“I don’t really feel I’m from Park Forest,” says producer and director H. James Gilmore. “I feel I’m from the suburbs. And when people ask me where I’m from, I say, ‘Chicago, a little south of the city.’ Then I pause and add, ‘A suburb.’”
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In the summer of 1948, at the peak of the postwar housing shortage, the first tenants moved into new rental town houses developed by former Federal Public Housing Authority head Philip Klutznick, Chicago builder Nathan Manilow, and entrepreneur Carroll F. Sweet Sr. on 2,400 acres of former cornfields 30 miles south of Chicago. Designed to provide homes for returning GIs, Park Forest was the first self-sufficient planned community of its kind. Though plopped in the middle of nowhere, it was anchored by a huge shopping mall and linked to Chicago by the Illinois Central railway; by the mid-50s it was a thriving town full of young families in starter homes. “You Belong in PARK FOREST!” read an ad cited in William H. Whyte’s The Organization Man, the famed 1956 study of community conformity in Park Forest and similar suburbs. “The moment you come to town you know: You’re welcome. You’re part of a big group. You can live in a friendly small town instead of a big lonely city.”
Park Forest was an idyllic place to grow up. It was safe, it had good schools, and the Kresge’s lunch counter at the mall made excellent fries. Run by an elected board of officials and driven by exceedingly civic-minded homeowners, the town was increasingly at odds with its creators, pushing Klutznick, who lived in the village, to provide things such as a fire department, which he felt they should supply on their own. He soon grew disillusioned with his creation, says Gilmore. “Here’s a developer who really tries to do the right thing. Klutznick thought, ‘Here we’re going to do this little experiment in democracy, which would be a nice public-relations tool,’ and it quickly gets away from him. All the people that got elected quickly do what anyone would do. He’s seen as the power, so they line up as opposite to the power.” Klutznick moved away in the late 50s and went on to develop Old Orchard Mall, Oakbrook Center, and Water Tower Place.
