The Joseph W. Royer Arts and Architecture District is the first district of the city of Urbana dedicated to the arts and celebration of the city’s historic and architectural heritage.  The district coincides with the oldest part of Urbana–its historic downtown and the immediately adjacent residential neighborhoods–and it contains the greatest concentration of historically and architecturally significant buildings in town.  The district was named after Urbana architect Joseph W. Royer in recognition of his exceptional contributions to the city’s architectural heritage [City of Urbana].

The City of Urbana published a brochure about the district that includes a walking tour with property descriptions and a map.  Properties included in the district include the Freeman House, Canaan Baptist Church, Illinois Theater, Flatiron Building, Fox Building, Knights of Pythias Building, Cohen Building, Urbana Post Office, Knowlton & Bennett Building, Tiernan’s Block, Eubeling Building, Champaign County Courthouse, Sheriff’s Residence and Jail, Lloyd House, Urbana Lincoln Hotel, Urbana Free Library, Unitarian Universalist Church, First Presbyterian Church of Urbana, and the McWilliams House.  Some properties are no longer present.

Copies of the brochure are available at the PACA Warehouse.

East Urbana began to be built up also as a response to the arrival of the railroad, but in this case it was the construction of the Danville-Urbana-Bloomington-Pekin Railroad (DUB&P) (later known as I.B. & W and Big Four Railroad), the first railroad to pass through the city itself. The line was chartered by the Illinois Legislature in 1967, at the same time as the University of Illinois. Construction of the railroad began immediately, and was completed in 1869.

The line’s first director was Clark Robinson Griggs (Urbana mayor in 1866-67) who had championed the fight for locating the University of Illinois in Urbana, as well as the chartering of the DUB&P Railroad. Griggs being an Urbana resident (his estate was located in the 500 block of West Elm Street), both the headquarters and repair shops of the railroad were located in Urbana. The headquarters were housed in the “Griggs Hotel” -named after C.R. Griggs-, a large, four-story frame building, erected in 1870 along the DUB&P railroad at the north end of McCullough Street. The building also served as railroad station, depot, and hotel. The roundhouse and repair shops (generally known as the Big Four Shops) were built in East Urbana north of Main Street. The large number of workers attracted by the job opportunities offered by the railroad settled in East Urbana, just south of the railroad yards.

Prior to the arrival of the DUB & P Railroad, East Urbana was the Webber family’s farmland, with only a few residences located along Main Street, which was part of Bloomington Road. The original cabin of William T. Webber (now gone) stood east of the still extant elegant brick residence at 605 East Main Street that was built in 1870 by William’s son, George. Another early residence along East Main Street was the home of Archa Campbell, first Mayor of Urbana (1855-56), which stood near the Webber homestead, at 304 East Main Street. Undoubtedly as a response to the establishment of the DUB&P Railroad line and its shops and roundhouse in East Urbana, the heirs of William T. Webber began to subdivide their extensive inheritance into city lots in 1872, which they quickly sold off. The first area to be built up was that lying between Vine and Anderson Streets west to east and Main and Oregon Streets north to south. This is now the west part of the HEUNA neighborhood. The next phase of subdivision building proceeded to the east, and occurred between Anderson and Glover Streets. This is the east part of the HEUNA neighborhood.

The area was built up with small, one and one and a half story cottages mostly built in vernacular and Classic Revival styles. The cottages became home for the hundreds of workers employed by the railroad, and in the booming construction business, among them the Sutton and Sheldon brick yards between Broadway and Vine Street north of Main. Some of the original housing stock of East Urbana was also replaced with larger and more costly homes at the turn of the century, but the area still has a significant number of its early, small cottages. Unfortunately, the vast majority of these have been sided with plastic siding, and had their original windows replaced. An important addition to the neighborhood was Victory Park between Lynn and Cottage Grove Streets, established in 1920. Many of the homes were turned into rentals also in this old neighborhood after World War II, and demolition of the original building stock has also destroyed significant portions of the neighborhood as in west Urbana.

The Historic East Urbana Neighborhood Association (HEUNA) maintains a website, http://www.heuna.org/.

Source:  Ilona Matkovszki

The oldest residential neighborhood in Urbana, outside the Original Town, grew up to the south and west of the Original Town in the 1850′s and 1860′s in response to the construction of the Illinois Central Railroad, which started in 1851 and reached Urbana in 1854. Prior to the coming of the railroad, population and economic growth in Urbana was very slow, partially due to the lack of easy access to the outside world. The incoming people were mostly pioneer farmers of southern origin, who settled in the country, rather than the county seat. In the 1830′s only two small additions were made to Urbana, one along its eastern, the other along its northern boundary, each a block deep, and in the 1840′s no further expansion took place. There was very little public and commercial construction. In 1837 a county courthouse was erected of hewn logs on the north side of the city square, along Main Street. A log jail and a small Baptist church were the only other public buildings, and a bakery and general drug and grocery store along Main Street served the town’s small population. There were no factories, public schools or banks. All this changed in the early 1850′s with the chartering of the Illinois Central Railroad.

The Illinois Central Railroad, the first railroad to run through Champaign County, was chartered in 1850, and its construction began in 1851. The line was to connect Chicago in the north to Cairo in the southern tip of Illinois, and the tracts connecting Chicago to Urbana were finished by July 1854. The construction and arrival of the railroad resulted in a population explosion in Urbana. Masses of laborers employed in the construction and operation of the railroad settled in Urbana, and the pioneer subsistence farmers of earlier decades who came primarily from the Upland South were replaced by big-time land speculators, merchants, and intellectuals coming from the East (New York, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and North Ohio). As a result of this population influx and the opening of the markets by the railroad, Urbana experienced its first boom in production and construction in the 1850′s. The northwestern outskirts of the original town, along the Boneyard creek, were established as the city’s industrial area. Here, a variety of factories sprung up overnight, including a sawmill and flouring mill, foundry and machine shop, plow and wagon factory, a wool factory and sash and door factory. Main Street became a hub of activity, lined with retail stores, saloons, law offices, banks, and real estate offices. The log county seat was moved and replaced with a brick structure which lasted only a few years. In 1848 a more substantial third courthouse was built on the city square, which served the county during Abraham Lincoln’s years as circuit lawyer on the Eight Judicial Circuit of Illinois. This was moved and replaced with the fourth courthouse in 1860. New churches and public schools were built. Of the latter, most important was the University of Illinois, the first land grant collage in the state that was located in Urbana in February 1867.

The population boom associated with the coming of the railroad, lead to a construction boom in Urbana. In the 1850′s and 1860′s the size of the city quadrupled by the addition of over a dozen new subdivisions and hundreds of homes. The first residential areas outside the Original Town were established between Main and Washington Streets north to south and Vine Street and Lincoln Avenue east to west on land that had formerly belonged to city founder, Isaac Busey. Today this area constitutes the north half of the WUNA neighborhood. Mr. Busey died in 1847, and the chartering of the Illinois Central Railroad in 1850 spurred his heirs to subdivide his former holdings and sell them as city lots. The area between Vine and Orchard Streets was built up with family homes located on closely paced city lots, while the area west of Orchard Street was occupied by large estates owned by the political and economic leadership of town. The majority of homes in town were one and one and a half story carpenter built cottages with no particular stylistic distinctions (vernacular style). Better homes were built in Gothic and Italianate styles. Buildings at this time were nearly exclusively of frame construction. Very few of these original buildings remain today.

On February 14, 1855 Urbana incorporated as a city. In the meantime, a new town, first called the “Depo” and “West

Urbana”, grew up spontaneously around the Illinois Central Railroad depot which, by an unfortunate decision by the railroad company, was located two miles west of Urbana, in raw prairie land. Having direct access to the railroad, West Urbana grew even faster than its parent town, and in 1860 it established itself as a separate city by popular vote. The new city was named Champaign, and from this time on the two cities developed side by side, for the most part as competitors. In 1863 the two downtowns were connected by a mule-drawn streetcar which ran along the present Springfield Avenue. This line was later expanded with branches circling the university, and was electrified in 1900.

The next great expansion in Urbana occurred at the turn of the century, at which time the city experienced a major economic boom. The majority of the residential cottages of west Urbana were replaced by large and elegant, two and two and a half story homes built for the prosperous upper classes in various Victorian and Revival styles. The largest and most elegant homes were erected along the westward extensions of the original streets of Urbana – Main, Elm, and Green Streets In the 1940′s and 1950′s many of these buildings were converted to apartment houses to house the masses of young men returning to the university after World War II. The city still has a good stock of these buildings, in spite of their extensive destruction in recent decades by developers.

Construction remained concentrated within the original residential historic core in west Urbana up until the early decades of the 20th century, when a new economic boom initiated a new expansion to the south. Construction south of Washington Street began after 1909 when Carle Park was constructed on land formerly in the possession of Mr. Albert G. Carle and his wife Margaret (the later Mrs. Morrison). Mrs. Carle-Morrison had their extensive estates subdivided, part of which she dedicated to the city for the purpose of building Carle Park. The residences between Washington Street and Florida Avenue were constructed in the 1920′s and 1930′s in various Revival styles and in the popular contemporary Craftsman style. These are substantial homes built on large lots with deep setbacks, and occupied mainly by university faculty. This area constitutes the south half of the WUNA neighborhood.

The West Urbana Neighborhood Association (WUNA) maintains a website, http://www.prairienet.org/wuna/.

Source: Ilona Matkovszki