The Development of Downtown Plainfield

Chester Ingersoll platted the Town of Planefield in August 1834 north of the settlement at Walker's Grove as a modified grid of thirteen nearly square blocks centered on a formal Public Square at Fox River Street and Lockport Street, but within a decade the community's central business district developed instead along Lockport Road, then known as DuPage Street and now Lockport Street. Ingersoll's town included the southern half of DuPage Street, while Levi Arnold owned the northern half and allowed haphazard building on his land while retaining ownership; after his death in 1845, his wife and daughters formally platted that area as Arnold's Addition. The commercial district along Lockport Street first took shape when Isaiah Clippinger divided and sold lots in the front yard of his residence on the south side of DuPage Street between Illinois and Des Plaines Streets, and when George Bennitt moved twelve buildings from around Plainfield to the north side of the street just east of Chicago Street, placing them on every other lot so infill construction needed only a front wall, rear wall, floor, and roof. In the 1850s and 1860s, Congregationalists, Baptists, Methodists, and Universalists built churches, and Plymouth Congregational Church, Sharon United Methodist, and Plainfield United Methodist remain downtown. Plainfield's northern and southern portions were united in April 1869, and the village was incorporated under Illinois law on June 30, 1877. Fires between 1881 and 1898 destroyed most of the early wooden structures along Lockport Street between Illinois and Des Plaines Street, after which buildings were typically constructed of brick to reduce fire risk; among later downtown buildings, the Masonic Block, designed by Aurora architect J.E. Minett, was built in 1892.

Plainfield, Illinois · United States