While driving down Tonne Road in Elk Grove Village, it came to my attention that the names of the streets in the Centex Industrial Park looked familiar. Estes Avenue. Lunt Avenue. Morse Avenue. Pratt Boulevard.
Coincidentally, these street names can all be found in Schaumburg’s Centex Industrial Park.
When doing an update of the Roads of Schaumburg Township blog post, I found these same names on the internet and noted that they were also streets in Chicago. I then checked the names in Streetwise Chicago: A History of Chicago Street Names by Don Hayner and Tom McNamee. Sure enough there was a connection.
George Estes, Stephen P. Lunt, Charles H. Morse, and brothers Paul and George Pratt were all members of the Rogers Park Building and Land Company, founded in 1873, that developed the community of Rogers Park. Not surprisingly, there are streets in Rogers Park named for them too.
In addition, the Centex Industrial Park in Elk Grove Village also has Touhy Avenue and Greenleaf Avenue. Touhy is named for Patrick L. Touhy, the son-in-law of Phillip Rogers, who Rogers Park is named for. Greenleaf is named for Luther Greenleaf. And, yes, you guessed it. Touhy and Greenleaf were both part of the Rogers Park Building and Land Company.
The real questions are, why did Centex not only use the same street names in these two nearby industrial parks but, also, what was the Rogers Park connection?
The first step in solving the mystery was to address when the two Centex parks were developed. Elk Grove’s was begun in 1957 and Schaumburg’s was begun over 10 years later in 1969. However, the quirky thing is those names can be found on Schaumburg Township maps PRIOR TO 1969. And they’re not in the current industrial park.
As you can see on this 1963 plat map from Atlas [of] North Cook County by Paul Baldwin & Son, the names Lunt, Morse and Pratt are part of this subdivision that is at the very south central boundary of Schaumburg and Bloomingdale Townships.
This subdivision, according to local realtor, Larry Rowan, is officially called the N.O. Shively and Company subdivision, though it was originally purchased for development by H.O. Stone & Co. from Chicago and is noted as such on a 1926 Thrift Press map out of Rockford. In the November 1999 issue of Schaumburg Township’s Town Crier it stated that this area was developed in 1927 and is referred to as the Shively Roselle Highlands. For many years, though, it was colloquially known as “Taylorville.”
The earliest plat map that the library owns that shows the subdivision laid out, is the 1936 M.B. Schaeffer North Part of Cook County. No streets are named, but it’s hard to believe that names were not assigned when the roads were put in.
The earliest map that the library owns that shows actual street names is the 1952 Cook County Highway map of Schaumburg Township. This is five years before the Elk Grove Village Centex Industrial Park was developed. So, clearly, someone was ahead of Centex in assigning these names. Which begs the question–how did these even earlier streets get the same names?
In doing a bit of research on Ancestry, I found that N.O. Shively’s name was Nilas Oran Shively. In the 1940 census he was listed as a broker, so we know he was involved in real estate. This census was also the first to list addresses. And his address? 2452 Estes Avenue in [Rogers Park] Chicago. His World War II draft registration card lists the same address. So there’s the Rogers Park connection for Schaumburg Township.
In addition, there are real estate transactions in the Cook County Herald that mention Shively & Co. The Chicago Tribune also mentions N.O. Shively & Co laying out Madison Street Gardens in Villa Park in 1927. Clearly, Mr. Shively was in the real estate development business in the rural areas of Cook and DuPage County.
So, when Centex began developing the Schaumburg Industrial Park in 1969, it seemed logical to extend the streets of N.O. Shively’s subdivision into the industrial park. They also added one more–Estes Avenue–the same street that Mr. Shively lived on in Rogers Park.
But, how did those same names come to appear in the Elk Grove Village Centex Industrial Park in 1957, more than twelve years earlier?
In trying to answer that question, I contacted the Rogers Park/West Ridge Historical Society to see if they were aware of any connection.
Their researcher surmised that, in looking at a large scale map of the northwest part of the Chicagoland area, both the industrial park in Elk Grove Village and the streets in Rogers Park run along the same latitude. Could it be that the developers looked at the same type of map when laying out the streets in Elk Grove Village? And that it’s just as simple as that?
It might be possible. In doing some research on Tom Lively and Ira Rupley, the founders of Centex who were from Texas, I could not find any Rogers Park and/or Chicago connection. There also seemed to be no Rogers Park connection from Marshall Bennett and Louis Kahnweiler, the local owners of Bennett & Kahnweiler, a local real estate development firm that was engaged in the development of both industrial parks.
Is it really as simple as that? Extend those streets from Rogers Park, through O’Hare and you wind up in Elk Grove Village? And was the coincidence of that earlier, twentieth century N.O. Shively subdivision in Schaumburg Township, with the same street names, just too interesting for Centex to pass up?
If so, how could Messrs. Estes, Greenleaf, Lunt, Morse, Pratt and Touhy of the Rogers Park Building and Land Company, possibly have known in 1873 that their names would extend further west? Past one of the largest airports in the world to the towns of Elk Grove Village and Schaumburg? What an unusual, yet impressive, honor to have.
Jane Rozek
Local History Librarian
Schaumburg Township District Library
jrozek@stdl.org
*Photo credit of the 1963 map from Atlas [of] North Cook County, Illinois to Paul Baldwin & Son, Rockford, Illinois.
History of Schaumburg Township 