HISTORY OF ELMHURST CITY’S HERITAGE IS CHISELED IN STONE
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mong Chicago Magazine’s No. 1 places to live, the City of Elmhurst is a community rich in its heritage, invested in its present and focused towards its future. The city boasts a proud history that dates back to the Potawatomi Indian tribe members who settled along Salt Creek just south of the Elmhurst of today.
By the 1830s, European immigrants staked claims along Salt Creek. Hill Cottage (413 South York Street) was built in 1834 as a tavern and stage coach stop. In 1842, Ohio nave Gerry Bates formally established this community in the area of “treeless land” that is now Elmhurst’s City Centre. Cottage Hill, as the community was known back in 1845, was renamed Elmhurst in 1869 for the many elm trees planted along the streets. Elmhurst-Chicago Stone (founded in 1883) is the city's oldest business.
While a popular escape for businessmen following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871—the same year that German immigrants founded Elmhurst University—Elmhurst remained a farming community unl the 1930s, when the populaon reached 15,000 and suburbia began moving in on its rural character. From 1950 to 1970, the populaon grew to more than 50,000-bringing with it a building boom of housing subdivisions, shopping centers, business districts, industrial parks, schools and more. Even in a ght economy, Elmhurst attracts new construcon and redevelopment projects—totaling a combined $250 million in commercial and residenal—in both the public and private sectors. Annually, new home construcon is at or near triple digits, ranking Elmhurst No. 1 in DuPage County. Elmhurst enjoys a cultural campus (see Arts and Culture on page 8)
adjacent to its Central Business District (CBD) with the close proximity of the Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst Park District’s Conservatory/Formal Gardens, Elmhurst Public Library and Veterans Memorial in Wilder Park; Old Main, Hammerschmidt Memorial Chapel, Mill Theatre and A.C. Buehler Library on Elmhurst University’s arboretum campus; and Elmhurst Historical Museum in the Glos Mansion. Old Main (built in 1878) is on the Historical Register and the Glos Mansion (built in 1892) as the home of Henry Glos, Elmhurst's first Village President, while the McCormack House (built in 1952), designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is part of the Art Museum’s campus. Famed architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Walter Burley Griffin have put their design prints on Elmhurst’s housing stock. Providing a spiritual core are some 30 houses of worship, some of which are rooted in Elmhurst's birth.
E x p l o r e E l m h u r s t . c o m ¢ E l m h u r s t C h a m b e r. o r g
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