Unattended Death and Biohazard Cleanup in Lincolnwood, IL

Lincolnwood was originally named Tessville, after German immigrant Johann Tess, who arrived in 1856 and bought 30 acres; the village's first business was the Halfway House Saloon, opened in 1873 for travelers on the rough road between Chicago and Milwaukee.

Only 359 residents incorporated the village in 1911, in part because only an organized municipality could issue liquor licenses for its saloons and roadhouses.

The village renamed itself Lincolnwood in 1936, taking the name from Lincoln Avenue, the road that bisects the community, rather than directly from President Abraham Lincoln.

During the Great Depression, a Works Progress Administration beautification project planted 10,000 elm trees across Lincolnwood, giving the village its leafy, wooded character.

Mayor Henry Proesel, elected in 1931, led Lincolnwood for more than four decades and is remembered as one of the longest-serving mayors in American history.

Bell and Howell opened facilities in Lincolnwood in 1942, pulling other employers into the village; decades later the Lincolnwood Town Center mall, with more than 100 stores, was built on the former Bell and Howell headquarters site and opened in 1991.

The opening of the Edens Expressway in 1951 transformed Lincolnwood: its population jumped from 3,072 in 1950 to a peak of 12,929 in 1970 as Chicago commuters poured in.

Lincolnwood's most famous landmark was the Purple Hotel, a 1960 hotel at Lincoln and Touhy avenues named for its distinctive purple brick; the hotel made national news in 1983 when Teamsters figure Allen Dorfman was murdered in its parking lot.

The 2020 census counted 13,463 people in Lincolnwood, and Census Bureau survey estimates put the village at about 4,600 households, with a median owner-occupied home value near $496,000.

More than half of all houses standing in Lincolnwood today were built in the postwar boom between 1940 and 1959, and the village was fully built out by about 1990.