Illinois – James Krohe Jr

I hear that Jerome had to lay off its police chief. What, you didn’t know that Jerome had a police chief? Or that Jerome had a police department? Or that Jerome needed a police department? The village is home to only 1,651 people. As for the ability of its tax base to support the full […]

First it was going to be the site of a courts complex, then of a new Lincoln museum. After that hope fizzled it was going to be home to a showcase mixed-use development, but the City of Springfield backed out of the deal. “It” is the YWCA block downtown, the graveyard of broken dreams, two […]

I’m terrible at anniversaries, so I wasn’t surprised that I’d forgotten that this year marks 30 years since the City of Springfield changed from an at-large commissioner form of government to its present aldermanic form. For those readers who were too busy growing up to notice, the switch was the result of a 1987 consent […]

Springfield has no yellow brick roads leading toward Oz – I know because I looked for one for 40 years. It used to have plenty of red brick ones, though, gorgeous streets the color of aged wine. Bloomington is thought to have been the first Illinois town to pave streets in brick, in 1877. As […]

In 1909 its Chamber of Commerce undertook a campaign to make Springfield “the largest city by all odds in the state outside Chicago.” Our best Babbits insisted that there was “no good reason why Springfield” (which then counted some 51,000 people) “shouldn’t become a city with a population of 100,000 within the next 10 years […]

Let’s talk about manufacturing in Illinois – everybody else is. Our new honorary president and our not-so-new governor have promised to bring back good manufacturing jobs, jobs just like the old days. Only they won’t, because they can’t. The industrial economy of the 1950s and ’60s is (to borrow a term not presently fashionable on […]

In 1922 a reporter from the Illinois State Journal dropped by the City Hall offices of Willis J. Spaulding at Seventh and Monroe. Spaulding was then the city’s Commissioner of Public Property. Citing Joshua Reynolds’ insight that a room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts (it was a very long time ago), […]

Organizers with the City of Springfield and the Springfield Regional Planning Commission held what amounted to an informal design charette the other day. Citizens were invited to imagine a future Springfield as part of the process of devising a new 20-year land use plan for the capital. My eye was caught by remarks made to […]

It’s gift-choosing time again, and who better than a professional wise man to ask what you ought to get those hard-to-shop-for friends? I have the perfect gift suggestion: a short shelf of the best books on Illinois history. I know. You’re saying, “Why didn’t I think of that?” Riots, murders, corruption, skulduggery – Illinois’ past […]

The new president, apparently, plans to make America toxic again. The New York Times reports that Comrade Trump has put a climate-change agnostic and friend of the coal companies in charge of his Environmental Protection Agency transition team. Not to fear, however. He is doing it for the very best of reasons – because he promised to […]

Looked at in one way – actually, looked at in several ways – Donald Trump’s win was the revenge of the countryside against the city. While the billionaire common man couldn’t carry Illinois, he did prevail in every county outside greater Chicago. He did least well in the most urbanized counties, but very well indeed […]

I am among those dismayed by the outcome of the November elections – not because people I disagree with elected the next President of the United States, but because they didn’t. Voters were asked to choose from among four candidates, and the one who was awarded the most votes was Hillary Clinton, the pride of […]