Berwyn, IL is a suburb of Chicago located about 32 miles northwest of the Chicago “loop”. As of the 2010 census 56,657 people called Berwyn home. Berwy is also known as Berwyn Township after breaking off from Cicero Township in 1908.
Berwyn was originally fairly marshy and cold. As the glaciers receded at the end of the last ice age, a giant body of water known as Ancient Lake Chicago was created. Over time, Lake Chicago grew smaller and became Lake Michigan. In 1846, Theodore Doty came to control the land and built the 8-foot-wide (2.4 m) Plank Road from Chicago to Ottawa (what is now Ogden Avenue in South Berwyn). In 1856, Thomas F. Baldwin purchased 347 acres of land in hopes of developing a community called “LaVergne”. Unfortunately no one wanted the land.
In 1890 Charles Piper and Wilbur Andrews purchased a 106-acre plot of land to develop. Piper and Andrews decided to build a train station on the land with the understanding that trains (from the Burlington and Quincy Railroad – opened in 1864) would stop regularly. They did not know what to name their station so they consulted a Pennsylvania train timetable to find a name. The name they chose was Berwyn, a subdivision outside of Philadelphia. After 1901, all settlements in the area were known as Berwyn.
Top employers in Berwyn include MacNeal Hospital, Turano Baking, and High School District 201.
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