Spotlight
OAK
PART I: PAST & PRESENT
BROOK
BY MIKE ELLIS
Over the next three months, Hinsdale Magazine will be shining an in-depth spotlight on Oak Brook. This month, print managing editor Mike Ellis takes you from the settlement of Frank Osgood Butler at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, all the way up to the present-day.
F
ounders are an important concept involved in the history of any place. In America, we esteem those Founding Fathers who sat through the sweltering summer heat in Philadelphia in 1787 to draft and construct the document we call the United States Constitution. The names Washington—Jefferson— Adams—Madison are immortalized, not only in our history books, but also as the names of towns and streets throughout our nation. While many people were involved in and have contributed to the development of Oak Brook over the past 50-plus years, the central root of that growth is aptly represented by the name Butler, as Paul Butler and his father, Frank Osgood (F.O.) Butler, were chiefly responsible for planting the seed that has blossomed into the unique village that is now home to more than two dozen beautiful subdivisions, McDonald’s corporate headquarters and one of the Midwest’s premier shopping malls.
Oak Brook’s Heritage
For newer residents to the greater Hinsdale area, it may be difficult to envision that much of the space you now see sprawling with homes, retail stores and corporate offices was once open farmland. This statement may be applied to many parts of the area, but is especially true of Oak Brook as late as the 1950s and early 1960s. Vestiges of Oak Brook’s heritage can be traced to the last decade of the 19th century, when F.O. Butler, president of the Butler Paper Company, settled on First Street in Hinsdale, several miles south of present-day Oak Brook. The paper company had a plant in downtown Chicago and a mill in St. Charles, and Kathleen Maher, president of the Oak Brook Historical Society (OBHS), said this location was an ideal “stopover” between their locations, and that a number of people from the city had summer homes in and around Hinsdale in those days. At one time, Maher said the Butler Paper Company was the largest family-owned business in Chicago. According to the historical society, in 1906, F.O. Butler and his brother Julius Frederick purchased the Natoma Dairy on 31st Street, and thus came into possession of a large portion of property in present-day Oak Brook. Frank Osgood Butler
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