 1972, a history the town now wears with a wink through a crop of breweries and distilleries named in homage to it. Its neighborhoods each carry their own character: the historic Lakeshore Historic District in Southeast Evanston holds 765 homes spanning Italianate, Queen Anne, Tudor Revival, and Georgian Revival styles along the water, the blocks around Northwestern buzz with campus-driven coffee shops and bookstores, and family-oriented stretches near Howard Street keep a quieter, tree-lined feel. What ties it together is the lakefront itself, miles of public Lake Michigan shoreline with sand beaches, a historic lighthouse, and shaded parks, paired with a downtown dense enough to rival much of the city, all a half-hour Purple Line or Metra ride from the Loop.
Beach & Lakefront
Lighthouse Beach
Tucked beneath the historic Grosse Point Lighthouse at the northern edge of Evanston's shoreline, Lighthouse Beach is the North Shore's quiet answer to a day at the coast. It's a rare urban beach backed by protected sand dunes and wild grasses, with a playground, a picnic pavilion, and a walking trail that winds through wildflowers past the lighthouse itself. All summer, from late May through Labor Day, its lifeguarded sand and open Lake Michigan water are a short walk or bike ride from your door: a morning swim, an afternoon with a book, an evening watching the light drop over the lake. No car, no crowds, no highway to the coast.
Wrapped around the base of the Grosse Point Lighthouse is one of Evanston's most storied green spaces: a leafy lakefront park on the grounds of the historic Harley Clarke Mansion, a French Eclectic house whose gardens were first laid out by the pioneering Prairie-school landscape architect Jens Jensen. Wide lawns and mature shade trees run between the mansion and the shore, and tucked in among them is Noah's Playground for All, a beloved inclusive play space with a braille map, a puppet-theatre gazebo, and giant spring riders, all in view of the water. It's free, open to everyone, and rolls straight into Lighthouse Beach next door: the kind of unhurried lakeside afternoon most people have to leave the city to find.
Northwestern's Deering Library is the closest thing the North Shore has to a Cambridge quad. Opened in 1933 and designed by the great collegiate-gothic architect James Gamble Rogers, its ivy-clad limestone facade, soaring pointed-arch windows, and corner towers were modeled on the 15th-century King's College Chapel at Cambridge, right down to the vaulted reading rooms inside. It anchors Northwestern's lakefront campus, a short walk from downtown Evanston, and the public is welcome: rotating exhibitions in its galleries draw on the university's rare books, maps, and art, and the long front lawn is one of the loveliest spots in town to sit with a coffee. Grand architecture and free culture, minutes from your door.
Rising 113 feet over the shoreline, one of the tallest lighthouses on the Great Lakes, Grosse Point has guided ships since it was first lit in 1874, its beam once thrown by a rare second-order Fresnel lens shipped from Paris. Designed by the celebrated Army engineer Orlando Poe and named a National Historic Landmark in 1999, it still stands as the single most recognizable landmark on Chicago's North Shore. On summer weekends the keeper's quarters and tower open for guided climbs, and the view from the top, lake to one side and tree-lined Evanston to the other, is the kind of thing most people drive hours for. You'd have it a stroll from home.
