Riverside Historic District

Nine miles west of Chicago, the village of Riverside looks unlike any other Chicago suburb, and that is exactly the point. In eighteen sixty-nine, landscape architects Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux laid out sixteen hundred acres along the Des Plaines River as a model commuter community. Where other towns used rigid grids, Olmsted traced curving streets that followed the land's natural contours, wide grassy parkways, and generous setbacks between houses.

The idea was to deliver the best of both city and country in one place. Riverside was among the first planned suburban communities in the United States, and its design influenced how Americans imagined the suburb for a century afterward. The village was designated a National Historic Landmark in nineteen seventy, and expanded to full landmark coverage in twenty twenty-three. Today the curving streets and canopy trees make it feel more like a woodland park than a Chicago bedroom community.