The House Museum began as a joint project of the 50th Anniversary Committee, the Park Forest Historical Society, the League of Women Voters of the Park Forest Area and Thorn Creek Townhouses. Thorn Creek Townhouses generously loaned the townhouse rent-free for this project for nine years.  When the 50th Anniversary Committee was dissolved, the Park Forest Historical Society took over the operation of the museum. In May 2007, Thorn Creek's owners asked the museum to move out. AIMCO, owners of Central Park Townhomes in rental Area F, generously offered us the use of one townhouse for a modest rent. We are open at 141 Forest Boulevard, as of December 1, 2007. We are closed in January, except by appointment, weather permitting. Our second unit and office remain in storage.  We hope you will enjoy our virtual tour, and will come in person when you can.

The first residents moved to Park Forest in late August 1948. In August 1953, Park Forest celebrated its fifth anniversary as "Pioneer Days."

Our tenants are a young couple with a new baby and small children. Like most of Park Forest's early residents, the husband is a World War II veteran. He is just starting out in his first job. Perhaps he has just finished college on the G.I. Bill. She is home with the children all day as most of the wives in Park Forest were then. Money is very tight. The rent is a good deal--only $75-$99 per month (this unit would have been about $88.50-$93.00) but they have just come from living with his or her family or from a  Quonset hut on the college campus. If they had an apartment, they had used a large part of their budget to pay the rent for the apartment. Apartments and homes were rare in the post-World War II years.

When was World War II? Internationally it was 1939-1945. The U.S. joined the war in December 1941, after the Japanese bombed the U.S. Navy at Pearl Harbor. Before World War II, what took place in the U.S. and the world? The U.S. and the world were in a Depression from October 29, 1929. Most of the people in this country were very poor and had little to eat. Families moved in together, with several generations living in one home. Very few people could afford to build new homes.

During the war. the economy began to improve. but women often stayed with their families or roomed near war factory jobs while the young men were off at the war from l941-l945. Some men did not come home until I947. Building materials were used for the war effort. There was no iron or steel or wood to build new homes.

Many families were started during the war. Many more couples were married right after the war and children began being born right away. So many young lives were lost in the war, and people were so happy to be alive, that they wanted to fill the world with new life. Can anyone tell me what the word used for all these babies being born was? The "Baby Boom." You may see books and newsstories about "Baby Boomers" as they are beginning to turn 50 and become middle-aged.

So, apartment space and house space were very scarce because there were many new families ready to live on their own, but no real building had been done for 15 years. Landlords could pick and choose who they would rent to. They chose not to have crying babies or noisy small children. If they knew a couple were expecting a baby, they often did not rent to them, either.

Rent controls were holding down rents in the cities, but landlords found ways around the controls. They left some old broken-down flirniture or carpeting in the apartment, then "required" tenants to "buy" the items before they could rent the apartment. The broken furniture might cost $1,500-$2,000 which was a lot of money.

This is called "The City to Order" from Collier's magazine Feb.1948.

In 1946, Carroll Sweet Sr., an elderly gentleman, and Nathan Manilow, a Chicago-area builder, approached Philip M. Klutznick, a man who was working in Washington, DC, planning war-time housing near army bases and factories and who was beginning to think about how to use this about to be abandoned housing for post-war housing. Mr. Klutznick had been stationed in Chicago during part of the war working on war time housing, so the gentlemen had met each other then.

They all liked Mr. Sweet's idea of building a "G.I. Town" which would give preference to returning veterans and their families. The drawing on this article is what they thought their town would look like. They formed a company called American Community Builders and hired architects, Loebl, Schlossman & Bennett. They meant to start with single-family homes on this land, but ran into zoning problerns and funding problems. FHA loans would cover multi-family dwellings-so they began with the rentals first.

This land was made up of several farms and a golf course called Indian Wood. Who knows what street runs East and West in front of the bank? Indianwood that's right. It was named for the golf course which was over by Western Avenue and Sauk Trail. Part of the land was a slough (slew) or marsh where duck hunting took place. This became Central Park.. And who moves back in everytime Central Park floods? Ducks! That's because they had come for hundreds of years before the village was built. The park is now being redeveloped into a Wetlands Recreation Area, and over 70 breeds of birds have returned to live on the wetland.

Building began in 1947, but it was a long, rough winter-so there were many delays. Tenants planned to move in by June of 1948-but they had to wait until late August. When they came there was dirt and mud everywhere. No sidewalks, no grass, no trees, near the construction. It just looked like a construction camp.

The day the first three families moved in, two were moved in the wrong units and had to be moved again, and they all had to move their furniture to the second floors because the wood floors were still having the finish put on them.

In spite of all this mess and confusion, you know what they say now? "It looked like heaven". "We were living together in a spacious, sunny, clean apartment, where our children were welcome, and it was a great adventure to put up with the mud and the things that went wrong along the way".

We have photographs showing the mud and the construction. The first court occupied was B-1, then B-4 and then across the street to E-7 and E-8, probably for the sake of water pipe connections.

In the early days up to five vans a day from one company alone, moved families in. On muddy days bulldozers had to pull the moving vans in and out of the courts.

In November 1948, American Community Builders, known as ACB for short, held a tent meeting for 600 people just across the street from our unit where Nurses Plus is now. They offered the tenants a chance to incorporate and form a village government. The tenants decided they would. By Illinois law, below a certain population a place could incorporate as a village and have a manager/trustee government as opposed to having mayors, wards and alderman. Park Forest was about to cross the threshold of having too many people to be a village. On February 1, 1949, the village was officially incorporated. Over the years, the village birthday has been celebrated either in August because of the move-in date or near February, for the incorporation date. The 50th Anniversary Committee  decided to recognize August with the House Museum, November with a reunion of village trustees and officials, and birthday cake on January 31, 1999, to celebrate Incorporation.
On the Fourth of July weekend 1999, they sponsored a village-wide reunion and homecoming.
                  -- Jane Nicoll,  Archivist and Museum Director, Park Forest Historical Society.  Former Reference Librarian for the Park Forest Public Library