Dentist Near Oak Lawn, IL

About Oak Lawn

Oak Lawn is a village of roughly 58,000 people in Cook County, adjacent to Chicago and the twenty-second most populous municipality in Illinois. It covers about eight and a half square miles and uses ZIP codes from 60453 through 60459. It was first settled in 1835 and incorporated in 1909.

The connection to our practice is 95th Street. It runs through the heart of Oak Lawn and continues east to our door at 2036 West 95th — typically a ten to fifteen minute drive depending on where in the village you start.

From Black Oak Grove to Oak Lawn

In August 1835 James B. Campbell bought the land between Cicero and Central Avenues from 95th Street to 103rd. What he intended to do with it is unclear; by 1840 he had lost a court battle with the Illinois State Bank and the land went to public auction. John Simpson, a significant figure in the village's early history, bought the northern half in 1842.

In 1859 the newly incorporated Worth Township paid for the construction of Black Oak Grove Road — an early name for 95th Street, and the earliest known name for the area itself, later shortened to Black Oak. Briefly in the early 1800s the area was called Agnes. When the railroad that became the Wabash arrived in 1880, the post office, depot and surrounding community came to be known simply as Oak Lawn by 1882.

Incorporation followed in 1909, and infrastructure came steadily after: electric lights on 95th Street in 1911, a volunteer fire department in 1923, the first bank in 1925. The public library began in 1934 as a collection of a hundred books and moved into a WPA-funded building in 1936.

The Round-Up, and the tornado

After the Second World War, returning veterans using the G.I. Bill drove a major population boom. Oak Lawn Round-Up Days began in 1949 as a Western-themed celebration and drew 25,000 people in its first year; by 1952 it was pulling over 100,000, with Jack Brickhouse as master of ceremonies and the parade televised on WGN. It had outgrown itself by 1957 and a final scaled-down version was held the following year.

On 21 April 1967, an F4 tornado touched down west of the village and tore through it with winds estimated above 200 miles an hour. Roughly 900 buildings were damaged or destroyed and more than thirty people were killed. It cut Oak Lawn Community High School in half before continuing into Hometown, Evergreen Park and Chicago. The whole path of destruction, sixteen miles of it, took sixteen minutes.

The village rebuilt and kept growing, peaking somewhere around 63,500 residents in the mid-1970s.

A medical town

Oak Lawn is a significant medical anchor for the southwest suburbs. Advocate Christ Medical Center, one of the largest hospitals and Level I trauma centers in Illinois, is here. That matters for how we talk to Oak Lawn patients about emergencies: if you have facial swelling that is spreading toward your eye or under your jaw, or any difficulty breathing or swallowing, that is an emergency room visit and Christ is right there. Ordinary dental emergencies — a broken tooth, a lost crown, an abscess, severe pain — are ours, and we hold same-day time for them.

Downtown, parks and schools

Starting in 2002, downtown Oak Lawn along 95th Street between Tulley Avenue and 55th Court underwent a large redevelopment. Properties on both sides were demolished and replaced with multistorey condominium complexes over ground-floor retail, alongside an expanded Metra station housing a retail and office center and a children's museum. The downtown looks very little like it did in 2002.

The village maintains more than 300 acres across 22 parks, including the 38-acre Centennial Park, with outdoor pools, an indoor ice arena, two fitness centers, an indoor racquet center and an eighteen-hole golf course.

Oak Lawn has two public high schools — Oak Lawn Community High School and Harold L. Richards — along with public elementary schools including Kolb, Lieb, Harnew, Columbus Manor, Covington, Hannum, Kolmar and Sward, and two middle schools. Catholic grammar schools include St. Germaine, St. Catherine, St. Linus and St. Gerald. Metra's SouthWest Service line stops at Oak Lawn station, with Pace connections.

Neighborhood history, demographic and transit details on this page are drawn from the Wikipedia article on Oak Lawn, available under CC BY-SA.