In 1901 when Riverside`s railroad station was sold to make way for a new one, the older structure had to be moved across town.
Not surprisingly, the movers encountered a problem on the town`s winding streets. The building lodged at one of the many bends in Riverside Road, against one of the even more numerous trees lining the public parkway. When the new owner applied to the village government for permission to remove the offending branches, it was denied.
The structure was dismantled. The trees were not.
Those parks–the boulevards, the open space along the Des Plaines River and the 41 small parks at the triangular intersections created by the winding streets–remain sacred, even today.
And despite the bitter cold of winter, Riverside`s residents are out in those parks, sledding, skating or just meandering.
Unlike most villages that are born, then realize the need for parkland and designate the open spaces through statutory law, Riverside`s parks came first and were designated and protected by common law. They were designated first in 1869, by the Riverside Improvement Co., and again in 1875 by the town fathers when they incorporated.
However, Riverside`s parks and trees are only a portion of the overall plan for which the village was named a national historic landmark in 1970. Although most historic landmarks are named because of their architecture, it was Riverside`s open spaces, thoughtful landscaping, curvilinear thoroughfares and original gs street lamps that provided the thrust for the landmark designation by the Department of the Interior.
In the middle of the last century, Riverside was the vision of the multifaceted urban planner and landscape architect, Frederick Law Olmsted, of an ideal suburb, a verdant sanctuary away from the din of the city.
”Olmsted ws a very farsighted man,” said Dorothy Unger, president of the Riverside Historic Commission.
”In his lifetime he had experienced the immigration from Europe and the migration from farm to city. He had seen the spread from east to west coasts. And he was very aware of a growing tendency in the 1860s of the successful business man, who wanted to get away from the city, back to the country.”
In his initial plan for Riverside, Olmsted wrote, ” . . . the countertide of migration, although as yet of but moderate strength, is clearly perceptible, and almost equally so, in Paris, London, Vienna, Berlin, New York, Boston and Philadelphia.”
And of Chicago, he wrote, ”The City, as yet, has no true suburb . . . in which urban and rural advantages are agreeably combined with any prospect of long continuance.”
Because they had gained national acclaim for their work on Central Park in Manhattan, Olmsted and his partner, Carlton Vaux, were brought to Riverside in the late 1860s by an East Coast businessman, Emery E. Childs, and his group of investors, the Riverside Improvement Co.
They were hired to help develop an 1,600-acre parcel of land, 10 miles west of Chicago, which until that time had been inhabited only by
Pottawatamie, Ottawa and Chippewa Indians and a handful of farmers. The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad had extended its line to the area in 1864, paving the way for Riverside`s new era to begin.
The result of the Olmsted & Vaux Co.`s efforts was a plan for a ”village within a park” with, in Olmsted`s words, ”the conveniences peculiar to the finest modern towns with the domestic advantages of a most charming country.” The very civilized ”domestic advantages” included easy access to the city, not only the already existing railroad but a to-be-constructed divided highway to Chicago; water, gas and sewage lines to each lot; fireplugs along the roadside; gas street lights; a durable road system and service alleys; a nondenominational church; schools, and recreation. Of the total acreage, Olmsted set aside 700 for public space.
Because Olmsted allowed for that freedom of architectural taste, Riverside`s houses vary from smallish Sears catalog homes, to vintage Prairie style, to mammotRiverside`s architecture that drew the historic designation, it was from the beginning a place where architects have lived or worked.
The Olmsted-Vaux involvement in the community was s because the Riverside Improvement Co. ran into financial difficulties by spreading their resources too thin.
Then the Chicago Fire of 1871 and the Panic of 1873 spelled the company`s rars later.
Riverside remains today a residential community; there is virtually no industry. Some of the large lots were subdivided during the Depression. A public library, which is undnsion, was built on a piece of the public space.
It is no longer a community for just the very wealthy. Through the years, Riverside has evolved to be solidly middle-class. According toousehold income was $32,187 in 1980.
Time also has brought more variety to Riverside`s houses. During the Depression some of the large lots were subdivided to allow for smaller homes. nstructed at the same time. Still, the majority of the suburbs`s homes still are single-family. Only half of the village`s 3,619 housing units fit in the large, $50,000-to-$150,000 price range the median value was $88,600 in 1980.
Riverside`s population peaked during the 1970s at about 10,400. It declined, however, by the 1980 Census to 9,236. And the Northeastern Illinois Pedicted that the decline will continue, to 8,112, by the year 2005.
”Even when people don`t understand the philosophy on which the plan developed,” Unger said, ”they still can feel t tranquility that Olmsted intended. He designed the parks for socialization and recreation.”
In addition to the parks an locked into the surrounding grid system. The rest of Riverside`s roads align themselves with the natural terrain, the Des Plaines River and the hills.
On entering Riverside, said Charlanager, ”You feel as if you`ve just gone down a side street, but the whole town is that way.”
