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When Hinsdale officially became a village in 1873, it did so without a police department. In fact, it wasn't until nearly 15 years later that John Linn, a local delivery driver, was put in charge of law enforcement in town. The versatile Danish immigrant brought his skills to bear in several jobs over the course of his more than five decades in Hinsdale. This obituary of Linn's death at age 77, which ran in the May 5, 1938, edition of The Doings, pays tribute to his important...
The building at 24 W. Hinsdale Avenue has seen several occupants since its construction in the early part of the last century. Built as a car dealership in the 1920s, the site is also alleged to have housed an illegal beer depot back in the days of Prohibition. For many decades it was host to Hartley's Cycle & Hobby Shoppe, owned by former Hinsdalean Charlie Hartley. Hartley sold the building recently and it is now home to a high-end men's clothing store, Burdi. As an homage...
Imagine a cross between a room-sized safe deposit box and the corner of a basement. That's "the vault" at Hinsdale Village Hall. Part storage area for village documents and part holding area for items that need to be thrown away (think village vehicle stickers from 2017), the vault is located inside the administrative wing of the Memorial Building. Village offices originally were in the center part of the building, where there were three vaults, said Jim Piontkowski, building...
In 1957, The Doings published Christmas letters and stories from Hinsdale schoolchildren, then republished them in the paper’s 1995 centennial edition. Here are some of those charming — and unedited — submissions for the season. Dear Santa, I know Christmas is almost here. I love to go in to the stores and see them all decorated. It’s a lot of fun to set on your lap and tell you what I want for Christmas. I always forget the names of your reindeers. I can remember: Dancer, Prancer, Commet and Cupid, and, and, oh foo! “ca...
This weekend, Hinsdale Central wrestlers will compete with 24 other teams in the 57th annual Whitlatch Invite, one of the toughest tournaments in the state. The event is named after legendary Central wrestling coach Rex Whitlatch, who passed away in 2021 at age 84. Whitlatch, who a two-time state champion in high school, was the Red Devils’ head wrestling coach from 1964-81 and assistant coach from 1986 until he retired in 1992. For a November 2021 story on Whitlatch, his w...
Today, Dec. 7, is Pearl Harbor Day, "a date which will live in infamy" as President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously pronounced in a Dec. 8 address to Congress asking that a state of war be declared with Japan. The surprise attack on the U.S. naval base in Hawaii immediately and profoundly altered life across the country, including Hinsdale. The Centennial edition of The Doings from 1995 captured stories and vignettes from the World War II years, which are excerpted here. "When...
With the Hinsdale Central girls wrestling team in the early days of its first regular season, it seemed appropriate to look back at the days when hardly any girls had the opportunity to compete in any sport, much less wrestling. Below are excerpts from a column 17-year-old Sandra Bucha, a senior at Hinsdale Central, wrote for The Doings in November 1971. She opened by quoting Article II, Section 14 of the Illinois High School Association Official Handbook. "Provisions...
The building at 35 E. First St. was built in 1929 for hardware dealer Ray Soukup. For decades Hinsdaleans ran to Soukup's for any hardware or household item they needed. The business remained in the family for 63 years, with Hank eventually taking over for his dad. After buying the building, the Fuller family continued with a home and hardware store facing First Street until 2018, when it became Fuller House bar and grill. The hardware store is now tucked around the corner on...
HCS Family Services doesn't date back to Hinsdale's 1873 incorporation, but the organization's history of meeting needs in the community runs deeps. One of its biggest annual outreach activities is the Thanksgiving meal distribution before the holiday. Asked how far back that tradition extends, Executive Director Wendy Michalski said she wasn't sure. So she asked around. "The best guestimates are that we have been distributing Thanksgiving meals for at least 10 years and that...
Eight decades ago, America was at war in the largest, most deadly conflict the world has ever seen. Hinsdale residents, like those of every other town across the country, waited on any word that their native sons and daughters serving in distant lands were alive and well. In 1944 the The Doings newspaper reached out to homegrown U.S. service members for letters to include in the paper's 50th anniversary issue the following year. In observance of Veterans Day, we include excerp...
Hinsdaleans today would be surprised, to say the least, to see coffins in stock at Fuller's Home and Hardware. But in the 1870s in Hinsdale, they were sold at John Bohlander and Charles Pfeifer's hardware store, according to Timothy Bakken's history of the village, titled "Hinsdale." "In those days, embalming was not practiced, nor was there any business about the funeral; the family, or whomever, merely came in, selected a coffin, carried it off, and buried the body...
In 1989, The Hinsdalean's Pam Lannom (then with The Doings) decided to get a head start on Halloween by transforming into a monster bride a week before Oct. 31. The cosmetically creepy result as penned by Lannom we resurrect here as part of our sesquicentennial retrospective. "Phase I: hair styling "My transformation from mild-mannered reporter to monster bride began at Gazebo Hair Design in Oak Brook. Albert Cosenza and Joanne Williams, determined to create a truly...
A Texaco gas station was built on the southeast corner of First and Lincoln streets in 1928, and it remained in operation until 1982, when it was sold. The Yurchaks remodeled the building and opened the Hinsdale Fruit Store. The store gained a new neighbor to the south in 2006 when Passero Development Corp. built a mixed-use office building at 111 S. Lincoln St. (Hinsdale Historical Society photo/Jim Slonoff photo)...
Over half a century, a three-day event called the Hinsdale Antiques Show grew from humble beginnings to become the largest annual fundraiser for The Community House. "The first show in 1945 - held just four years after The Community House was incorporated as a nonprofit organization - was much different from the one people are accustomed to today," a Sept. 11, 2008, article in The Hinsdalean stated. "A group of women hosted a show at The Community House, then located at First...
Just beyond the southwestern boundary of Hinsdale is a residential area that doesn't belong to any particular town but has strong community spirit nonetheless. Golfview Hills, so named for overlooking adjacent Ruth Lake Country Club, is a collection of about 300 homes that was established in the mid-1950s between Madison Street and Route 83. Assimilating into Hinsdale would have seemed a natural step at some point in the intervening decades, right? Not for Golfview Hills homeo...
Longtime residents might remember a time when the skies over downtown Hinsdale were filled with melody and when the clock that sits atop the Memorial Building rang out to signal the top of each hour. "I remember it as young person, hearing the bell ring and listening to the music," said Cynthia Curry, one of a trio of Hinsdale residents who months ago took it upon themselves to see if the bell, clock and carillon could be restored. Their work paid off Sept. 5 when the...
The land on which Hinsdale Central's Red Devils will celebrate Homecoming this weekend was once home to Sedgeley Farm, a regional leader in both dairy cattle breeding and use of electric power. New York-born Enos Barton helped launch Western Electric Manufacturing Co. with Oberlin College classmate Elisha Gray in Chicago in the early 1870s, eventually becoming the firm's president and then chairman of the board. In his retrospective "Hinsdale," author Timothy Bakken sheds...
For more than a dozen years, the Eighteenth Amendment made it illegal to manufacture, transport or sell alcohol in this country. In Hinsdale, Prohibition lasted another 68 years. While the ratification of the 21st Amendment in 1933 meant an end to Prohibition nationwide, it allowed state and local authorities to remain dry. Hinsdaleans worried about the sale of liquor in town from the early days. In 1878 an ordinance was passed to prohibit bars and drinking establishments in...
Philip R. Clarke, a.k.a. "Mr. Hinsdale," was community service personified for most of his 77 years, both in the village he called home his entire life and in Chicago, where he was a prominent businessman, civic leader and philanthropist. Clarke's life was chronicled in a tribute story, excerpted here, that appeared in The Doings upon his death in 1966. "Born in Hinsdale (in 1889), he was the son of Robert W. Clarke, a founder of the Presbyterian Church in the village which la...
Almost a century ago, Hinsdale residents came together and raised almost $150,000 in a single week to pay for a new building to honor those who fought in the first World War. Village leaders hope residents will do the same this year to fund improvements to the Memorial Building in honor of the village's 150th anniversary. "They had a committee 100 years ago for how to create a memorial and they wanted it to be something lasting and something that would serve the community...
Eight years ago this month, lightning struck twice in Hinsdale on the same day, causing one house to catch fire and destroying the chimney of another. These excerpts are from the article that ran Aug. 6, 2015. Shortly before midnight, lightning struck the home at 561 Walker St., causing $75,000 in damage. "The guys did a great job," Chief Rick Ronovsky said of the firefighters who responded. "They got there and there was fire coming out of the roof of the house." They located...
Hinsdale is a community that gives back, and that spirit can be traced to the village's early years. In the late 19th century, residents established the Fresh Air Association to give Chicago's under-resourced women and youth a therapeutic retreat from their hardscrabble urban landscape by hosting them in more pastoral environs. Entries in a publication of that era, "The Hinsdale Beacon," detail the founding and flourishing of the outreach effort. "In the spring of 1888, Rev....
One of the shining moments of the village's 150th anniversary celebration will occur Aug. 17 when the village presents "Hinsdale History - Illuminated" at the conclusion of the summer's final Uniquely Thursdays concert. The 20-minute light show, which will illuminate the south side of the Memorial Building, will transport viewers through the past 150 years of Hinsdale history using enhanced audio and visual effects. Historic figures such as Joel Tiffany, the first village...
Voters approved a $3.9 million bond issue in December 1973 to build a new three-story junior high next to the Garfield School, with the first students moving into the Hinsdale Junior High School in March 1976. Forty-three years later, a successful $53 million referendum led to the construction of the new Hinsdale Middle School, which opened to students in January 2019. (Jim Slonoff photos)...
As Hinsdale’s population was expanding 150 years ago, families needed lodging while their homes were being built. The Park Hotel served that purpose and more, as Timothy Bakken chronicles in his book “Hinsdale,” and was a fixture in the community for more than four decades, despite revolving-door ownership. Built around 1867 near the northwest corner of Washington Street and the railroad tracks, the original three-story structure was called Hinsdale House. An expansion several years later by new owners brothers Charles and T...
