Oak Park Il

Oak Park has easy access to downtown Chicago (the Chicago Loop) thanks to public transportation such as the Chicago 'L' Blue and Green lines, CTA buses, and Metra commuter rail. A census estimate for 2003 showed that the population had dipped to 50,824.


History
In 1837, Joseph Kettlestrings purchased 172 acres of land just west of Chicago.

By 1850, the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad was constructed as far as Elgin, Illinois, and passed through what would later become Oak Park. In the 1850s the land on which Oak Park sits was part of the new Chicago suburb of Cicero, Illinois.

The population of the area boomed during the 1870s, with Chicago residents resettling in Cicero following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The Village of Oak Park was formally established in 1902, disengaging from Cicero following a referendum.
Oak Park has had a history of alcohol prohibition.

From the time of its incorporation, no alcohol was allowed to be sold within its village limits. But this law was relaxed in 1973, when restaurants and hotels were allowed to serve alcohol.

The law was further loosened in 2002, when select grocery stores received governmental permission to sell packaged liquor.
Oak Park's expansive homes, parks and an excellent school system have continued to bring in tourists from all around the world.Recently, Oak Park demographics have shifted from long-term, more conservative residents, to younger, urban, more liberal residents. For example, a pedestrian mall on Marion Street in the center of the village was opened to traffic, using brick pavers similar to the original early 20th century street and bluestone sidewalks, intended to highlight the historic character of the area.Even the lighting fixtures were chosen to evoke the look of streetlights that lined the street in the 1920s. The effort to remove the mall from downtown Oak Park has won acclaim throughout the region from urban planners and preservationists alike.

Wright's home in Oak Park.

Oak Park is a popular tourist destination in the Chicago area, as many come to view the many Frank Lloyd Wright buildings found throughout the village. The largest collection of Wright-designed residential properties in the world is in Oak Park.

Other attractions include Ernest Hemingway's birthplace home and boyhood home, the Ernest Hemingway Museum, and the three Oak Park homes of Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Oak Park is known in the Chicago area and throughout Illinois for its Oak Park River Forest High School, which is also the public high school for the bordering village of River Forest. The school is known for its large number of successful alumni, honored teachers, and advanced educational programs.
Geography
Oak Park is located immediately west of Chicago.

The boundary between the two municipalities is Austin Boulevard on the east side of Oak Park and North Avenue on the village's north side. Oak Park also borders Cicero along its southern border, Roosevelt Road, from Austin to Lombard; and Berwyn from Lombard to Harlem.

Harlem also serves as its western border, where between Roosevelt and South Blvd, it borders Forest Park and between North Blvd and North Ave to the west it borders River Forest.
The entire village of Oak Park lies on the shore of ancient Lake Chicago, which covered most of the city of Chicago during the last Ice Age and is today called Lake Michigan. Ridgeland Avenue in eastern Oak Park marks the shoreline of the lake, and was once an actual ridge.Both middle schools (Percy Julian and Gwendolyn Brooks) have theater programs called CAST and BRAVO, respectively. Run by the Polish National Alliance, the station's programming serves the diverse linguistic and cultural communities in the Chicago metropolitan area (in the late-1960s WPNA had the only "underground" disc jockey in Chicago, Scorpio).