By Colin Doyle
In my hometown of Downers Grove, Illinois, there’s a a major East-West street that’s close to the downtown called Prairie Avenue. People in the area know Prairie as one of the best ways to get between the three major North-South streets, those being Highland, Main Street, and Belmont. On that street, up until December of 2021, there was a lot with an old school and even older oak trees scattered throughout the lot. Most people who wanted to go west from the train station at Belmont traveled down Prairie, and passed the old school. For me, it was a visually distinct landmark that divided Prairie Avenue in half. The old school was called Longfellow.
What was formerly Longfellow school is currently Longfellow On Prairie, a housing development being led by McNaughton Development. At the end of 2021, the property was sold after a period of brief resistance from the local homeowners, especially those who lived on the two streets that flanked the school. They, alongside some other residents in the neighborhood, argued that Longfellow was a historic building, and resorted to heroic and effective manners of protest such as planting lawn signs with the #savelongfellow hashtag and complaining on line. Sarcasm aside, I do think that the who debacle raised an interesting question about the value of an aesthetic place even if its current value is much less than it proposed value.
Prior to its demolition, Longfellow wasn’t actually being used as a school. The school was built in 1928, but in the 1980s it ceased its use as an elementary school and was converted into office and storage space for the district 58 school district. This was likely due to its proximity to two other elementary schools within half a mile, which made its central location redundant.
The district stated that it was becoming too expensive to maintain the nearly century old building, and the $4.1 million the lot sold for probably sweetened the deal. It was an understandable financial decision. The significant sum of money can go into better funding for the schools, and it’s obviously very difficult to argue against bettering schools for children. But I wonder if there’s something intangible that’s lost in moves like this. Downers Grove and other towns like it have become hot within the last 10 or so years. Its affluent north portion contains both a growing downtown and a train line that leads into Chicago, so apartments and housing are rapidly popping up for the people who want to work in but not necessarily live in the city. Thus, property values are increasing which in turn increases school funds. The school district likely wanted to strike while the iron was hot, but it’s not like the area was in a dire financial situation either. The sale of the Longfellow lot wasn’t the catalyst; fancy new homes had been popping up in the neighborhood for a while.
The question of the aesthetic and emotional value of a place is hard to answer. Maybe I’m just arguing from the illogical, knee-jerk perspective of a college student who came back from New York one year and was shocked to see an iconic aspect of his neighborhood changed. But as I see an increasing number of eerily similar large houses that squeeze as much square footage out of their lots without trying to preserve the trees or the original feel of the lot, I become a little dismayed. I worry that often times suburban development happens rapidly and in a very homogenized manner, which destroys the uniqueness of a place and detracts from the identity of the community.
Sources used :
https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20220217/fight-over-longfellow-center-property-prompts-downers-grove-to-revise-zoning-rules
https://www.dailyherald.com/news/20210923/downers-grove-residents-seek-historic-designation-to-former-school
https://mcnaughtondevelopment.com/longfellow/
https://www.shawlocal.com/my-suburban-life/news/downers-grove/2021/10/01/housing-developer-to-buy-93-year-old-longfellow-center-in-downers-grove/
