A boy maybe 8 years old sits on the bank of a pond in the village park holding an old-fashioned bamboo fishing pole. He easily could have come out of a Norman Rockwell painting of Americana.
Indeed, at a quick glance, Manhattan, Ill., about 50 miles south of Chicago, the year-and-a-half-old terminus of the South West Metra line, seems a typical small, Midwestern town.
Off the main street, there are lots of nicely maintained Victorian cottages, many featuring flower gardens with old-fashioned hollyhocks standing tall. Other homes are larger pre-Depression brick structures with wide front porches seemingly made for rocking chairs.
In the mornings, the parking lot at Kirby’s Korner Bakery (the corner is State and Trask Streets) is filled with locals talking about the news of the day over the bakery’s irresistible cinnamon rolls. On the north side of the village, at the Manhattan Family Restaurant, there’s an entryway that’s universal with such places — two gumball machines and a bulletin board with notices for a part-lab dog free to a good home, a yard sale, an older Pontiac in good running condition. Next door, the Bit O’Blarney Pub (with the sign “Welcome Peggy Jean, Karaoke Queen”) has an outdoor patio overlooking a soybean field.
But, looming to the south, there’s evidence of a new era dawning — rooftop after rooftop after rooftop of recently built subdivision houses. And across the road (Illinois Highway 52), a vast swath of cleared land sits with giant earth-moving equipment at the ready. There are corn and soy fields around that open space, but you’d guess their days are numbered.
“You know it’s coming,” said William Ardaugh at the Manhattan Realty office. His boss, Greg Hobbs, agreed that a boom in housing is in progress with more on the horizon. “The village is digging new wells to meet the demand for water,” he noted. Nyla (who didn’t want to give her last name) at the Ace Hardware said new people have been coming in for supplies to landscape and maintain their new houses.
There seems to be a mixture of feelings about what will happen — expectation, resignation, concern.
Ardaugh has lived here all of his 78 years and remembers when the realty office was a pharmacy and there was a bar next door that his parents ran.
“There was a grocery across the street,” he said, “and two more further down. The Chevy dealer also sold International Harvester farm equipment (the village has always been a hub for the surrounding farms) but that burned down. There was a medical clinic and a hotel and a movie theater. There were more things here when I was a boy and the population was 600.”
The 2000 census showed 3,330 residents. The population estimate for this year is 9,500. The population projection for 2007 is 12,500, a near 400 percent leap in seven years. A special census is being conducted of the developments built in that span of time –Leighlinbridge, Ridgefield, Brookstone Springs, White Feather, Sunset Lakes.
More people will most likely mean more possibilities for restaurants (there’s just the Family Restaurant and a couple of pizza places now plus some bar food), job opportunities and entertainment.
Twenty-year-old Ashlee Niec, who works at the bakery, said that other than hanging out at the park, there’s nothing for young people to do. “Once you get a drivers license, you go out of town,” she said.
At the Metra station, built in 2005 to extend the line out from Orland Park, 16 cars sat in a parking lot built to accommodate 260. And there’s room for expansion to 500 spaces. The station isn’t staffed but has time locks that open 15 minutes before arrivals and stay open 15 minutes after the train leaves.
Though train stations are often thought of as noisy, bustling places with crowds of people coming and going, this one is almost serene, surrounded by fields and a wildlife refuge, and with the park on the other side of the tracks. The day Tribune photographer Fila visited, the station was bare except for a paperback bookrack set up by Noreen Bormet of the local library.
Commuters take — and hopefully return — books on an honor system. “They are books donated by library patrons,” Bormet said, “so our only cost is the rack.”
There’s a pervasive sense here that a huge party has been planned, but the guests are just beginning to show up, and that’s sort of what’s going on.
Manhattan’s motto is: “Memories With Progress.” One has to wonder how long the memories can last.
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Next: South Bend, Ind.
For more photos of Manhattan, go to: chicagotribune.com/endoftheline
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Manhattan by the numbers
Incorporated: 1886
Area: 3.4 square miles
Population: 3,330 in 2000; white only: 97.2 percent; black only: .2 percent; Hispanic or Latino of any race: 3 percent (Because people may be counted in more than one category, the percentages will not necessarily total 100.)
Under age 18: 32.4 percent; from 18 to 24: 8 percent; from 25 to 44: 33.1 percent; from 45 to 64: 19.2 percent; 65 or older: 7.3 percent
High school graduates: 92.9 percent. (The high schools are in nearby Frankfort and New Lenox)
Bachelor’s degree or higher: 19.2 percent
Median family income: $62,865
Median house value: $150,000
Sources: U.S. Bureau of the Census, the Manhattan Village Web site, the Lincoln-Way School District Web site
