The American Dream
Visionaries forge community out of farm fields
Sunday, July 18, 1999
By Mary Paleologos
A team of visionary builders overcame formidable obstacles to
carve the nation's first suburb out of farm fields, creating what was
to become known as "the American Dream."
They named their new community Park Forest and built it
specifically for house-hungry GIs returning from World War II.
Eight brilliant men came together from different parts of the country
to construct this new "GI Town" that was to become the country's
first completely planned community. They were Carroll Sweet Sr.,
Nathan Manilow, Philip Klutznick, Jerrold Loebl, Norm
Schlossman, Richard Bennett, Elbert Peets and Charles
Waldmann.
Another who played a key role was Sweet's son, Carroll Sweet
Jr., whose autobiography details his experiences in helping to build
Park Forest.
Sweet idea
Sweet Sr., a financial expert, was the first to originate the idea of a
"GI Town." At the time, he was working with Manilow, a
prominent Chicago-area builder. The two envisioned building
massive-scale housing to save planning and production costs, thus
making it affordable to returning servicemen.
After the war, no one thought of building in large numbers, such as
a thousand units at a time. Nor did developers ever consider
building commercial amenities together with housing.
Housing was scarce after the war. And building materials were
hard to come by because industry was still in the long process of
changing from war production to a peacetime economy.
Site search
In February 1946, Manilow and the Sweets began searching for a
suitable site on which to build their vision. They almost selected a
site near Aurora, but that prospect was scrapped when the owner
of a 250-acre golf course smack in the middle of the parcel refused
to sell.
So they found another site near Western Avenue and Sauk Trail
that included a championship golf course called Indian Wood
Country Club. The course was located on the north side of Sauk
Trail. On the south side was a farm not under cultivation, known as
the Batcheldor property.
Both properties were controlled by the First National Bank of
Chicago. Bank officers and their favored clients had used the farm
area as a private hunting preserve, while the golf course supported
itself. The only residents were a caretaker and his wife who lived in
a bungalow among the many beautiful trees, according to Sweet.
Using almost his entire financial reserve, Manilow bought 2,500
acres of property through blind trusts that he controlled. The
developers were trying to keep their project a secret. They feared
that if word got out about their plans the price of parcels would
skyrocket.
Assembling the team
Manilow then set out to find people to help him with the
development. Sweet Sr., then 69, was in declining health, which
kept him from taking on such a major project.
In 1946, Sweet introduced Manilow to his good friend Philip
Klutznick, an attorney from Omaha, Neb., who was as
commissioner of Federal Public Housing in Washington, D.C.
Manilow persuaded Klutznick to resign from his federal post, move
his family to Chicago and undertake the gargantuan task of building
an entire city. Together, they created American Community
Builders Inc.
Before leaving Washington, Klutznick signed on another addition to
the project Charles Waldmann, considered one of the world's
great engineers. A graduate of the Royal Academy in Budapest,
Waldmann was a civil, electrical and mechanical engineer. He
served as chief engineer on the Park Forest project.
"Probably there was then no one in the world better qualified for
our engineering needs than Charles Waldmann, and signing him up
for our 'team' was one of Phil's first noteworthy accomplishments,"
Sweet Jr. wrote in his autobiography.
Klutznick also brought in Elbert Peets, a nationally recognized
planner based in Washington, D.C., to lay out the community.
Peets was well known for having helped design three experimental
"greenbelt towns" near Washington, Cincinnati and Milwaukee in
the 1930s. He placed Park Forest's town center, its major
thoroughfares and the residential and commercial areas.
Later, Klutznick brought in the architectural and planning firm of
Loebl and Schlossman. They, in turn, hired Richard Bennett, who
had been the head of the department of design at Yale University.
Bennett helped design Park Forest's clock tower, the shopping
center, the curvilinear streets, the town houses and Trinity Lutheran
Church. Bennett later became a partner in the firm that hired him.
The best intentions
The key players involved in building Park Forest undertook the
project not for profit but to provide good housing for war veterans
and to forge a new style of community, according to Sweet Jr.
Sweet Jr. also reported how Manilow, when initially purchasing
farm parcels, rejected an offer to buy the property at a net profit of
$1 million.
"That was not the purpose for which the land was acquired," Sweet
Jr. said of Manilow's more altruistic intentions.
Sweet said his father, along with Manilow, Klutznick and the
others, all had a social conscience that was to set the tone and
attitude of Park Forest to the end of the century.
What's in a name?
Early on, the project team hired a public relations firm to conduct a
survey to suggest names for the new community. The survey came
up with names like Meadowlawn and Oak Knoll, which Sweet Jr.
said "sounded more like cemeteries than cities."
One day when Sweet Jr. was walking to his office in downtown
Chicago, someone remarked to him that just because there was
already a Forest Park doesn't mean there can't be a Park Forest.
Sweet immediately liked the name, as did others on the
development team. Sweet also named some Park Forest streets.
Others were later named by George Treichel.
Problems jeopardize project
In fall 1946, the developers ran into a major problem that would
ultimately alter their plans.
Cook County zoning restrictions required a one-acre minimum lot
size for single-family homes. That was due to the prevailing use of
well water and septic tanks. The developers wanted to put 3.5
homes to an acre, the average city density for single-family homes.
The builders knew they could not build a city of moderate-cost
homes on a density of one house per acre.
In order to get around the restriction, the developers would have to
ask for a variance. But in doing so, they would be forced to reveal
their plans. As of yet, all property acquisitions had not been
completed and the developers still feared knowledge of the project
would drive up the costs.
More is better
Sweet Jr. suggested getting around the restriction by building
multifamily dwellings. That move would require the project to
change from a sales project to a rental project. He later wrote:
"This was only just the beginning of our encounters with problems
resulting from the fact that we were blazing a new trail in the
construction industry city-scale building. Policies, practices and
even laws were not designed to accommodate us.
"Formidable obstacles had to be regarded as just new challenges.
The word 'impossible' had to be removed from our vocabulary.
We learned then that most people only think of problem-solving in
terms of how they did it yesterday; we had to think in terms of how
people would do it tomorrow. We adopted the philosophy of the
Navy SeaBees 'Difficult jobs we do immediately; the impossible
takes a little longer.'"
The obstacle worked in their favor. Klutznick realized that with
multifamily zoning, they could qualify for financing under the Federal
Housing Authority 608 program. The project was to receive a
record $28 million FHA loan. Also, by shifting to a rental program,
developers could meet the needs of families without savings for
down payments or those who needed housing for only a year or
two.
The developers were to build 3,010 apartments in some 600
buildings. Rents were to begin at less than $100 a month.
Town house concept born
The project team was opposed to building the typical "row
housing" which, they contended, carried the image of big-city slum
areas. Sweet credits Bennett for designing the "court system" of
their so-called "town houses," which William Whyte, author of "The
Organization Man," later credited for much of the social and
economic success of the development.
The developers' name for this new design, "town houses," is now a
standard term for this type of unit.
"Instead of being lost in rows of nearly identical structures, small
groupings were devised," Sweet wrote. "All were two-story frame
buildings with a good variety of exterior treatment. All buildings
were arranged around open parking areas ... with a fenced tot lot,
a playground for small children, and large open lawn areas. There
were also duplexes, four-family and six-family buildings. All
buildings were built over full basements where the gas furnace was
located."
Park Forest was also the first community to use natural gas heating
instead of coal or oil, the standard home-heating fuels at the time.
School district leaves town
In his autobiography, Sweet recalls an outrageous incident involving
the old School District 163. American Community Builders officials
informed school board members during a meeting that the district
might have to prepare for 20 to 30 more children a week once
residents starting moving in at a rapid rate.
Sweet estimated that, at the time, there were probably about 30
children in all of District 163, all housed in a one-room schoolhouse
complete with pot-bellied stove on Sauk Trail. He described the
board as "stunned." The developers offered some solutions but got
"no response, no questions, no speculation nothing," Sweet Jr.
recalled.
School officials finally responded a few weeks later by cutting all
the future Park Forest property out of the district.
Developers eventually worked out a temporary deal with Chicago
Heights School District 170 to accommodate the majority of
children living in Park Forest. Some grade schools were set up in
rental units. Older children attended Bloom Township High School
in Chicago Heights. The village's first grade school, Lakewood,
was dedicated Sept. 15, 1951. Rich East High School was built in
1953.
Church land donated
The developers did not forget the religious aspect of community
life. They wanted to be sure that all residents, whatever their faith,
could find a church or temple of their choice in the village, Sweet
wrote.
American Community Builders donated a seven-acre site to the
Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, where St. Irenaeus Church was
built. Two more sites were donated to the Church Federation,
representing more than 20 Protestant denominations, which built
Faith United Protestant Church. The first Jewish residents formed
their congregation and built Beth Sholom. The developers also
donated land to other Protestant groups that later wanted their own
churches.
First residents
Move-ins to the town houses were supposed to start Aug. 30,
1948. The first building scheduled for occupancy was the
four-family building facing Western Avenue in the first court on the
east side of the street's 2690 block.
But Manuel and Madeline Kanter arrived a day early, piling all their
household furnishings around the room. Unfortunately, they had
moved into the wrong unit and had to move to the apartment next
door. Other first residents were the Ross DeLue family, the William
R. Heckman family, the Vincent Saitta family and a Col.
Lowdermilk.
The entire first court 22 new families plus the Klutznicks
moved in within a month and the occupancy rate increased
thereafter to about a court, or 20 to 30 units, per week.
Sea of mud
When cold weather arrived in winter 1948, grading and concrete
work halted. Rain created a "sea of mud" where the grass and
concrete walks were supposed to be. Wooden walkways were
made by the hundreds and placed end to end so people could get
to their front doors without getting stuck in the mud.
Babies arrive and keep arriving
But the mud didn't stop the unceasing influx of new residents.
People continued to swarm into the new town houses.
Sweet wrote: "New babies began arriving so fast that it was
jokingly said, 'It must be the water.' That too was proving so tasty
that a number of people, principally from Chicago Heights, used to
come regularly to the water plant with containers for free samples."
Birth of a village
The village was incorporated, at the urging of Klutznick, on Nov.
24, 1948, in a now-famous town meeting under a tent on Forest
Boulevard at Victory. Klutznick announced that Park Forest had a
sufficient number of residents to incorporate as a village and that
American Community Builders believed it was time for the
residents to consider it.
The residents voted unanimously to incorporate and named
representatives to meet further with American Community Builders
to iron out the details of incorporation.
A short time later, an election took place. The first elected village
president was Dennis O'Harrow. The first trustees were Henry X.
Dietch, Francis B. Norris, Frederick C. Roop, David Saxe,
Marcus Wexman, George W. Wright and Peter M. Bernays.
Three got 'show on the road'
Sweet Jr. concluded in his book that three men were
"indispensable" to Park Forest's creation: his father, who had the
original concept; Manilow, who got "the show on the road" by
risking nearly all his personal fortune on the property; and
Klutznick, "whose leadership, integrity, wisdom, ability and
determination bridged the many pitfalls of the development and
finally led to the community of which we are now so proud."
"Many of us, both on the ACB staff and among residents, made
very important contributions, but as I see it, without the
contributions of each of the foregoing three, there probably would
not have been a Park Forest, maybe some other community, but
not Park Forest."
The following individuals and businesses also were instrumental in
Park Forest's creation:
Hart Perry, Consoer Townsend, Joe Shudt & Associates, Joseph
Goldman, Harold Yost, Robert Tweedell, Thomas McDade, Felix
Stawicki of Stawicki Construction Co., Arthur Klutznick, Edward
Kirk, Jerald Katleman, E.L. Waterman, Jack Swanson, Howard
Oberndorf, Jack Hirsch, Richard L. Senior, Louis J. Fogel, Israel
Rafkind, Allan S. Harrison, Kincaid & Hutchison and William
Lawrence.
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The Park Forest Public Library holds the Archives of Park
Forest History and can be reached at this website by clicking HERE.
The Park Forest Historical Society online has many interesting
articles on the History of Park Forest and the people who created it. Click
HERE.
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