range, one glamorous face of it is the neighborhood known as Streeterville.

It's the backdrop to the infamous Playpen, which on a hot summer weekend is like a floating frat party.

Now, some of the most expensive real estate in Chicago, Streeterville is home to world-renowned hospitals, graduate schools and architecture.

So it's hard to imagine that this was once a lawless vice district known as the Sands.

A desolate 180 acre sandbar humming with gamblers, drunks, and prostitutes.

In 1886, a circus owner, grifter and gun runner named George Wellington Streeter was at the helm of a steamboat, when it ran aground on the Sands.

The boat landed somewhere around here near Superior Street.

Now historians say it was almost certainly a case of "accidentally on purpose," because the minute Streeter and his common law wife crawled out of the wreck, they staked a claim.

He called these 180 acres the District of Lake Michigan, a federal territory, he claimed, off limits to the city and state.

He even forged President Grover Cleveland's signature on a document proclaiming as much.

He sold lots, collected taxes, and when the city sent police to shut down Streeter's encampment, shots were fired and someone died.

Streeter was convicted of manslaughter, but was released after a few months on a technicality.

Years later, authorities nabbed him for selling alcohol on Sundays and demolished his domain, while he was locked up.

He died broke in Indiana.

But he enjoyed a 30-year run as a con man.

And his legacy lives on in the neighborhood's name, Streeterville.