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is a suburban municipality in Cook County, Illinois directly north of the City of Chicago, east of Skokie, and south of Wilmette, with an estimated population of 74,360 as of 2003. It is one of the North Shore communities that adjoin Lake Michigan. Evanston is concurrently a city and township, according to state and municipal charters. It is the home of Northwestern University.
What is now Evanston was once part of a larger area called "Grosse Pointe Territory" in the 1830s. The first non-native Americans settled in 1836, in an area that by 1850 was called Ridgeville. In 1851, a group of Methodists founded Northwestern University and chose the area as its new home. In 1854, the founders of Northwestern submitted to the county judge their plans for a city to be named Evanston after John Evans, one of their leaders. In 1857, the request was granted.
Evanston was formally incorporated as a town on December 29, 1863, but declined in 1869 to become a city despite the Illinois legislature passing a bill for that purpose. Evanston expanded after the Civil War with the annexation of the village of North Evanston. Finally, in early 1892, following the annexation of the Village of South Evanston, voters elected to organize as a city.
The 1892 boundaries are largely those that exist today. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, No Man's Land was the name of a disputed unincorporated area on the shore of Lake Michigan between the suburbs of Evanston and Wilmette. The dispute was eventually resolved in Evanston's favor and the area incorporated into the city. Actor Charlton Heston was born there and elaborated on the locale in his autobiography
During the 1960s Northwestern University changed the city's shoreline by adding a 74-acre (300,000 m²) lake-fill.
In 1939, Evanston hosted the first NCAA basketball championship final at Northwestern University's Patten Gymnasium.
In August, 1954, Evanston hosted the second assembly of the World Council of Churches, still the only WCC assembly to have been held in the United States. President Dwight Eisenhower welcomed the delegates and Dag Hammarskjöld, secretary-general of the United Nations, delivered an important address entitled "An instrument of faith."
Today, the city is home to Northwestern University and other educational institutions as well as headquarters of Alpha Phi International women's fraternity, Rotary International, the National Lekotek Center, the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity, the Sigma Chi Fraternity and the Woman's Christian Temperance Union.
Evanston is also the birthplace of Tinkertoys and local theory claims that an Evanston pharmacist invented the ice cream sundae, a theory disputed by Ithaca, New York and Two Rivers, Wisconsin, who also claim the heritage.
Evanston was "dry"--that is, the city prohibited the sale or commercial service of liquor--from 1858 until 1972, when the City Council voted to allow restaurants and hotels to serve liquor on their premises. In 1984, the Council voted to allow retail liquor outlets within the city limits.