Roselle is a village located about 30 miles from Chicago on the Chicago-Elgin Metra line, and is in both DuPage and Cook counties, although the majority of the town lies in DuPage County. It was first settled in the 1830's by the Meacham family. Thanks to the federal government, they were able to buy up Roselle, as well as the land surrounding it (which today are separate towns) for a mere $1.50 an acre. The village is named after one of the later settlers in the area, Rosell Hough, who is credited for altering a land survey to have the railroad going through Roselle, rather than neighboring Bloomingdale. It is because of this that the town is named after him. The population today is about 23,000.
I hadn't shown a town on here in a couple of weeks I think, so I decided I'd take myself for a quick ten minute ride up to Roselle to snap some pictures for you guys. It really did't take me long, only about an hour, and I was taking my time. Needless to say, Roselle has a small historic center. The town is, like most, composed mainly of post-war housing. It is still a pretty nice middle class town, though, and probably oe of the only ones around here where one could get a nice old house for relativly cheap.
check this map out, too - compare roselle from today to what it looked like in 1938:
http://www.historicaerials.com/Default.aspx
So I went just before sunset, thinking I could get some nice colors on the houses, but that wasn't the case. Instead the colors got washed out. Anyways, I started off at the train station, which is for some reason moved away from the downtown area Roselle is *trying* to develop. (i'll get to that later)
Then I drive about a half mile west to the historic core.
a very patriotic house
This is the fire department, part of a four-building civic complex consisting the village hall, library, police department, and fire department.
sorry about the bluriness on this one.
The civic complex is surrounded on three sides by historic homes and o the other side (north) by brand new condos...
They are pretty nice, yeah, but the "downtown" area in general sucks. The reason I put it in parantheses is because, while the village likes to call it their dowtown, all it really is is a nice looking strip mall. They actually connected the parking lot to the adjacet street and then called it "Main Street" This buildig has been open for atleast four years now, and it still only has a few stores occupying it.
This is on the north side of the tracks. They are expanding their downtown into that empty lot in the foreground as yet another stucco strip mall set away from the street.
I really don't get why they are struggling so much in bringing in busines.
This is Lynfred Winery, adjacent to downtown and one business that is defnetly
not struggling.
These are nice:
There were some of these scattered throughout
I then thought i'd drive to my church...
...and my school to get pictures, as if any of you care.
And that concludes my tour of Roselle. Check out
St. Charles and
Wheaton, too, if you haven't already.
Hybrid Mode