History

Springfield is known as the home of Abraham Lincoln, but a man from Lincoln’s neighborhood gets short shrift in our city’s legacy. Julius Rosenwald was born a block from Lincoln’s home in 1862 (where the Lincoln Home’s main parking lot is now) and became one of America’s greatest businessmen and philanthropists of the 20th century. […]

Since this year marks the sesquicentennial of the Civil War’s beginning, it seems appropriate to look back at how some of those soldiers spent their holidays. We begin with the accounts of two men in the 84th Illinois Volunteer Infantry who wrote about their experiences in the fall and winter of 1863. It had been […]

“The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson If one acorn can create a thousand forests, Springfield’s Harriet Knudson had enough acorns in 1936 for a million forests. “There were so many that I had to put them out on the back porch. There wasn’t room for them in […]

One of the best theater tickets in town over the last couple of years was to Springfield actor Aasne Vigesaa’s performance of The Yellow Wallpaper at the Vachel Lindsay home, directed by Kevin Purcell. But if you missed that, you can now see it on DVD. Springfield multimedia artist David Cain was so inspired by […]

A new event at the Old State Capitol on Sept. 10 follows an old tradition – showcasing artists and art in the building. It’s a practice that dates back to the 1800s. The event, “Celebrating Sangamon County History Through the Arts,” is sponsored by the Sangamon County Historical Society (SCHS) and will feature a visual […]

When Springfield Mayor Mike Houston announced in July that he would hold regular open office hours, he was in good company. In 1860, after he became president-elect, Abraham Lincoln did the same, but his experience with Springfield office hours was quite different from Houston’s. The mayor says he began the practice because “the average person […]

Some people think there’s a lot of crud in the Statehouse. For more than 50 years, there was. From at least 1917 to 1970, the Illinois Department of Public Health’s (DPH) main diagnostic lab was housed there. Its staff examined saliva, blood and bodily excretions for contagious diseases. Today, it’s hard to believe that such […]

The Boeing B-17 was the world’s first long-range, strategic heavy bomber, deployed to England in 1942 to help retake western Europe from the German war machine that had invaded in 1940. Before the war a newspaper reporter, commenting about machine guns protruding from almost everywhere on an early version, described it as an impregnable “flying […]

Until the mid-1850s or so, much of Springfield was a mud bog. For decades our dirt streets were filled with trash and mud, and in summer, pools of rainwater stagnated on the streets and combined with refuse from roaming livestock to make the place smelly as well. Perhaps it’s no surprise then, that some Springfieldians […]