Downtown Peotone Historic District

	Downtown Peotone Historic District
	U.S. National Register of Historic Places
	U.S. Historic district
Location	Roughly North First Street and both sides of North Second Street, roughly bounded by the alley south of Main and north by North Street; Peotone, Will County, Illinois, U.S.
Coordinates	41°20′3″N87°47′29″W / 41.33417°N 87.79139°W Coordinates: 41°20′3″N87°47′29″W / 41.33417°N 87.79139°W
Architectural style	Late 19th and Early 20th Century Movements, Queen Anne
NRHP reference #	05001253
Added to NRHP	November 16, 2005

Last updated May 10, 2019

The Downtown Peotone Historic District is a set of forty-two buildings in Peotone, Illinois. Of these, thirty-seven contribute to the historical integrity of the area.

Peotone is a village in Will County, Illinois, United States. The population was 4,142 at the 2010 census, an increase from 3,385 in 2000. The city is about 43 miles (69 km) south of Chicago. The city is home to the Peotone High School Blue Devils.

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern and Great Lakes region of the United States. It has the fifth largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth largest population, and the 25th largest land area of all U.S. states. Illinois is often noted as a microcosm of the entire United States. With Chicago in northeastern Illinois, small industrial cities and immense agricultural productivity in the north and center of the state, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south, Illinois has a diverse economic base, and is a major transportation hub. Chicagoland, Chicago's metropolitan area, encompasses over 65% of the state's population. The Port of Chicago connects the state to international ports via two main routes: from the Great Lakes, via the Saint Lawrence Seaway, to the Atlantic Ocean and from the Great Lakes to the Mississippi River, via the Illinois Waterway to the Illinois River. The Mississippi River, the Ohio River, and the Wabash River form parts of the boundaries of Illinois. For decades, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport has been ranked as one of the world's busiest airports. Illinois has long had a reputation as a bellwether both in social and cultural terms and, through the 1980s, in politics.

History

The Illinois Central Railroad was constructed in 1856 and provided rail service for eastern Will County. Two years later, the first commercial structure opened in the city, and residents flocked to the area. By 1865, a windmill, post office, an opera house, a trolley system, and several grain elevators had opened in the city. Peotone also housed the Will County Fair during this period.^[1]

The Illinois Central Railroad, sometimes called the Main Line of Mid-America, was a railroad in the central United States, with its primary routes connecting Chicago, Illinois, with New Orleans, Louisiana, and Mobile, Alabama. A line also connected Chicago with Sioux City, Iowa (1870). There was a significant branch to Omaha, Nebraska (1899), west of Fort Dodge, Iowa, and another branch reaching Sioux Falls, South Dakota (1877), starting from Cherokee, Iowa. The Sioux Falls branch has been abandoned in its entirety.

An opera house is a theatre building used for opera performances that consists of a stage, an orchestra pit, audience seating, and backstage facilities for costumes and set building.

The land east of Peotone was fertile, resulting in a large population of both farmers and merchants. Most business was conducted on Railroad Street, with storefronts facing the railroad tracks. Eventually business moved to Second Street, causing many of the Railroad Street businesses to simply install new storefronts on what was the rear of their building. An electric generation plant was opened in Peotone in 1894, and street lighting was added later that year. A water tower was erected in 1895, and sidewalks were laid in 1902. A portion of the district on Main Street was destroyed in a 1913 fire and rebuilt a year later. The village trolleys carried passengers from 63rd & Halsted in Chicago south to Kankakee. A major employer in the 1920s was the Continental Bridge Company, which produced many bridges in the United States and Canada, and also supplied steel for the United States Shipping Board. Development ceased in the 1930s following the Great Depression and never recovered.^[1]

A water tower is an elevated structure supporting a water tank constructed at a height sufficient to pressurize a water supply system for the distribution of potable water, and to provide emergency storage for fire protection. In some places, the term standpipe is used interchangeably to refer to a water tower. Water towers often operate in conjunction with underground or surface service reservoirs, which store treated water close to where it will be used. Other types of water towers may only store raw (non-potable) water for fire protection or industrial purposes, and may not necessarily be connected to a public water supply.

Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the most populous city in Illinois, as well as the third most populous city in the United States. With an estimated population of 2,716,450 (2017), it is the most populous city in the Midwest. Chicago is the principal city of the Chicago metropolitan area, often referred to as Chicagoland, and the county seat of Cook County, the second most populous county in the United States. The metropolitan area, at nearly 10 million people, is the third-largest in the United States, and the fourth largest in North America.

Kankakee is a city in and the county seat of Kankakee County, Illinois, United States. The city's name is probably derived from the Miami-Illinois word teeyaahkiki, meaning: "Open country/exposed land/land in open/land exposed to view", in reference to the area's prior status as a marsh. As of 2017, the city's population was 26,216. Kankakee is a principal city of the Kankakee-Bourbonnais-Bradley Metropolitan Statistical Area.

The first buildings in the town were mostly vernacular structures of framing. Following devastation by fire, focus on building materials shifted to masonry. All but two of the buildings in the historic district were, at some point, used for commercial purposes. The Downtown Peotone Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places on November 16, 2005.^[1]

Vernacular architecture category of architecture based on local needs, construction materials and reflecting local traditions

Vernacular architecture encompasses the vast majority of the world's built environment, and thus resists a simple definition. It is perhaps best understood not by what it is, but what it can reveal about the culture of a people or place at any given time. The sheer range of global building types and developments--from Mongolian yurts to Japanese minka to American roadside commercial strips--suggests that vernacular architecture is everywhere, but tends to be disregarded or overlooked in traditional histories of architecture and design. As geographer Amos Rapoport has famously written, vernacular architecture constitutes 95 percent of the world's built environment: that which is not designed by professional architects and engineers. While such an understanding has its limitations, it nonetheless indicates the vastness of the subject and helps us recognize that all aspects of the built environment can impart something about the society and culture of a people or place. If nothing else, vernacular architecture cannot be distilled into a series of easy-to-digest patterns, materials, or elements. Vernacular architecture is not a style.

Framing, in construction, is the fitting together of pieces to give a structure support and shape. Framing materials are usually wood, engineered wood, or structural steel. The alternative to framed construction is generally called mass wall construction, where horizontal layers of stacked materials such as log building, masonry, rammed earth, adobe, etc. are used without framing.

Masonry is the building of structures from individual units, which are often used to be stuck togetherby mortar; the term masonry can also refer to the units themselves. The common materials of masonry construction are brick, building stone such as marble, granite, and limestone, cast stone, concrete block, glass block, and adobe. Masonry is generally a highly durable form of construction. However, the materials used, the quality of the mortar and workmanship, and the pattern in which the units are assembled can substantially affect the durability of the overall masonry construction. A person who constructs masonry is called a mason or bricklayer. These are both classified as construction trades.

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References

1 2 3 National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Downtown Peotone Historic District

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[nrhp-1] 1 2 3 National Register of Historic Places Registration Form: Downtown Peotone Historic District