Klasey: A short history of a long street

Stretching almost four miles across the center of the city, Court Street is one of Kankakee’s oldest and longest streets.

Beginning at the city’s eastern boundary near Splear Road, the four-lane concrete thoroughfare passes beneath Interstate 57 and continues westward through a neighborhood of mixed residential and commercial buildings before reaching downtown Kankakee at Harrison Avenue. Passing the Kankakee County Courthouse and the city’s historic intersection with Schuyler Avenue, the street continues over the railroad viaduct and proceeds through the complex of buildings surrounding St. Mary’s Hospital. After crossing the Kankakee River, Court Street continues through a quarter mile of commercial buildings until curving to the south and merging with Station Street.

In 1853, when the new town of Kankakee was laid out along the then-under-construction tracks of the Illinois Central Railroad, Court Street was much shorter — on the plat map, the street extended for only eight blocks, from Chicago Avenue on the east to Entrance Avenue on the west.

Court Street was one of 17 named thoroughfares: eight east-west streets and nine north-south avenues. Fifteen of those 17 street names remain in use today (Matteson Street was eventually renamed as Chestnut, while Merchant’s Street was shortened to just plain Merchant).

The ground that would become Court Street through the downtown was a narrow trail or pathway atop a wooded ridge. Converting the pathway to a usable street involved clearing brush and cutting down trees. (In Kankakee’s earliest days, it had more lawyers than there was legal business; some of the attorneys took jobs “grubbing out” stumps to make ends meet.)

The street gained its name from what would be the new community’s most important building, the Kankakee County Courthouse. On the plat map, the block bounded by Court Street, Indiana Avenue, Merchant’s Street, and Harrison Avenue bore the notation, “To be kept forever vacant of buildings, except a Court House, which is to be placed in the center of the Block.”

Work on the original courthouse, a two-story structure built of local limestone, was begun in mid-1854, and completed just over one year later. After a devastating fire in October 1872, the courthouse was rebuilt using the original stone walls. The current Kankakee County Courthouse was begun in 1909, and opened in 1912.

While the courthouse was being constructed in 1854, the town’s first stone-walled commercial building was being erected by a man named Henry Hall. Located on the north side of Court Street, midway between Schuyler and East Avenue, Hall’s building provided office space for several county officials and the community’s first newspaper, the weekly Kankakee Gazette.

Publisher Augustin Chester had the Gazette’s first issue (dated Aug. 29, 1853) printed in Chicago. Local tradition holds that the newspaper’s second issue was printed outdoors under a large white oak tree at the corner of Court Street and Schuyler Avenue. When Henry Hall’s stone building was completed, the Gazette moved its printing press and office there.

Although the town’s earliest commercial development was along East Avenue, the center for retail business gradually shifted to Court Street and Schuyler Avenue. Through the years, the southeast corner of the Court and Schuyler intersection has been home to a number of successful businesses. One of the earliest occupants of that corner, in 1868, was a three-story brick building housing the F. Swannell dry goods store. In 1913, the building was purchased by the Gelino Brothers department store.

A notable feature of the Gelino store was the pair of cast-iron lions that stood outside its Court Street entrance. After a disastrous fire in 1928, the Gelino firm declared bankruptcy and went out of business the following year. The lions were acquired by the Kankakee Public Library, and stood at the entrance of that institution’s building on Indiana Avenue for 74 years.

In 2004, the library relocated to the Executive Centre office building at Court Street and Schuyler Avenue, where the Gelino store had once stood. The library entrance (with its two guardian lions) is on the south side of the Executive Centre building. In effect, the lions have “come home.”

Two blocks to the west of the Court and Schuyler intersection stands a structure that has been a vital downtown institution since 1855: the Court Street viaduct. For 169 years (with periodic interruptions for repairs or rebuilding) the viaduct has carried Court Street traffic across the sunken railroad tracks.

Until the early 1960s, Court Street ended at Fifth Avenue, approximately one-half mile west of the viaduct. On the south side of the terminated street were two long-standing community institutions: St. Mary’s Hospital and Alpiner Park. St. Mary’s, the community’s first hospital, opened in 1897 at Fifth Avenue and Merchant Street as Emergency Hospital.

Alpiner Park, directly west of the hospital, was a filled-in stone quarry originally called West Side Park. In 1911, Kankakee Mayor Ben Alpiner proposed installing playground equipment and renaming the park as the Sol Alpiner Public Playground, in honor of his late father, a prominent local businessman. The mayor donated $500 to purchase the playground. In the late 1920s, a baseball diamond and spectator stands were added to the park; for nearly a century, the park has been strongly identified with semi-pro and youth baseball.

Court Street crossed the Kankakee River when a major bridge and roadway project was completed in the early 1960s. In addition to the building of the Court Street Bridge, the project created a westward extension of Court Street from Wall Street to a merger with Station Street just east of Main Avenue. Also part of the project was the construction of Kennedy Drive, a four-lane street connecting Court Street with the Meadowview Shopping Center.

https://daily-journal.com/news/klasey-a-short-history-of-a-long-street/article_b3480e70-c3bc-11ef-9390-177a66462caf.html