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Editor's Notes:

STATEMENT OF SIGNIFICANCE

N.B.: Of the above areas, Architecture applies primarily to structures Nos.1-4 and Exploration/Settlement to Millburn's significance as an example of a type of settlement, arrested at a specific point.

Throughout northeastern Illinois, one can encounter any number of suburbs and other satellites of Chicago whose origins lie in the earlier 19th Century and a small rural settlement which was the germ, so to speak, of the later town. In some luckier examples, that germ can still be recognized, usually as the somewhat anachronous center of an altogether different entity. There are even a few in which the original settlement has not yet progressed much beyond the scale of a small town. Millburn, however, is one of the very, very few (one cannot call it unique because there is at least one other, Wayne in DuPage County) in which the incipient town (or suburb) was arrested in its first stage and preserved until the present. Far from developing along other lines or even growing in a manner consistent with its beginnings, Millburn has not even been incorporated. It remains a simple settlement, the germ of a town that never happened. As such, it is a true remnant of the 19th Century and its dominant type of settlement, a type that has almost disappeared in the metropolitan area it did much to create.

Millburn's own origins reach back to 1837, when three brothers, Robert, George and Peter Strang, left Ontario, Canada, to seek work on the Illinois and Michigan Canal. Presumably successful in that quest, they claimed the land that was to become Millburn in 1838 and then went back to Canada. The very next year, they returned to their new land in Illinois, bringing their parents, three sisters, and a fourth brother, John (Jake), with them. Originally from Scotland, the Strang's were soon joined by other Scotsmen and the settlement, then appropriately known as Strang's Corners, was a reality. How quickly, indeed, this happened can be seen in the fact that a church was organized as early as 1840.

Although the earliest dated buildings surviving in Millburn (both, by the way, associated with the Strang family) are from 1856, the pattern of the settlement -- a rural agglomeration of farmers, craftsmen and tradesmen, mostly of Scottish origin -- was certainly determined by the 1840's and was probably a foregone conclusion from the moment the Strang's arrived. Again, though the buildings may be somewhat more recent, the character has remained almost inviolate since the beginning.

While the nature of Millburn as a living remnant of the earliest type of settlement within northeastern Illinois may be its single point of greatest significance, the architectural significance of some individual buildings should not be overlooked. At least ten of the 18 structures in the district are of architectural interest within the context of a rural settlement and four of those ten would most probably be considered of high significance in almost any setting. Relationships between buildings, particularly within the group at the northwest corner of Grass Lake Road and U.S.Route 45 and within the larger group on the east side of U.S.Route 45, are also of the highest order. Though located on a major highway, Millburn is hardly an anonymous stretch of that highway.

EXTANT STRUCTURES IN THE MILLBURN HISTORIC DISTRICT

Numbers refer to the corresponding map.

A. STRUCTURES OF PRIMARY SIGNIFICANCE

B. STRUCTURES CF SECONDARY SIGNIFICANCE

C. STRUCTURES OF LITTLE INDIVIDUAL ARCHITECTURAL SIGNIFICANCE

D. NON-INTRUSIVE RECENT STRUCTURES

E. INTRUSIONS AND FEDERAL PROPERTY