From The Old Plank Road To A Hand-Planned Village
Before La Grange was La Grange, the area was farmland traversed by the Old Plank Road — the Chicago-to-Aurora toll road, built atop a defunct Native American trail, today known as Ogden Avenue (US-34). The first European settler in the area, Robert Leitch, arrived in 1830 — earlier than Chicago's incorporation. The Aurora Branch line of what became the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad reached the area in 1864, and a small commuter station opened in 1868 at "West Lyons" (near today's Stone Avenue). The first stop in what is now La Grange was a milk depot called Hazel Glen. That was the village's character through the 1860s — a milk stop and farmland.
Everything changed in 1870. Franklin Dwight Cossitt — a Connecticut-born wholesale grocer who had moved to Chicago in 1862 and built the city's largest wholesale grocery business — purchased 600 acres of farmland adjacent to the Burlington line. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 destroyed his grocery business, and rather than rebuild only that, Cossitt turned his focus to developing the suburban land in earnest. Improvements to the village began in 1873: Cossitt planted hundreds of elm trees along the streets, donated land for churches and schools, set covenants restricting saloons and minimum lot sizes, and built quality homes ranging in value from $2,000 to $8,000 — substantial sums for the era. He built the railroad depot at La Grange Road from locally-quarried stone himself. His son-in-law David Lyman donated funds for the second depot at Stone Avenue.
The original post office serving the area was called Kensington — but Cossitt discovered another Illinois community already had that name, so he chose La Grange to honor the Tennessee town where he was raised. The village formally incorporated on June 11, 1879. Kensington remains the name of one of La Grange's main avenues today. By 1890 the village had 28 retail businesses, the construction crews had finished the new high school, and Lyons Township High School held its first graduation in 1891. By the 1890s, the village was described as the largest of towns on the road between Chicago and Aurora.
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 had a second effect on La Grange beyond Cossitt's pivot: thousands of displaced Chicagoans sought new homes within commutable distance, and La Grange — newly tree-lined, newly platted, newly rail-served — was one of the villages that absorbed them. Population went from about 500 in the early 1880s to nearly 4,000 by 1900. By 1921 the village had over 2,300 telephones (up from 52 in 1894), six churches, three schools, paved streets, electricity, and the foundations of the dense walkable downtown still in use today. The Stone Avenue Metra station — a 900-square-foot Romanesque limestone building — was built in 1901 and renovated in 2015. A Frank Lloyd Wright "bootleg" home was built in 1893 at 109 South 8th Avenue while Wright was still under exclusive contract to Adler & Sullivan; that home, plus designs by Wright protégé John Van Bergen and architect Enock Hill Turnock, anchor La Grange's place on the architectural map.
Modern La Grange holds remarkably to Cossitt's vision. Population is 16,321 (2020 census), at a density of 6,464 per square mile — denser than Chicago in spots, denser than any rebuilt suburb on this site. Median household income is approximately $154,600. Median home value is $582,600. 65.5% of adults hold a bachelor's degree, 80.5% own their homes, and the village's Lyons Township High School — established 1888, with the original building still part of the North Campus on La Grange Road — is the 8th-largest public high school in Illinois with 3,730 students. The annual La Grange Pet Parade — running every year since 1947, now in its 80th year — draws thousands to downtown the first Saturday after Memorial Day, joined by the West End Art Festival, the Endless Summerfest, the Craft Show, the Halloween Walk, and the Holiday Walk through the year. AMITA Health Adventist Medical Center is a 270-bed Level II trauma center serving the western suburbs.
Lincoln Limo Inc serves La Grange because La Grange's logic and the service's logic match. A village hand-planned by one person to a single quality standard, preserved as a National Register district with 1,000+ historic buildings, served by two Metra stations plus an Amtrak stop with express trains 23 minutes to Union Station — this is a community that pays attention to consistency. Reservation-based black car service for residents who want a vehicle that arrives when promised, charges what was quoted, and treats every booking as if the next twenty depend on it. Same driver, same Escalade ESV, every booking, year after year.