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    Northfield
    Northfield
    Northfield
    Ebook185 pages50 minutes

    Northfield

    By ArLynn Leiber Presser

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    About this ebook

    In 1926, railroad and electric power tycoon Samuel Insull held a contest to name a station on the Skokie Valley Electric Line that the locals already called the Skokie Swamp. The winning name? Wau Bun, a Potawatomi word meaning "dawn" and also the name of a noted Potawatomi chief from the late 1700s. But the residents of Skokie Swamp hated the name and plotted their revenge. Three years later, as Insull was on a train pulling into the station, he was horrified to discover that vandals had taken it upon themselves to rename the station Hot Bun. Insull and the locals compromised, and the more neutral moniker of Northfield was adopted. The Skokie Valley Electric Line has long since been closed, and popular legend holds that Insull died penniless and alone in Paris. But the town of Northfield has survived and thrived. Once a loose affiliation of farms, Northfield is now a quiet suburb that has enviable schools, beautiful homes, and gorgeous landscapes.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 18, 2012
    ISBN9781439640913
    Northfield
    Author

    ArLynn Leiber Presser

    ArLynn L. Presser, granddaughter of science fiction and fantasy writer Fritz Leiber, has published more than twenty-seven romance novels. Some have been published under the name ArLynn Presser, but most often she has used the name Vivian Leiber. She lives in the Chicago area, where she writes and directs plays designed to teach ethics to lawyers. She has a law degree and practiced law before becoming a full-time writer. Among her recent publications are a short story, "The Archivist Says Goodbye to His Daily Routine," in the New England Review and Winnetka: Images of America from Arcadia Publishing, both published under her full name.

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      Book preview

      Northfield - ArLynn Leiber Presser

      drink!

      INTRODUCTION

      If travelers to Chicago take the Edens Expressway north about 19 miles out of the city, get off at the Willow Road West exit, they will find a delightful treasure. Overlooked by the typical commuter rushing off to important business or anxious to get home, it is nonetheless a town worth dawdling over. It is just 3 square miles, and as of the start of the 21st century, it has only approximately 5,000 residents. Northfield is affluent and well educated. Its children attend Middlefork and Sunset Ridge Public Schools, or maybe they are in the Glenview or Avoca Districts; perhaps they favor Christian Heritage Academy. The houses are cozy Cape Cods or split levels, and travelers who take a side street or two will suddenly find themselves amongst some gorgeous Italianate mansions and sturdy center-hall Colonials.

      Most local people have heard the story of the Happ family from Trier, Germany. John Happ, a blacksmith, set up shop in Winnetka in the mid-1800s, but with the railroad and gentrification of Winnetka, Happ took his wife and nine children and headed west across the Skokie Swamp to find enough land to be what he wanted to be—a simple blacksmith and farmer. His children became friends with children of other farmers—the Selzer family, the Leverniers, the Metzs, the Bracktendorfs, and the Seuls. Sometimes the families intermarried. Even today, a Selzer might have a tough time explaining exactly how he is related to someone else with the last name Selzer and an even tougher time explaining how he is related to someone else with the last name Happ—but the family connections are there.

      The farmers may have thought their way of life would be a gift that they could give their children and their children’s children, but change was to come to Northfield in the form of an electric train. Samuel Insull, born in England and a one-time personal secretary to Thomas Edison, came to Chicago to create a utility company. The electricity would power the trains he planned to build between Chicago and Milwaukee, but while many investors in his company thought he was planning a freight line, he was onto a different idea: he would use the trains to attract the middle class who were feeling squeezed in their Chicago neighborhoods. He would offer them land—he was smart enough to buy a lot of land, including a significant amount in Northfield—and then, when they built their houses, he would sell them the electricity to run their lights and their appliances. Insull seemed to have it all figured out, and though the Great Depression hit the community, its investors, and Insull himself pretty hard, time did prove that he had the right idea. In the second quarter of the 20th century, Northfield was part farm community, part suburb—and tied to Chicago by a railroad.

      After World War II, the Edens Expressway replaced the railroad. Commuters could afford cars, and it was more convenient and liberating to drive one’s vehicle to the city and back. The Edens Expressway divided the community into west and east Northfield, and it was not so convenient to walk to a neighbor’s house on the other side of what started as a four-lane highway. Within 15 years of the laying out of the Edens Expressway, the rail line connecting Northfield to Chicago was dismantled, although freight traffic would continue for years after. The expressway may have initially seemed a quick way to get to the city and back, but it was not. With people from the northwest suburbs taking the Willow Road exit off the Edens Expressway to cut through Northfield on their way home, traffic became a challenge. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Illinois Department of Transportation wanted to widen Willow Road in key places to streamline traffic, but many Northfield residents resisted: a four-lane Willow Road dividing their town into north and south Northfield does not seem to be what John Happ anticipated or wanted when he crossed the Skokie Swamp and said goodbye to Winnetka.

      Northfield has many challenges as it faces the future, but it has many resources: its people are friendly and hardworking. They come together as a community for fellowship and worship. They have a strong, well-organized village government. They have several large corporate residents—the Stepan Company and Kraft International Foods—as well as such family-owned businesses as Seul’s Tavern and Bess Hardware. This little treasure to the north of Chicago will shine just as brightly in the 21st century as it has in the past.

      The community was originally called Waubun (or Wau Bun), a name that means dawn in the Ojibway language and was also the name of a Potawatomi chief of the 1700s. It is a surprisingly apt name, because Northfield is at the dawn of its best days.

      One

      THE SKOKIE SWAMP AND THE HORSERADISH KINGS

      In the middle of the 1800s, Northfield was not a village; neither were Glenview, Northbrook, Wilmette, or any of the other towns that now border Northfield. It was not much of a

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