The modern Village of Bolingbrook got its start in the first half of the 1960s when the first builder laid out the first housing tract in the farm fields just north of old U.S. 66 and beside Illinois Route 53.
Those first families, as they moved in, had never heard or seen the name "Bolingbrook". Where they were moving was known as "Westbury" they thought, which, as it turned out, was just the first west side unit of what was "Bolingbrook Subdivision", as recorded by Dover Construction Company at the county.
The young families, for the most part, were lured out to model homes by advertisements that featured a handsome and distinguished British butler named Mr. Dover. They come via the Stevenson Expressway, as the new and improved Rout 66 had been renamed. It was the long umbilical cord that stretched out from the city of Chicago to the far west farmlands. The first model homes went up on Rocklyn Court, off Route 53, just north of the current Pheasant Hill shopping center.
Homes were priced at $10,000 with as little as $200 down. The first homes ready for families to move into were on Avondale Court, just west of Route 53 and north of Briarcliff Road. Lesson #1 learned the hard way through teary eyes: everything you see in the model home isn't in your finished house, necessarily. In the case of Dover homes that meant no carpeting or even floor tile in some area unless you paid extra. And there certainly were no trees or lawns. And not always paved streets.
Dover Construction Company also designed two other areas to follow Westbury, the two subsequent areas both east of Route 53, but still centered around the Dover-built Briarcliff Road. While Westbury had the first homes, the east side's Colonial Village became the site of the first churches, parks, fire station and, eventually, Village Hall and jail.
The three original home tracts - sold from 1961 to 1965 under the names of Westbury, Colonial Village and King's Park were all part of the original "Bolingbrook Subdivision".
It was these homes, and the families in them that officially formed the Village of Bolingbrook in 1965 with incorporation.
|