| Although the response was positive, officials in
neighboring Arlington Heights protested, hoping to buy the land
themselves for estate homes. But prospective buyers of the Kimball
Hill homes persuaded the Cook County Board for zoning changes to
allow Hill to proceed. In 1953 the first families moved into the
development, which Hill named Rolling Meadows. With a production
schedule of 20 houses a week, 700 houses sold by 1955, mostly to
blue-collar workers. Hill donated $200 per home for a school system,
then built and equipped the first elementary school. He also founded
the Rolling Meadows Homeowners' Association, donated land for parks,
and funded the Clearbrook Center, a home for the mentally handicapped,
which opened in 1955.
Rolling Meadows incorporated in 1955 as a city named for its gently
rolling terrain, and soon began annexing land for future development.
The town boomed during the 1950s and 1960s as businesses moved into
the area. When Crawford's department store opened in the 1950s it
was the largest in the northwest suburbs (it closed in 1993). An
industrial park opened on North Hicks Road in 1958, and Western
Electric opened a facility in the 1960s which employed 1,500 workers.
Developers inundated the area with apartment buildings and by 1970
multifamily dwellings made up 35 percent of the total structures
in Rolling Meadows.
Ramblin' Rose North, renamed Meadow Trace, opened in 1966, followed
by Three Fountains. Rolling Meadows complexes, however, suffered
from a series of fires in the decade. This prompted the city to
become more stringent in their building codes, which had allowed
for frame multifamily structures. Single-family housing continued
to flourish in Rolling Meadows as developers utilized the natural
wooded setting for the subdivisions of Tall Oaks, Dawngate, and
Creekside. |
