The villagewide celebration of Park Forest’s 75th anniversary will start this Thursday, Feb. 1, with a gala cake-cutting and gift bag giving celebration in Freedom Hall.
The date marks the “official” incorporation of the village by the state in 1949.
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To my way of thinking, Park Forest was actually “born” on Saturday, Nov. 27, 1948, when a large crowd of newly arrived residents were shoehorned into a tent where Philip Klutznick, the president of American Community Builders, urged the crowd to take control of the destiny of the still unformed community.
Start your own government, Klutznick said. Force us, the builders, to bow to the will of the residents.
What’s that again, some asked? You want the people who pay rent to the apartment builders to tell them what they must do? There must have been loud moans from the real estate barons when that took place.
During World War II, Klutznick was the commissioner of the Federal Public Housing Authority and saw the looming postwar housing shortage. His message that day was his response to the turbulent era in which service members returning from World War II were unable to find decent housing for themselves and their growing families.
This “G.I. town” was being built on the site of the Indian Wood golf course and part of a family farm, and living conditions for the pioneer settlers who began arriving in August of 1948 were challenging. Unpaved streets became mud rivers after rains, which also flooded basements.
Phone service was a spotty party-line status. The community was 30 miles from the Loop, then the center of business and shopping, but a two-bedroom apartment cost less than $100 a month, allowing hardy pioneers to flock to the area. A home in the suburbs, once the bastion of the well-to-do, was now available to “G.I. Joe” and his family.
Park Forest changed things forever.
The name and the village became a national symbol of change. The Park Forest Plaza, with its iconic clock tower, was the first post-war shopping center built in the United States and civic participation became a condition of community life.
“I was proud of my village,” Klutznick said in later years. “I lived there. It was my home.”
There is a theory that women were the driving force for change in the village. While men would drive or ride commuter trains to work wives would discuss what needed to be improved. There was many a dinner table conversation focused on needed changes.
A nursery school at 26th street and Western Avenue during the day became the village’s first town hall. In it’s first election, city planner Dennis O’Harrow bested 12 other candidates to become Park Forest’s first official.
Nothing seemed impossible in those days.
In 1952, citizens decided to tax themselves to build a high school. There were 1,828 yes votes to 12 nos. That drive to educate the children helped win the first of two All-America City awards for the village. The second, in 1977, was anchored by another communitywide effort connected with the building of Freedom Hall, and the village also made the finals on two other occasions.
In 1956 Fortune Magazine editor William Whyte wrote the national bestseller “The Organization Man,” which explored Park Forest’s culture and theorized that postwar suburban life began to focus on the need for corporate values.
In December 1959, the village became home to its first Black family, breaking the despicable racial barrier that shamefully bound surrounding communities. De Paul professor Charles Wilson and his family moved to town on Christmas Eve. There were no demonstrations, and the next day they allegedly received a welcome cake from Phillip Klutznick’s wife, Ethel.
On March 26, 2003, a meteor shower struck two houses in the village. The largest remnant, a 6-plus pound stone labeled the Park Forest Meteor, is on display in the Field Museum in Chicago.
Park Forest is an integral part of a transportation exhibit in the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington. The display highlights how the village was an example of how the village helped change commuting.
If you want more, a special exhibit celebrating the first 75 years of the village’s history is housed in the Park Forest Historical Society office in St. Mary Catholic Church, 227 Monee Road.
Visiting hours are 1 to 3:30 p.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays.
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One last note, how many communities in this country boast that its mayor is also the community’s poet laureate.
Jerry Shnay if a freelance columnist for the Daily Southtown.