Elmhurst, Illinois, United States

🇺🇸 Elmhurst is a city mostly in DuPage County and overlapping into Cook County in the U.S. state of Illinois, and a western suburb of Chicago.

History Members of the Potawatomi Native American people, who settled along Salt Creek just south of where the city would develop, are the earliest known settlers of the Elmhurst area. Around 1836, European-American immigrants settled on tracts of land along the same creek. At what would become Elmhurst City Centre, a native of Ohio named Gerry Bates established a community on a tract of "treeless land" in 1842.

The following year, Hill Cottage Tavern opened where St. Charles Road and Cottage Hill Avenue presently intersect. In 1845, the community was officially named Cottage Hill when a post office was established. Four years later, the Galena and Chicago Union Railroad was given right-of-way through Cottage Hill giving farmers easier access to Chicago. The first Elmhurst railroad station was built in 1894. The community changed its name to Elmhurst in 1869. In 1871, Elmhurst University was organized and currently has 3,500 undergraduates and about 300 graduate students. Elmhurst was incorporated as a village in 1882, with a population between 723 and 1,050, and legal boundaries of St. Charles Road to North Avenue, and one half mile west and one quarter mile east of York Street. Elmhurst Memorial Hospital was founded in 1926 as the first hospital in DuPage County.

The Memorial Parade has run every Memorial Day since 1918. The annual Elmhurst St. Patrick's Day Parade continues to be the third largest parade of that sort in the Chicago area, following the more famous parades downtown and on the city's South Side.

Since 1964, it has been home to Elmhurst CRC, one of the largest congregations of the Christian Reformed Church in North America.

The Keebler Company's corporate headquarters was in Elmhurst until 2001, when the Kellogg Company purchased the company. The city is home to the headquarters of Sunshine Biscuits and McMaster-Carr Supply Co.

In 2014, Family Circle magazine ranked Elmhurst as one of the "Ten Best U.S. Towns for Families".

Geography According to the 2021 census gazetteer files, Elmhurst has a total area of 10.28 square miles (26.63 km²), of which 10.22 square miles (26.47 km²) (or 99.42%) is land and 0.06 square miles (0.16 km²) (or 0.58%) is water.

The town also has a tendency to flood, and the city has tried preventing or suppressing this for the future.

Economy: Top employers According to Elmhurst's 2017 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the top employers in the city include: 1 Edward-Elmhurst Hospital; 2 McMaster-Carr Supply Company; 3 Elmhurst University; 4 Duchossois Enterprises Group; 5 Altorfer Power Systems (Caterpillar dealer); 6 Semblex Corporation; 7 Superior Sound, Inc.; 8 FedEx Freight; 9 Superior Air-Ground Ambulance Service; 10 Safway Services, LLC.

Arts and culture • The Theatre Historical Society of America is focused on the preservation of dance, opera, and movie theaters and includes a collection of objects from many theaters that are no longer in existence. Among the items on display is a scale model of the 1927 Avalon Theater (now known as the New Regal Theater). • Wilder Park Conservatory • A 150-foot-deep (46 m) limestone quarry covering about 59 acres (240,000 m²) is located half a mile west of downtown along West Avenue and 1st Street. A tunnel from Salt Creek diverts water into the quarry in case of a flood. The quarry is an important piece of DuPage County's stormwater management system, and can hold up to 8,300 acre-feet (10 million cubic meters) of stormwater. • Each spring, the company RGL Marketing for the Arts runs the event, Art in Wilder Park. The event takes place in centrally located Wilder Park, which is also home to the Wilder Mansion, the Elmhurst Public Library, the Wilder Park Conservatory and the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art. The event "features of a juried show of fine arts, crafts and original creations of over 100 artists, including jewelry, glass, ceramics, painting, wood, photography, sculpture, paper and mixed media". The event also hosts live music and entertainment and over 40 food vendors. • Elmhurst is home to multiple residential homes built by significant architects, including but not limited to Mies van der Rohe (McCormick House), Frank Lloyd Wright (F.B. Henderson House), Walter Burley Griffin (William H. Emery House, Sloane House), and R. Harold Zook.

Education Elmhurst University is a local college of the area. It is a four-year private liberal arts college affiliated with the United Church of Christ.

School districts serving Elmhurst include: • Elmhurst Community Unit School District 205 serves most of the city; its high school is York Community High School • Salt Creek School District 48 • DuPage High School District 88 • Hillside School District 93 serves the Cook County portion; in 1953 this portion had 45 houses • Students at Hillside 93 move on to Proviso West High School of the Proviso Township High Schools District 209; Private schools: • IC Catholic Prep, formerly Immaculate Conception High School • Timothy Christian School • Immaculate Conception Grade School • Immanuel Lutheran Grade School • Visitation Catholic Grade School.

Transport Elmhurst is served by Pace buses, and the Metra Union Pacific/West Line. The Union Pacific Railroad has freight service on the Metra line and Canadian National Railway serves the former Illinois Central line south of the Metra line. O'Hare International Airport is 18 minutes from Elmhurst, and Chicago Midway International Airport is 33 minutes from Elmhurst.

During the summers and December, Elmhurst also has the "Elmhurst Express Trolley", a free weekend trolley that connects downtown Elmhurst to the Spring Road businesses and the Elmhurst Public Library. It runs Friday-Saturday and the $40,000 cost comes out of visiting and tourism fund.