About Oak Park Illinois
A lot of famous people have called Oak Park, IL their home. Ernest Hemingway was born here, as was actress Betty White. Frank Lloyd Wright lived here for many years, and his buildings and homes provide a veritable history of his architectural development. A few of the many other notable Oak Park denizens include Ray Kroc, who founded McDonald's, Edgar Rice Burroughs, the creator of Tarzan, and Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer Simpson.
The community began in 1835 when a man with the delightful name of Joseph Kettlestrings bought 173 acres and built a house on the stagecoach route from Galena to Chicago. Kettlestrings Grove grew rather slowly until after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, when it saw a boom of people rebuilding their lives. In 1902, it was incorporated as Oak Park. By then the village was already linked to downtown Chicago by public transportation.
The village has had a reputation for conservative values. Alcohol was prohibited from the time of its founding until 1973, when restaurants and hotels were allowed to have liquor licenses. In 2002, grocery stores began to sell bottled goods, and in 2005 the first bar opened, but there are still no actual liquor stores in the village.
As the population of Oak Park diversified from the original German, English, and Scandinavian majority, the consensus of Protestantism, conservatism and Republicanism also began to change. What Hemingway once famously described as a place of "broad lawns and narrow minds" is now an exciting, thoroughly modern community.
