FEATURE Image: 143 First Street, c. 1863. Since the 19th century Batavia, Illinois, 40 miles west of Chicago, was a railroad and manufacturing center in addition to its farmsteads. This mid-19th century limestone factory building is testament to Batavia’s industrial heritage. After the U.S. Civil War, Batavia was a major manufacturer of Conestoga wagons used in the country’s westward expansion. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 7.52 mb_6360.
Batavia, Illinois, reveals how a small Fox River community evolved from a frontier settlement and manufacturing center into a town rich with architectural diversity, where industrial buildings, churches, houses, and civic landmarks collectively preserve the story of nineteenth and early twentieth century Illinois.
Text & Photographs John P. Walsh.
143 First Street, c. 1863.
The square shaped south façade’s stone cut is more grandiose than the longer west side indicating that it is the front face of the building. The tower at the north end likely held the building’s water tank and added more room and height for pulleys and other equipment. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 7.52 mb_6360.
Batavia’s architectural heritage reflects its origins as a Fox River settlement established in the 1830s and its later development as a railroad and manufacturing center.
Batavia is one of the towns along the Fox River settled in the 1830’s between Geneva and St. Charles to the north and larger Aurora to the south. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 95% 7.75 mb DSC_6350.
Batavia’s history intersects with larger national stories, including the life of Mary Todd Lincoln, westward expansion, and nearby Fermilab’s scientific legacy.
Fermilab is adjacent and to the east of Batavia. Since 1969 it has housed a herd of bison when Fermilab’s first director, Robert Wilson, established the herd as a symbol of the history of the Midwestern prairie and the laboratory’s pioneering research at the frontiers of particle physics. Each spring new calves are born signaling the herd’s rejuvenation. July 2016. Author’s photograph. 4.70mb _0577 see – https://www.fnal.gov/pub/about/bisoncam/ – retrieved 1.24.25.
Campana Sales Company Factory, Batavia, Illinois, East Elevation, 1936-1937.
The Campana Factory was built in the International Style to manufacture cosmetics for The Campana Company. At the time Campana’s “Italian Balm,” heavily promoted on the radio, was the nation’s best-selling hand lotion. The building was designed by Frank D. Chase & Company (founded in 1913) with Childs and Smith in Chicago. Frank David Chase (1877-1937) built newspaper plants in St. Louis, Milwaukee and Oklahoma City and a number of important buildings in Chicago including hospitals and office buildings. The central tower reflects the 19th-century heritage of Batavia’s limestone factories. The far one-story wings were added in the late 1940’s. The factory was purchased by the laundry detergent brand Purex who later closed Campana operations in 1982. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 77% 7.72mb _6437.
Limestone industrial buildings and former factories testify to the town’s important manufacturing history, including wagon production and later consumer industries such as Campana and Purex.
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/102112/campana-sales-company-factory-batavia-illinois-east-elevation – retrieved January 22, 2025.
https://www.artic.edu/artworks/102113/campana-sales-company-factory-batavia-illinois-landscape-perspective – retrieved January 22, 2025.
The main entrance is stainless steel set into black polished marble at the bottom of the tower. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 7.48mb _6446.
Religious institutions played a central role in Batavia’s civic development, with churches tied to abolitionist causes and community building.
The Congregational Church, 21 S. Batavia Avenue, 1856.
The locally quarried limestone central section dates to September 1856. The church displays the eclecticism of New England Colonial and Classical styles. Though the building’s classical detailing of capitals and pilasters is today mostly missing, the precisely cut and laid stone are original. These cut ashlar blocks include neatly finished arches, sills, and entablatures. The church’s design is attributed to architect Elijah Shumway Town (1804-1890) who built Batavia’s Bellevue Place Sanitarium in 1853 where Mary Todd Lincoln was committed for four months in 1875. When the original steeple was knocked down in a storm in 1877 it wasn’t replaced until 97 years later in 1974 and is the tallest steeple in Kane County. There have been additions to the church in the last 60 years. Established in Thompson Paxton’s cabin in 1835 as “Church of the Big and Little Woods” and affiliated with the Presbyterians, the church relocated to Batavia Avenue in 1841. Sharing a common belief in the anti-slavery doctrine, the church was supported by church members and the community-at-large so that the church changed its name to “Congregational Church and Society of Bavaria” in 1843. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 89% 7.73mb _6372.
Methodist church, 355 First Street, 1852.
Batavia’s first Methodist church was built in the Greek Revival. The pilasters are Doric order that meet the main beam resting across the tops of columns (architrave), blank frieze, cornice, and classical pediment. After 1886 the building was used as a schoolhouse in the Batavia school system. Today it is law offices. In 1836 a group meeting in William Van Nortwick’s home in Batavia organized the “First Methodist Class” which marked the establishment of the Methodist church in Batavia. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 96% 7.83mb DSC_6389.
West wall stonework and window of former Methodist Church built in 1852. July 2013. Author’s photograph. 7.02mb _0004
Born in Maine, Elijah Gammon (1819-1891) was a spiritual and business powerhouse in Batavia. After he moved to Illinois, he was the Methodist church’s first preacher in 1854. Having to give up preaching because of health in 1858, he changed careers to the manufacture of harvesting machinery. As he substantially contributed to the industry’s development and earned a fortune, his business responsibilities and success in no way limited his spiritual vision. https://aaregistry.org/story/elijah-gammon-supported-black-ministry/ – retrieved January 23, 2025.
United Methodist Church of Batavia, 8 N. Batavia, 1887.
United Methodist Church of Batavia was built in 1887. The rugged eclectic Richardsonian Romanesque-type building was designed by Solon Spencer Beman (1853 –1914) and inspired by a church in France that its donors had admired. The structure was almost entirely the gift of abolitionist Elijah J. Gammon (1819-1891), the church’s first preacher and local businessman, and Captain Don Carlos Newton (1832-1893), an active local businessman who had a house investment property right across the street.
Noted architect Beman designed the planned Pullman community and Pullman Company factory complex in Chicago as well as Chicago’s Fine Arts Building (1884) on Michigan Avenue. At the top of the church tower is a Palladian window under a pyramidal roof while in the back are hipped roofs. The building’s boulders were taken from the contractor’s farm about one mile south from the building site. The new church building replaced the first Methodist church in Batavia built in 1852 in Greek Revival and which still stands today. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 87%7.91mb _6498.
Chicago-based architect Solon Spencer Beman designed the United Methodist Church of Batavia in 1887. Several of his largest commissions, including the Pullman Office Building, Pabst Building in Milwaukee (1891), and the Romanesque Revival Grand Central Station (1890) in Chicago, have been demolished. A number of architects trained with Beman, including Prairie School architect William L. Steele (1875-1949), church architect Charles Draper Faulkner (1890-1979) and Spencer Solon Beman (1887-1952).
Born in New York, Captain Newton was a very active businessman and described as ”a persevering, self-made man.” He died unexpectedly at his home in Batavia after attending the Chicago World’s Fair for a week with his family in 1893. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/16849480/don-carlos-newton – retrieved January 23, 2025.
Batavia contains an unusually broad range of architectural styles, including Greek Revival, Italianate, Richardsonian Romanesque, Gothic Revival, Classical influences, and International Style design.
415 Main Street, 1860.
Eclectic Gothic Revival with Italianate features including scroll-cut square brackets tailored to the pitched roof line, segmental arches above the windows, and the heavy outlines of the door entrance. A polygonal bay and wings are informal features found in the Italianate that balances a formal façade. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 89% 7.87mb.
415 Main Street (1860). The door is larger than the windows and offset by the small ventilating window at the top in the gable. July 2011. Author’s photograph. 2.54mb100_3328 (1)
360 Main Street, 1855.
The house is an example of the evolving transition from Greek Revival to Gothic Revival to Italianate. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 74% 7.72mb DSC_6409.
33 S. Lincoln Street, 1850.
The lengthy 1850 Greek Revival is formal and simple. It has corner pilasters and there are four pairs of windows with an architrave, frieze and cornice characteristic of its type. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 73% 7.85mb DSC_6520.
505 Main Street, 1858.
The house is in the Swiss style and has a peacock feather spread motif above the second-floor balcony. There are also trifoils set in circles in the gable. The brick sunroom was added to the east around 1910. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 92% 7.81mb DSC_6426 (1)
356 First Street, c. 1850.
Greek Revival frame clapboard house. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 62% 7.80mb DSC_6395.
637 N. Batavia Avenue, 1906.
The Prairie style house was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959) in 1906. It is frame and stucco with massive chimneys. With its horizontals, low pitched roof, casement windows and thin eaves, it is the Prairie style fully developed. May 2024. Author’s photograph.
Frank Lloyd Wright in 1903, likely a self-portrait. Public Domain.
Fabyan Villa was the home of George and Nelle Fabyan from 1908 to 1939. A mid-19th century farmhouse was acquired by the Fabyans in 1905 and extensively remodeled by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1907. The house, on a hilltop looking east to the Fox River was the centerpiece of the Fabyans country estate called “Riverbank.” In 1914, the Fabyans purchased a windmill (photo below) that was located on a farm near Oakbrook, Illinois, and had it relocated opposite Riverbank on acreage that they acquired that same year. July 2013. Author’s phtograph.
The Fabyan Windmill, 1850s.
Between Batavia and Geneva, Illinois, The Fabyan Windmill is an authentic, working Dutch windmill dating from the 1850s. It was built by a German craftsman, Louis Blackhaus, and moved to this location in July 1915 next to the Fox River from its original site near Oakbrook, Illinois. July 2011. 2 mb 100_3357
111 S. Lincoln Street, c. 1850.
Though obscured by modern adaptations, the severe cube of the structure indicates its Greek Revival roots. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 92% 7.84mb DSC_6396.
125 S. Lincoln, 1852.
The Greek Revival design centers on a temple-like main block, where paired pilasters ascend to a pediment. The composition is subtly unconventional, however, as the entablature is only partially realized, one side implied by modest returns above the pilasters. Extending from the central section are a one-story entrance wing and a two-story addition featuring a pronounced cornice, dormers, arched windows, and tiny pitched roofs. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 88% 7.78 mb DSC_6400
432 Main Street, c. 1850.
The front porch may or may not be original but befits the broad formal mid-19th century Greek Revival structure. May 2024. Author’s photograph. 93% 7.82mb DSC_6431 (1)
Batavia’s historic buildings remain visible markers of changing economic, cultural, and social priorities across nearly two centuries.
333 S. Jefferson Street, Batavia Institute, Bellevue Mental Hospital, 1853.
Following the assassination of her husband, President Abraham Lincoln, Bellevue became the residence of Mary Todd Lincoln briefly in 1875. July 2011. Author’s photograph. 2.87mb 100_3332
Mary Todd Lincoln in 1846. Mary Todd was 23 years old when she married 33-year-old Abraham Lincoln in Springfield, Illinois on November 4, 1842. Their four sons were all born in Springfield. In 1875 Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926), her eldest son, had her institutionalized following a jury trial. She was committed to this private asylum in Batavia on May 20, 1875. Estranged from her finances and her son, she fell into a deep depression in the mental institution. Making contact with her lawyer and the press, the former First Lady got the wheels of justice and public opinion on her side. The resulting bad publicity for Robert Lincoln prompted the asylum director to pre-emptively change his opinion of Mary’s mental fitness so that in September 1875 she was released into the care of her sister Elizabeth Todd Edwards (1813-1888) with whom she was close and moved to Springfield. Following a second jury trial on June 19, 1876 that declared Mary “restored to reason,” Mary Todd Lincoln was back in charge of her money and freedom and promptly fled the country. She lived in France for the next four years. When she returned to Springfield in poor health in 1880, she lived again with her sister in Springfield. On July 16, 1882. Mary Todd Lincoln died of a stroke in Elizabeth’s home. Mary was 63 years old. Before her burial in Oak Ridge Cemetery next to her slain husband, her funeral was held at First Presbyterian Church in Springfield. Just steps from the Lincoln home, this was the church Abraham Lincoln started attending in 1850 after the death of their second son, four-year-old Eddie. The present church building was dedicated in 1868 and remains standing at 7th Street and Capitol Avenue today. see – https://www.nps.gov/features/liho/25/25.htm – retrieved January 23, 2025.
Elizabeth Todd Edwards. She and Mary were long close both in Springfield in the 1830’s and, later, at the White House. In 1875 Elizabeth accommodated her sister and the 64 trunks of her possessions with two rooms in her Springfield mansion. see – https://web.archive.org/web/20171201042129/https://www.civilwarwomenblog.com/elizabeth-todd-edwards/ – retrieved January 23, 2025.
333 S. Jefferson Street, Batavia Institute, Bellevue Mental Hospital, 1853.
The monumental Italianate structure was designed by Elijah Shumway Town (1804-1890), who also built Batavia’s Congregational Church. The projecting two-story wings, capped by a Mansard roof containing a third story of dormers, were constructed of slightly cruder stone and added before 1870. July 2013.
Details:
July 2013.
July 2013. 5.11mb 0479
419 Union Street, 1863.
The exuberance of the Italianate style is evident in the soaring polygonal bay anchoring one side of the façade and the cupola rising from the other. Large windows and multiple curved brackets are characteristic features of the style. Contrasting textures of stucco and heavy stone add visual interest while creating the impression of more costly materials and construction than were actually employed. The house served as the residence of one of the physicians associated with the Batavia Institute across the street. July 2013. Author’s photograph. 4.77mb _0092 (1)
Calvary Episcopal Church (222 Main Street), 1880.
Designed in the American Gothic style, the church reflects the mid-to-late nineteenth-century revival of medieval Gothic forms that arose in English Protestant architecture as a reaction against the prevailing Neoclassicism of the previous two centuries. American influences are evident in the building’s overall massiveness, particularly in its square tower, which is crowned by a double-pitched roof. Between the tower’s stages is an unusual sheet-metal band ornamented with bosses and discs and encircling the dormers of the steeple.
April 2016. Author’s photograph. 2.82 mb DSC_0476 (1)
Through its factories, churches, houses, and landmarks, Batavia offers a remarkably intact architectural record of how industry, religion, transportation, and community shaped a growing Midwestern town from the nineteenth century into the modern era.
Sources:
A Guide to Chicago’s Historic Suburbs on Wheels and on Foot, Ira J. Bach, Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1981, pp. 304-319.
