Schaumburg history

Schaumburg's rise coincided with the soaring popularity of suburban living in the 1950s and '60s. The town was the embodiment of a picture-perfect American suburbia, far enough from the city that residents could enjoy spacious yards and limited congestion, but close enough that the breadwinner could commute to work in the family station wagon.

The town of Schaumburg was incorporated in March of 1956, but its history dates back more than a century before that. The first known settler of what is now Schaumburg was a German immigrant named Johann Sunderlage who discovered the area working as a land surveyor in the 1830s and, as legend has it, he liked the place so much that he convinced his entire family to come from Germany to join him there. The Sunderlage clan represented a large contingent of the original settlers of Schaumburg (although it wasn't called that yet; according to records, the village's official name was still "Township 41"). The other prominent representative in Township 41 at the time was a man who went by the name Trumball Kent. He migrated to Illinois from upstate New York in the 1830s and eventually settled in what is now known as Olde Schaumburg Centre. The Kent and Sunderlage families expanded and multiplied, and by the 1850s, nearly 80 percent of the inhabitants of the Schaumburg township was either German-born or had roots in the east coast.

Around this time, the settlement acquired the informal name of "Sarah's Grove." The title derived from the fact that the matriarchs of three different families living in the heavily wooded northern part of the township were named Sarah. For some reason, the label never really caught on and in 1850, having grown weary of the bland "Township 41" designation, a meeting of the town board was called to discuss a new name. The deliberative process apparently became bogged down in squabbling until an exasperated townsman beat his fist on a table and declared, "It will be called Schaumburg!" It comes from the German town of Schaumburg-Lippe, where a large number of the town's residents had originated. The board was convinced, and the name stuck.

By the 1870s, Schaumburg had become almost exclusively German and every parcel of land in the township was owned by German immigrants. Germans remained the sole possessors of property in Schaumburg Township for the next half century, occasionally leasing smaller tracts to eastern pioneers making the westward push. The trend was interrupted by the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s, when many of the German landowners in the area were forced to foreclose and relinquish their landholdings. The changes that immediately ensued were slight though; for the next 20 years, German continued to be the primary spoken language in the vast majority of Schaumburg homes.

In the 1950s, the northwest suburbs of Chicago-including Schaumburg-began to change. The first harbinger of imminent transition was the sizeable expansion of O'Hare airfield in 1955 that transformed it into a major international airport. Then, the following year, the Northwest Tollway (I-90) was constructed, connecting Schaumburg to the expanding airport and providing residents with a speedy and direct route to downtown Chicago. Schaumburg was incorporated as a village the same year, which created a central government to control land use and development.

After the interstate highway was completed, Schaumburg experienced an explosive population growth. Massive residential housing developments began springing up as middle class families came in the thousands to fill them. By the early 1970s, Schaumburg's population had swelled to nearly 20,000 people. The Eisenhower Expressway (I-290), which would serve as the town's eastern boundary, was constructed in 1970, serving as a north-south connector for residents and making the town even more accessible to drivers. The following year, the Woodfield Mall, which is located at the intersection of Golf Road and Route 53, was opened and was at that time the largest shopping mall in the country (it remains the largest in the state).

The Woodfield Mall was enlarged several times over the next three decades to accommodate for the arrival of the Lord & Taylor and Nordstrom department stores. And as the mall grew, so did Schaumburg; the 2000 census reported the town's population to include more than 75,000 people. Schaumburg's boundaries were shifted out slightly in 1980 to make room for the still-expanding population and the growing commercial activity in the town.