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Community Corner

Lambert: The Story of How Lockport Street Became Our 'Main Street'

Three men with three very different visions for Plainfield helped shape the town we know today, but the biggest influence may have been the Illinois & Michigan Canal.

The Inquiry

Why is it that Lockport Street — and not Main Street — is the primary business street in ?    

The Facts

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The historic core of present-day Plainfield emerged from three separate, but adjoining, tracts of land. Each parcel, which had been claimed by 1833, was owned by men with distinct agendas. 

By late 1833, the individual men — James Mathers, Chester Ingersoll and Levi Arnold — were confident their claims to their tracts were guaranteed.  So, each moved forward with their distinct ideas. 

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Conflicting Concepts

envisioned an industrial community, grounded in religious and educational principles. He embraced the traditional models of New England mill towns. Near his mills along the DuPage River, Mathers sold lots for businesses and homes that stretched along the main road. His town included a traditional “town green” intended for institutional buildings such as churches and schools.

, however, embraced the innovative ideas about town planning that were emerging at the dawn of the 19th century. Ingersoll envisioned a town with orderly streets and regularly sized town blocks, surrounding a formal town square. The public square anchored a business district, encircled by residential neighborhoods. Ingersoll’s “grid plan” was favored in many communities that were developing with great haste across northern Illinois at that time.

adopted neither of those philosophies of town planning. Instead, Arnold embraced a concept that resembled a company town: Arnold retained ownership of all of the property and allowed individuals to build on it. It was not an uncommon practice. Graytown (present-day Montgomery), established in the late 1830s, followed the same model of development for nearly a decade.

Regardless of their differing views, the success of each man’s vision depended upon the proximity of their sites to strategic regional roadways. 

While Ingersoll relied on a well-thought-out location along the roads to Juliet (now, Joliet) and Dixonville, both Mathers and Arnold reaped the benefits of the Chicago-Ottawa Road (present-day Main Street).

The Chicago-Ottawa Road was a heavily travelled road that connected the two most prominent communities in northeastern Illinois. Furthermore, the roadway continued to downstate Alton along the Mississippi River. 

Locally, exposure to the travelling public provided a perfect location for commercial development. Therefore, many of the early businesses and industries chose to locate on the Chicago-Ottawa Road within the Mathers or Arnold developments.

The Game Changes

In the summer of 1834, Plainfield must have been an anxious and expectant place, filled with high hopes, competition and unbridled activity as each of Plainfield’s three founders pursued his own vision for a new community along the DuPage River.

Simultaneous to the development at Plainfield, however, a languishing proposal for a regional canal began to take root. 

Conceived in 1824, the Illinois & Michigan Canal, once completed, would allow the transportation of goods and people. The canal offered a quicker and cheaper alternative to the established overland routes. Stretching from Chicago to the Illinois River, the proposed canal would connect this region’s markets to those at the Port of New Orleans.

In 1836, canal construction began. Completion of the canal was hindered — for years — by numerous obstacles, including the financial Panic of 1837. 

Initially, the slow pace of the canal construction did not seem to threaten the existence of bustling pioneer towns that weren’t located along the route of the emerging waterway.

However, everything changed when the Illinois & Michigan Canal opened in 1848. 

Prosperity shifted away from the communities along the old overland routes and towards new and old towns along the canal, where development surged. However, in land-locked communities — such as Plainfield — development stagnated.

Survival Strategy

Although the regional economy was booming due to the success of the I&M Canal, the pioneer settlers remaining in Plainfield realized the town’s survival depended on a communal vision. As the canal gained in popularity, stagecoaches arrived less frequently in Plainfield. 

By 1848, the early settlement of Walkers’ Grove had all but disappeared, superseded a decade earlier by the modern and efficient sawmills closer to Chicago. Disgraced and broke in 1842, Mathers had moved to Nebraska Territory, where he pursued his religious convictions before moving westward and prospering. 

In 1847, Ingersoll moved to California Territory, where he was among the first on hand when gold was discovered. Arnold had died.

Fortuitously, the growing prosperity of farmers surrounding Plainfield — especially those in neighboring Kendall County — required a market for their abundant crops. Markets were located at the ports along the I&M Canal.

Farmers in the south and west portions of Kendall set their sights on the new port at Morris. However, farmers throughout eastern Kendall County transported their grain and goods to the Lockport wharf, making their way through Plainfield along the road to Lockport. 

Realizing that greater economic opportunities lay along “the Lockport Road,” Plainfield merchants began in the late 1840s to abandon their earlier business locations scattered throughout the community.  

Setting aside the differences that frustrated Plainfield’s founders, these influential merchants championed a cooperative development strategy.

Within a very short period of time, a centralized business district emerged along “the Lockport Road,” known today as Lockport Street.

Simultaneously, the once-prosperous Main Street — with its shops, inns, taverns, industries and schools — quietly evolved into the residential neighborhood we know today. 

Interested in learning more about the I&M Canal? Check out this short video on YouTube.

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