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SATURDAY NOVEMBER 21 | SUNDAY NOVEMBER 22 2015
Glenview | Northbrook
SUNDAY BREAKFAST ILLUSTRATION BY BARRY BLITT
One man’s journey from opera tenor to restauranteur. P30
SPORTS
Thomas Smart comes up big in Loyola Academy’s state quarterfinal win. P28
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NO. 58 | A JWC MEDIA PUBLICATION
NEWS
Lovell Restaurant Mural Finds New Home BY BILL MCLEAN
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t was the talk of the restaurant, Lovells of Lake Forest, for 16 years. An immense, magnificent 20-by-8-foot mural rested above and behind the main bar, greeting each patron, starting an instant conversation. It is dubbed, “The Steeds of Apollo.” The 1970 Apollo 13 mission crew patch was patterned after the mural, created by artist Lumen Martin Winter in 1969. The mural depicts several horses in flight, their legs in various stages of gallop high above Earth. “We threw the original plans for the building in the garbage can,” chef Jay Lovell, son of Apollo 13 commander Jim Lovell, recalls. “The original wouldn’t have been big enough for the mural, so we started over. The ceiling had to be three feet higher. Continued on PG 12
SOWING THE SEEDS OF SHERMERVILLE By then, its history—chiefly made by the Sherman family and n November 18, 1901, the an immigrant named Schermer— farm town made by was cast. Northbrook resident German immigrants was Hughes, who served on the school incorporated as Shermerville, Il- board and co-wrote Northbrook, linois. Illinois: the Fabric of our History Long before that, it was Indian and Arcadia Publishing’s Northterritory. Years later, it would brook volume, tells the tale like become Northbrook, home to she’s told it a thousand times. great athletes, a racehorse, paved “Until the 1950s, we were a roads, an upscale shopping center, very small, rural town,” she said. Underwriters Laboratories (UL) “In 1920, there were 545 people and a water treatment company in town. By 1940, there were started by a man named Emmett 1,000 and there were still farm Culligan. fields in 1962 when I moved here. In its early days, Shermerville I think a lot of the same qualities earned a reputation for partying are still here. Northbrook has amid heavy drinking in several people from all over—there are saloons. quite a few observant Moslems, “People from [Chicago] would which had more of a Bosnian get on the train and come here to congregation when it was party and they would sleep in founded, and the population has Shermerville’s parks,” explained certainly aged.” Judy Hughes, president of the Allstate retains a large center Northbrook Historical Society in unincorporated Northbrook and History Museum. To mitigate and UL, founded as a product the bad reputation, the town testing center in 1894, is one of changed its name to Northbrook the town’s largest employers. The in 1923. Culligan water company estabBY SCOTT HOLLERAN
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lished by Emmett Culligan and his brothers, headquartered in Northbrook for 71 years, moved to Rosemont years ago. The farm town on Chicago’s outskirts, with its groves, railroads and, later, an expressway, is an early part of northern Illinois progress. “Shermer Road used to be called Telegraph and it went all the way up through Deerfield,” Hughes said, noting that Northbrook used to have more paved roads per square mile than any other town in Illinois. “There was a good roads celebration on August 25, 1925, on the very first Northbrook Days. There were about 2,000 cars [on Waukegan Road].” Enthusiasm for being the best fits the town’s heritage, which began in earnest after an Indian treaty opened the area for land grants. “The first settlers probably jumped the land grant in the late 1830s or early 1840s,” Hughes said. Some were land speculators,
Chuck Schwall.
according to Hughes. Among Northbrook’s pioneers: the Shermans of Newtown, Connecticut. There were several generations; grandfather Ezra, his son Silas Wooster Sherman, who became sheriff and laid out Milwaukee Avenue, which he made more than a wagon trail, his brother
Francis Sherman, who became the owner of a Chicago brickyard and, later, mayor of Chicago. Francis Sherman also created one of Chicago’s top hotels, the Sherman House hotel, demolished in 1973 (where the James Continued on PG 12
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