Elmhurst

Elmhurst grew up around the railroad. The settlement that became the city took shape in the 1840s and 1850s along the rail line west of Chicago, and the elm plantings that gave the community its name were part of a deliberate nineteenth-century effort to landscape the young town. Incorporation followed in 1882.

Its position on the rail corridor made Elmhurst a commuter suburb early, and much of the housing near the station dates from the resulting building waves of the 1910s through the 1930s. Elmhurst College, founded in 1871 and now Elmhurst University, established the institutional presence that still shapes the center of the city.

One piece of modern architectural history sits within the city limits: the McCormick House, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and completed in 1952, was later relocated onto the Elmhurst Art Museum campus, where it is now part of the museum itself. Postwar subdivisions filled in the outer sections, and more recent decades have brought substantial teardown-and-rebuild activity on the older interior blocks.

Most of Elmhurst is served by Elmhurst Community Unit School District 205, which runs elementary schools on a K–5 model — including Emerson, Edison, Hawthorne, Lincoln, Jackson, and Conrad Fischer — feeding middle schools at Bryan, Sandburg, and Churchville, and then York Community High School for grades 9 through 12.

The detail that surprises buyers is that Elmhurst is not served by a single high school district. Portions of the city fall outside District 205, which is why the school table on this page also lists Willowbrook High School along with Albright Middle School and Stella May Swartz Elementary — schools associated with neighboring districts. Because these boundaries cut through the city rather than following its borders, confirming the assigned schools for a specific address with the districts is an essential step before making an offer.

Elmhurst’s housing spans roughly a century. Blocks nearest the Metra station and downtown hold the oldest inventory — bungalows, Colonial Revival and Tudor Revival houses, and Craftsman-influenced homes built largely between 1910 and 1940. Outward from the center, postwar ranches and split-levels dominate the subdivisions built in the 1950s and 1960s.

Layered onto both is significant recent redevelopment. Teardown-and-rebuild activity has been substantial on the older interior blocks, which means a single street can hold a 1920s bungalow beside a newly built house at two or three times the square footage. When comparing Elmhurst listings, lot size, distance to the station, and whether a property has been rebuilt or substantially expanded typically explain more of the price difference than the neighborhood name.