Nurturing Excellence (1892-1950) - A Brief History of Oak Park


	NURTURING EXCELLENCE
	Historical Overview: Beginnings \| Growth \| Challenges

The period 1892-1950 saw the construction of almost all of the housing stock in Oak Park, and most of the village's current buildings. During the 1920's, large Chicago stores such as Marshall Fields and The Fair opened branches on Lake Street. The Lake Theatre (pictured on the screen above) opened in 1936. Previously there had been a debate on the local ballots regarding the showing of Sunday movies. Eventually, in 1932 the proposition passed. By 1930, the village had a population of 64,000, even larger than the current population.
Oak Park Avenue & Lake Street (c. 1930's)

The "big story", impossible to know at the time, was the blossoming of artistic, business, and educational talent in the village. More than 300 former and present citzens have shaped American culture in the 20th Century, including some very surprising well-known names and inventions. We highlight below some of the Celebrated Citizens of Oak Park and River Forest from the era 1892-1950.

Burroughs Hemingway Humphrey Kroc
Newhart Rogers Shields Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright was a 22 year old architect in 1889 when he started work on his Home and Studio on Chicago Avenue in Oak Park. During Wright's 20 years in Oak Park, he designed dozens of structures in Oak Park and River Forest, and founded the Prairie Style of architecture. Today, the area surrounding the Home and Studio is a National Historic District, and contains the greatest concentration of Prairie-style houses in the world. The OPT Blading Tour offers online views and information of many of these houses.
The Wright Family

Edgar Rice Burroughs Edgar Rice Burroughs was born September 1, 1875 in Chicago. The son of a wealthy businessman, Burroughs was educated at private schools in Chicago, at the prestigious Philips Academy, Andover, Mass. (from which he was expelled), and at Michigan Military Academy, where he subsequently taught briefly. He spent the years 1897 to 1911 in numerous unsuccessful jobs and business ventures in Chicago and Idaho before moving to Oak Park in 1910 with a wife and three children. He wrote his first "Tarzan" story in 1912 while living in Chicago for the year, and 22 of the subsequent books while living in Oak Park.

Doris Batcheller Humphrey was born was born October 17, 1895, at 315 North Grove Avenue. Her father's family had lived in Oak Park for some time. Humphrey Avenue is named after her grandfather, Simon, who was a Congregational Minister, and her father used to work for the Oak Leaves as a free-lance photographer. After graduating in 1913, she went to New York City and studied for a brief while with Irene and Vernon Castle. Upon return to Oak Park after this, she opened the Humphrey School of Dance. In 1917, Humphrey went west to Los Angeles to study with Ruth St. Denis and Ted Shawn. She joined the Denishawn Company in 1918, and became the principal dancer, teacher and co-choreographer with St. Denis.
Doris Batcheller Humphrey

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway was born July 21, 1899 and raised in Oak Park, educated in the public schools and began to write while at Oak Park River Forest High School. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. Today you can Tour Online his Birth Home and view his Boyhood Home where he grew up in Oak Park, before leaving for the war in Spain and the beginnings of his subsequent writing career.

Ray Kroc was born 1902 in Oak Park, and lived here for 55 years before moving to California. Ray Kroc was the founder of the McDonald's Corporation. Brothers Mac and Dick McDonald opened the first "Speedee Shakes and Burgers" drive-in called McDonald's in 1953 in San Bernardino, CA, California. They were persuaded to sell the name to milkshake salesman, Kroc, who opened the first store of the McDonald's Corporation in 1955 in Des Plaines, Illinois. What happened after that is known to people all over the world.
Ray Kroc

Carl Rogers Carl Rogers was born January 8, 1902 in Oak Park. Rogers founded client-centered psychotherapy and pioneered in the development of scientific methods for studying psychotherapeutic outcomes and processes. In 1942 Rogers became the first therapist to record and transcribe therapy sessions verbatim, a practice now standard. He published his ideas and clinical results in several books, including On Becomimg a Person which made him a well-known figure in American psychology. His legacy lives on in the conciousness of America through another of Oak Park's native sons, Bob Newhart, whose TV therapist role captures the spirit of the Rogerian approach.

George Robert Newhart was born on September 5, 1929 in Oak Park, one of four children of of George David Newhart and Julia Pauline Burns. The family moved to neighboring Austin when he was young, though he attended St.ÊCatherine of Siena Grade School on Austin Boulevardin Oak Park. Newhart was drafted into the Army and served during the Korean war from 1952-54. He returned afterwords to Austin, living there while his carreer as a stand-up comic developed. Newhart moved to Los Angeles in 1961 at the start of his television career. The Oak Park connection persisted none-the-less, as he maintained an apartment at 1020 Randolph Street in Oak Park.
George Robert Newhart

Carol Shields Carol Shields was was born in Oak Park in 1935, the youngest of three children. She studied at Hanover College, the University of Exeter in England, and the University of Ottawa, where she received an M.A. Shields is today a celebrated author of many novels and short-story collections.