All Beach Bums Report to Beverly Shores, The Lakefront Hideaway Tucked Inside a National Park
An idyllic beach community awaits at the very bottom of Lake Michigan
It is something of a universal truth that things in life which are stumbled-upon tend to be delightful in nature. Setting aside the obvious caveats here — a horrific accident, a gruesome crime scene, a cheating partner caught in the act — the unexpected has a way of capturing the imagination in a lasting way. This is, of course, my grandiose way of saying that sometimes the coolest destinations are the ones we don’t see coming.
It feels wildly unlikely that I would ever come across a Lake Michigan beach that didn’t tickle my fancy, but the 4.5-mile stretch of sandy shoreline belonging to Beverly Shores, Indiana, is increasingly becoming one of my new favorites. The “town” of Beverly Shores, which is tucked between Gary and Michigan City and surrounded by Indiana Dunes National Park, isn’t much of a town at all. Aside from a couple of municipal buildings and a nifty old train depot, what you will find here on the underside of Lake Michigan is mostly a mix of beachfront, forest, marshland, and sand dunes. But, honestly, what more do you need?
I discovered this quaint little spot one day in late June when I stopped to fuel up at a Marathon gas station while chugging along U.S. Route 12, a highway that runs across the entirety of northern Indiana (and all the way to Washington state, if you really wanted to know (and even if you didn’t)). Right behind that Marathon, across some train tracks, was something that caught my eye: the Beverly Shores Depot Museum & Art Gallery. Looking like a literal set piece from a Wes Anderson movie, this small train station is one of 18 stops on the South Shore Line that runs from Chicago to South Bend. It is one of the best examples of an architectural style sometimes referred to as “Insull Spanish”, but more commonly known as Mission Revival, which was born in California at the tail end of the 19th century.
Aside from being an actual train station, the depot doubles as the first stop on the Beverly Shores Heritage Trail, a self-guided historical walking tour that includes “on-the-spot” archives through the use of QR codes. Intended or not, it also served as a personal gateway for me, leading me off the highway and into Beverly Shores proper, which, again, is only so big.
If you follow the road — South Broadway — past the depot, you pass through a marshland-type area before being dumped into a wooded residential neighborhood. Drive far enough and you eventually come out to East Lake Front Drive, which runs parallel with Lake Michigan, and a permit-only parking lot for residents. Here, you’ll hang a left and drive sadly by the definitely-already-full strip of public parking that sits directly west of the permitted lot, cursing the parking gods as you go. But then comes something really cool and certainly the most unexpected of all: the national park’s Century of Progress Historic District.
What exactly is this place, you ask? Well, it’s kind of like entering a time warp or a portal or an alternate universe. What awaits in this “district”, which is really just a half-mile stretch of road, if even that, is a collection of houses unlike any other. The quintet of homes date back to the 1933 Chicago World’s Fair, where they were first introduced to demonstrate “modern” architecture, experimental materials, and new technologies, such as central air and dishwashers.
The Century of Progress Homes include the Florida Tropical House, which gives off “I Love Lucy”-but-make-it-Florida vibes; the Rostone and Armco-Ferro houses, which make use of experimental materials; the Cypress Log Cabin, a rustic-looking cabin with modern amenities; and the House of Tomorrow, “America’s First Glass House”.
Real estate developer Robert Bartlett is the man responsible for bringing these architectural delights to Indiana. Bartlett bought a dozen buildings from the 1933 fair, including all five of these Century of Progress Homes. He then had them relocated, by land and by lake, to Beverly Shores, a new beach resort community he was developing at the time. According to the National Park Service, Bartlett hoped the peculiar homes might attract buyers to the area. Knowing he would need more than a small collection of quirky houses, though, he also oversaw the construction of various roads, a school, a golf course, a botanical garden, a riding academy, and a hotel.
The Frederick H. Bartlett Company had plans, in fact, to turn Beverly Shores and the surrounding area into a much larger development that would rival the likes of Atlantic City in New Jersey. The stock market crash of 1929 laid those plans low, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately? (I’m sure fans of Indiana Dunes National Park are happy, anyway)), resulting in a major scale back. Bartlett’s efforts did, however, attract a number of Chicagoans and others to purchase land and build both vacation and year-round homes there in the dunes in the 1930s and ‘40s.
A push to halt further intrusions into the natural dunes landscape by the Save the Dunes Council saw the creation of Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore in 1966, which was expanded a decade later to include part of Beverly Shores. The national lakeshore was finally upgraded to national park status in 2019.
The beach in Beverly Shores, featuring the Rostone House at left
The Century of Progress Homes, meanwhile, are managed by Indiana Landmarks, which leases the properties from the national park. Indiana Landmarks, in turn, subleases four of the five houses to private residents who have helped to restore them over the years in exchange for their long-term leases. The House of Tomorrow, currently in a state of disrepair, is the only one that remains vacant, but don’t worry: it’s right there on the National Register of Historic Places alongside its fellow Century homes.
While all five houses are private property, Indiana Landmarks and the National Park Service join forces to offer an annual tour every fall. The experience allows you to access the first floors of the Florida Tropical, Armco-Ferro, Rostone, and Cypress Log Cabin homes, along with a closeup look at the exterior of the House of Tomorrow, but you have to be extremely quick on the draw in terms of getting one of the limited tickets available. Tour tickets generally sell out within an hour of being released.
If you don’t give a rat’s patoot about any of that, however, you can easily just enjoy the beach, which is, of course, the reason this post exists in the first place. You may be lucky enough to snag one of those prime public parking spots right along the lakeshore, but if not, the National Park Service has you covered with a paid lot only about a quarter of a mile away.
-LTH