ELMHURST'S HERITAGE CHISELED IN STONE

Among 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 members of the Potawatomi Indian tribe who settled along Salt Creek just south of the Elmhurst of today. By the 1830s, European immigrants staked claims along Salt Creek. In 1842, Ohio native Gerry Bates formally established this community in the area of “treeless land” that is now Elmhurst’s City Centre. The community was named Cottage Hill in 1845 and then renamed Elmhurst in 1869 for the many elm trees planted along the streets.

While a popular escape for businessmen following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 – the same year that German immigrants founded Elmhurst College – Elmhurst remained a farming community until the 1930s, when the population reached 15,000 and suburbia began moving in on its rural character. From 1950 to 1970, the population grew to more than 50,000-bringing with it a building boom of housing subdivisions, shopping centers, business districts, industrial parks, schools and more.

Today, Elmhurst is experiencing new construction and redevelopment projects – York Community High School was renovated and expanded, and the Elmhurst Public Library built a new facility thanks to homeowner-approved referendums – in both the public and private sectors. Founded in 1883, the Elmhurst-Chicago Stone Company is the city’s oldest business. Hill Cottage ( 413 S. York St.), Elmhurst’s oldest home, was built in 1834 as a tavern and stage coach stop. Elmhurst College’s arboretum campus features Old Main (built in 1878), which is on the Historical Register.

Elmhurst enjoys a cultural campus (see Arts and Culture) adjacent to its Central Business District – thanks to the close proximity of the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art, Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst Park District’s Conservatory/Formal Gardens, Elmhurst Public Library and Veterans Memorial in Wilder Park, Elmhurst College’s Hammerschmidt Memorial Chapel, Mill Theatre and A.C. Buehler Library, the Elmhurst Historical Museum and Theatre Historical Society at the York Theatre.

The Lizzadro Museum presents the most extensive collection of stoned carvings displayed in the Midwest. Highlight pieces from 70 years of collecting by Joseph F. Lizzadro and family are a nephrite jade imperial altar set from the Ming Dynasty and a cinnbar screen set with carved gemstones given to 18th century Chinese emperor Ch’ien Lung as a birthday gift.

Famed architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Burley Griffith have put their design prints on Elmhurst’s housing stock. The McCormick House, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is incorporated into the Art Museum building, while the Historical Museum is housed in the Glos Mansion, the 1892 home of Henry Glos, Elmhurst’s first village president.

Providing a spiritual core in the community are nearly 30 houses of worship, some of which are rooted in Elmhurst’s birth.
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