Orchard Place, Illinois was a small farming community in

Cook County Cook County is the most populous county in the U.S. state of Illinois and the second-most-populous county in the United States, after Los Angeles County, California. More than 40% of all residents of Illinois live within Cook County. As of 20 ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

, just west of

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. Settled by German immigrants in the 1840s, it was known as Farwell before 1886 when the name was changed to Orchard Place. The Post Office opened in 1881 and changed names in 1886. The Post Office seems to have been closed in 1935. It became a stop on the Wisconsin Central Railroad in 1887 and received the name Orchard Place at that time. In 1942, Orchard Place was selected as the site of a new air base and aircraft manufacturing facility, Orchard Place Airport/Douglas Field. After the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the city of Chicago bought the airport from the United States government and converted it into a commercial airport, Chicago Orchard Field, opened in 1946. At some point prior to 1950 much of the land in the adjacent community was subdivided into residential lots, and a network of initially unpaved streets was developed. This development covered most of the area bounded by Touhy Ave. on the North, (Des Plaines) River Road on the East, Devon Ave. and Higgins Rd. on the South, and Mannheim Rd. on the West side (the airport lay to the Southwest of the Mannhiem/Devon intersection, more-or-less diagonally across that intersection from the Orchard Place community.) These de facto boundaries were altered slightly by the construction of the

Northwest Tollway Interstate 90 (I-90) in the US state of Illinois runs roughly northwest-to-southeast through the northern part of the state. From the Wisconsin state line at South Beloit, Illinois, South Beloit, it heads south to Rockford, Illinois, Rock ...

in the mid-1950s, forming a barrier separating it from the largely undeveloped southwestern corner of the area as well as the airport area in general. Orchard Place evolved into an unincorporated residential suburban area, with housing development proceeding piecemeal as individual lots were purchased by prospective homeowners and speculative builders. The community was annexed by referendum to the City of Des Plaines in 1956. The airport was renamed in 1949 to

O'Hare International Airport Chicago O'Hare International Airport , sometimes referred to as, Chicago O'Hare, or simply O'Hare, is the main international airport serving Chicago, Illinois, located on the city's Northwest Side, approximately northwest of the Chicago Loop, ...

and has grown into the

Chicago metropolitan area The Chicago metropolitan area, also colloquially referred to as Chicagoland, is a metropolitan area in the Midwestern United States. Encompassing 10,286 sq mi (28,120 km2), the metropolitan area includes the city of Chicago, its suburbs and hi ...

's primary airport and a major North American transportation hub. Today, the former Orchard Place is the southernmost neighborhood of Des Plaines. The legacy of its original name persists in O'Hare's airport code, , as well as in the name of Orchard Place Elementary School.

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External links

* Des Plaines, Illinois Neighborhoods in Illinois Populated places in Cook County, Illinois Populated places established in the 1840s German-American history {{CookCountyIL-geo-stub