Photo 10-BDU-11

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George's Lumber company

Is that I-55 in the upper right hand corner? Looks like a Highway Sign. I believe this is a shot from the West side of the street facing East, This location now has the Sleep Medicine Center and Wight Architects if I am not mistaken.

The lumber company was owned by George Rockwood. In July 1959, the Chicago Tribune reported that Mr. Rockwood petitioned to have a 2-acre tract at this location rezoned from residential to commercial, so he could open the lumber yard. By December 1959, the new location was open for business. The company had been in operation since the 1930s, based on advertisements in Lemont newspapers. Its previous location was the corner of US Route 66 and Downers Grove Road. Mr. Rockwell's obituary states that he operated George's Lumber for 49 years.

George Rockwell was briefly famous after crashing his single engine airplane into a lake in Wisconsin, during severe weather in the summer of 1954. He swam 4 miles to shore to get help for the two other passengers in the plane, who were clinging to floating airplane parts for several hours.

The buildings in the photo survived into the late-1990s. By 2002, they were gone. Wight & Company building was in place by 2005. Construction of the Sleep Medicine Center began in 2009.

At the top of the photo a dock can be seen on a small lake. This was the Ullman family property.
I went to school with the Ullmans three sons; Jim, Ronald and Roger. They were a great family.
Our Boy Scout troop camped by their lake for a weekender.

Mr. AA21830, I was wondering if you could tell me what was located west of what is now Woodward Ave and east of 355, just north of I-55 and South of 87th Street. I am wondering what was located in that small corridor. It looks like it began a farm and then turned into some kind of industrial site. It is now a neighborhood of town houses just south of that Woodridge Stand-Pipe. I am using https://www.historicaerials.com/viewer and at the intersection of what is now Waterford lane and Woodward Ave. In the 1973 photo its farm land, if you go to 1974 you see two small ponds or dump sites, and one large one. What is that? It is still there up until 1988 and then it disappears.

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