Wayne Village Historic District

Wayne Village Historic District preserves the 19th-century core of a small railroad settlement about 35 miles west of Chicago in DuPage County, Illinois. Of its 53 structures, at least 39 were built by 1916 and all but four before 1929. Nearly all are frame, detached houses set well back from Army Trail Road and Glos Street, with a church, a small store, and a post office as exceptions. The settlement began when Solomon Dunham built a house, store and inn after the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad arrived in 1850. Growth accelerated from the 1880s because of the nearby Oaklawn Farm horse-breeding enterprise, and it slowed after that operation ended in 1929. No single building is outstanding, and ten have been heavily altered, but the village as a whole still reads as a rural community from before World War I. That intact ensemble, rare in the Chicago area, is the reason for its listing.