Oak Park, IL is a village in the state of Illinois located about 9 miles west of Chicago’s ‘loop’. As of the 2010 census 51,900 people called Oak Park home.
In 1837, Joseph Kettlestrings purchased 172 acres of land just west of Chicago. By 1850, the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad was constructed and passed through Oak Park. The Village of Oak Park was formally established in 1902, leaving the town of Cicero and becoming its own municipality. When the village was incorporated, no alcohol was allowed to be sold within its village limits. This law was relaxed in 1973, when restaurants and hotels were allowed to serve alcohol, and was further loosened in 2002, when select grocery stores received governmental permission to sell packaged liquor.
Oak Park attracts architecture buffs and others to view the many Frank Lloyd Wright designed homes found in the village. Other attractions include Ernest Hemingway’s birthplace home and his boyhood home, the Ernest Hemingway Museum, the three Oak Park homes of writer and Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, Wright’s Unity Temple, Pleasant Home, the Oak Park-River Forest Historical Society, and the Seward Gunderson Historic District.
Noteable people from Oak Park include Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ernest Hemingway, football Hall-of-Famer George Trafton, McDonald’s founder Ray Kroc, comedian Kathy Griffin, basketball player Iman Shumpert, and the voice of iconic cartoon character Homer Simpson, Dan Castellaneta.
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