” Oak Park, IL USDA Loan”

Oak Park is a village in Cook County, Illinois, adjacent to Chicago. It is the 26th-most populous municipality in Illinois, with a population of 54,583 as of the 2020 U.S. Census estimate. Oak Park was first settled in 1835 and later incorporated in 1902, when it separated from Cicero. It is closely tied to the smaller town of River Forest, sharing Oak Park and River Forest High School. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright and his wife settled in Oak Park in 1889, and his work heavily influenced local architecture and design, including the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio. Over the years, rapid development was spurred by railroads and streetcars connecting the village to jobs in nearby Chicago. In 1968, Oak Park passed the Open Housing Ordinance, which helped devise strategies to integrate the village rather than resegregate.

Today, Oak Park remains ethnically diverse, and is known for its socially liberal politics, with 80% or higher voter turnout in every presidential election since 2000. Oak Park is closely connected to Chicago with Chicago Transit Authority access via the Green Line and Blue Line “L” train lines, as well as the Metra Oak Park station downtown.

In 1835, Joseph and Betty Kettlestrings, immigrants from Yorkshire, England, staked out a farm and built a house near Lake Street and Harlem Avenue, west of Chicago. Once their children were born, they moved to Chicago for the schools in 1843, and moved back again in 1855 to build a more substantial home a bit east on their quarter section of land. More farmers and settlers had entered the area. Their land was called by several names locally, including Oak Ridge, Harlem, and Kettlestrings Grove. When the first post office was set up, it could not use the name Oak Ridge, as another post office was using that name in Illinois, so the post office chose Oak Park, and that name became the name for the settlement as it grew, and for the town when it incorporated in 1902.

By 1850, the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad (after that, the Chicago & Northwestern and now Union Pacific) was constructed as far as Elgin, Illinois, and passed through the settlement area. In the 1850s the land on which Oak Park sits was part of the new Chicago suburb, the town of Cicero. The population of the area boomed during the 1870s, with Chicago residents resettling in Cicero following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and the expansion of railroads and streetcars to the area. “In 1872, when Oak Park received its own railroad depot on the Chicago and Northwestern Railway, its rapid emergence as a residential suburb of Chicago began. In 1877, the railroad was running thirty-nine trains daily between Oak Park and Chicago; in the subsequent year, more railroads and streetcar lines, with increased service, came to link Oak Park and Chicago. As Chicago grew from a regional center to a national metropolis Oak Park expanded – from 500 residents in 1872 to 1,812 in 1890, to 9,353 in 1900, to 20,911 in 1910, to 39,585 in 1920. Oak Park thus emerged as a leading Chicago suburb.”

A review of Oak Park’s history by Wiss, Janny, Elstner Associates in 2006 further explains the importance of railroads and streetcars in the development of Oak Park: