Skokie

By By Amanda J. Hanson and Richard J. Witry

Settled in the late 1840s and incorporated as Niles Centre in 1888, Skokie was founded by immigrants from Germany and Luxembourg who created a small-town rural community filled with farms and greenhouses. A short-lived real estate boom in the 1920s gave Skokie its current boundaries, streets, and sewer systems. Due to the Great Depression, however, these paved roadways remained vacant until after World War II. Aided by the construction of the Edens Expressway, Skokie experienced tremendous growth and became a bustling suburban community. Many of the families that settled in Skokie during this time were Jewish. In the last quarter century, other families moved to the suburb, many with Indo-Asian origins, leading to the ethnically diverse community that Skokie has become today.