National Register of Historic Places
Downtown Plainfield Historic District
Plainfield, Will County, Illinois
The record
- Listed
- September 18, 2013
- Type
- Historic district
- Address
- Lockport bounded by Division & Main Sts., Plainfield
- County
- Will
- State
- Illinois
- Contributing resources
- 45 buildings, 4 structures
- Coordinates
- 41.61062, -88.20558
- Reference number
- 13000719
David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesUSGS Historical Topographic Map CollectionDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesDavid Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford LibrariesHistorical map archives, georeferenced via Allmaps
The story
Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com
The Downtown Plainfield Historic District is a historic district along Lockport Street between Division and Main Streets in Plainfield, Will County, listed in the National Register in 2013. It includes 45 contributing buildings and four contributing structures.
Why it's listed
It was listed under criterion A, with local significance in architecture, commerce and transportation. Its significance runs from about 1848 to 1963, matching construction on Lockport Street that began with a building dated about 1848.
Physical character
Most of the district's commercial buildings are brick, with corbelled brick cornices, arched brick hood molds with stone keystones, and cast iron columns on the storefronts; smaller buildings are wood frame with clapboard siding. Storefronts and facades were altered with a 1973 slipcover and, in 1995, stucco over brick, then later restored, with extensive 2006 work to many storefronts and facades and a 2009 rebuilding of one exterior in wood clapboard.
Historical context
Fires in 1888, 1891, 1898 and 1899 destroyed wood-framed, masonry and stone buildings along Lockport Street. Masonic Lodge 536 built its building in 1892, and the Plainfield State Bank, established in 1913, became Plainfield National Bank in 1940. The Lincoln Highway, established in 1913, was replaced by U.S. Routes 1, 30, 50 and 40 in 1927; U.S. Route 66 was then rerouted down Division Street, a district boundary, in 1939.