Fraus with Plows: The 19th Century Development of Skokie :: Essays Papers

Fraus with Plows The nineteenth Century Development of SkokieOn the deferral of Lake and Wagner Roads in Glenview, nearby an Audi dealership, the Glenview Tennis Club, and an Avon plant, nestled between rows of residential developments, is an 18-acre farm. As if its presence wasnt anachronistic enough, the cows grazing in the field attest to the fact that the farm, which sits on the border between lettuces self-christened North Shore and its inner suburbs, is still in physical process despite decades of efforts by developers to purchase it and convert the land into something more fat for the north suburban niche. In fact, until 2000, the farm was owned by the Wagner family and reach out for profit, though it has since been purchased by the Glenview Park District and is now maintained as a museum to showcase the villages diachronic roots. The rationale loafer the villages $7.2 million investment in the land was, as Park District Board President said, ...that this is a part of Glenview, and if we dont spring up it, it wont be there to show the children what Glenview was homogeneous. In some shipway, perhaps Wagner leavens presence is most fitting as a historical division between the two sets of suburbs directly to the north of the city. While two regions began developing simultaneously as outgrowths of the rapidly expanding and industrializing urban metropolis to the south, the lakeshore settlements were almost immediately identified as centers to serve the needs of moneyed urban commuters, and their subsequent development was largely directed towards this goal, whereas the inland settlements were all of a sudden awakened to their similar potential only in the real the three estates boom of the 1920s. The explosion of road and highway construction after WWII would in conclusion level the playing field for development between these competing areas and render their boundaries close to indistinguishable, but until then, towns like Glenview, Morton Grove, Niles, Park Ridge, Lincolnwood, and Skokie (then known as Niles Center) , would develop along a very different trajectory than their lakeshore neighbors, one that had often more in common with Wagner Farm than with the elegant single-family homes arranged in well-maintained subdivisions that now surround it. The development of Niles Center in many ways embodies a regional pattern of suburban development in 19th Century Cook County. With the exception of a few showcase towns like Riverside, Hyde Park Center, and the settlements along