Riverside, Illinois

One of America's earliest planned elite residential communities, Riverside, Illinois, is a model picturesque suburb, designed to combine the comforts of the city with the tranquility of the countryside. In the pantheon of America's prestigious suburbs, Riverside was developed just after Llewellyn Park, New Jersey, and became an inspiration for numerous other suburbs, from Roland Park in Baltimore to Palos Verdes in Los Angeles.

In 1868, Emery E. Childs and a group of eastern businessmen formed the Riverside Improvement Company. They bought 1,600 acres of land 9 miles west of Chicago, along the Des Plaines River, at a stop on the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy Railroad. They invited Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux to design their model suburb. Fresh from their work designing Central Park in New York City, Olmsted and Vaux created a plan for a spacious, leisurely, tranquil community. Separating work from residences, yet offering city services such as gas, water, street lighting, and drainage, Olmsted and Vaux planned to increase residents' mental and physical health with a picturesque, pastoral atmosphere inspired by British landscape designers.

Riverside's streets curve in contours, providing a contrast to the grid of many of Chicago's other suburbs. Its streets were lined with 39,000 planned trees and 47,000 shrubs. Nearly half the site was set aside for common use, including several larger parks on higher land and along the riverbanks, as well as croquet grounds, a lake created by damming the river, and 41 smaller triangular parks located at street intersections. In this planned pastoral landscape, every residence was located less than 600 feet from public open space.

To extend the parklike atmosphere to private residences, the minimum setback between individual houses and the street was established at 30 feet, private walls and fences were prohibited, and trees were required on [Page 687]every front lawn. Lot sizes were established at 100 by 200 feet, keeping Riverside an elite community limited to those who could afford to purchase such large lots. In addition, architect William LeBaron Jennings exercised veto power over all private construction plans.

Olmsted's and Vaux's plan for a private parkway connecting Riverside to Chicago was abandoned after the Riverside Improvement Company went bankrupt due to the Panic of 1873, after the pressures of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and rumors of dubious financial dealings. Lots had sold slowly, so that before 1873 the most numerous residents of Riverside were hundreds of gardeners, who might have questioned any assertion that it was a space of only leisure. In 1875, a village government was established to replace the Riverside Improvement Company.

The finances of this model suburb were revived by the 1890s, when some large lots were subdivided into 50- or 75-foot frontages. Frank Lloyd Wright, Louis Sullivan, and other prominent Chicago architects designed houses in Riverside. In 1893, the Riverside Golf Club opened, one of the oldest such clubs in greater Chicago. Riverside thrived as a fashionable residential suburb, especially after widespread automobile commuting became popular in the 1920s.

Surrounded by less-famous working-class and industrial suburbs such as Berwyn, Cicero, and Stickney, Riverside remains a prestigious residential enclave and an influential model. Designated a national historic landmark in 1970, Olmsted's general vision of curved streets, shared parkland, and urban amenities combined with picturesque landscaping is still apparent in Riverside today.

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