Glen Ellyn Main Street Historic District

Main Street in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, is lined with houses that record how the village grew from a farming settlement into a railroad town, a summer resort and a quiet residential suburb. The district runs along Main Street between Cottage Avenue and Hawthorne Street and contains homes from the 1860s to 1930, though its stated period of significance is 1874 to 1905. Most are set well back from the road beneath mature trees. Queen Anne houses are the most common, and no two are alike. Italianate, Gothic Revival and Greek Revival examples also appear. Individual houses are tied to local figures, including the Stacy family, whose Queen Anne mansion is called the village's finest, ornithologist Benjamin Gault, and village president Edgar McChesney. Buildings were rated as significant, contributing, non-contributing or intrusive according to age, style and integrity. The area was recognized for keeping an unusually intact record of the village's pre-1900 architecture despite suburban growth around it.