Downtown Oak Park
Downtown Oak Park, located about ten miles due west of the Loop,
expanded alongside Chicago's other outlying business districts during
the 1920s and 1930s. As residential development closed in the gap in the
urban topography that had so long separated Oak Park from Chicago, the
suburb's main retail corridor, Lake Street, expanded at a rapid pace.
Soon, it was no longer the small-town "main street" it had
once been. By the Second World War, stores and theaters along Lake
Street catered to patrons from all across the West Side of Chicago, as
well as from Oak Park and other western suburbs. To learn more about
downtown Oak Park during Chicago's Jazz Age, click on the links below. |
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