The area known as Hoosier Grove was home to dairy farmers from the 1830s through the 1950s. In the area of Hanover Township, which would become Streamwood, the 1950 Census population was roughly 800 people, scattered across dozens of farms.
But the farms soon gave way to suburbs. With the end of WWII and the Korean War, veterans were buying homes in the countless instant subdivisions that were sprouting up throughout the nation. In many cases, these new communities were largely paid for with money from the GI Bill. Across the country, 11 million new homes were financed with loans from the program. The postwar housing shortage quickly turned into a construction boom.
In 1956, L H Builders developed 21 pre-assembled houses on concrete slabs at the corner of Bartlett and Schaumburg Roads. The houses, shipped from Indiana by National Homes Corporation, were packaged with insulated walls, ceiling, roof sections, and framing. A local contractor, Maxon Construction Company, assembled the homes in less than two weeks. Once the community had established enough homes and residents, the builder applied for incorporation as a municipality. On February 25, 1957, the Village of Streamwood was born. The new Village President and Board of Trustees were all employees of the Maxon Construction Company or its engineering firm.
The builder’s brochures for the new community of Streamwood promised a “Town of Tomorrow,” and the community was marketed to returning war veterans seeking affordable housing. However, new residents faced insufficient well systems, unpaved streets and few municipal services. The young families in the community soon became activists. Homeowners established associations to wrench control of the government away from the builders. They protested a hike in water and sewer rates. They staged a protest on waste services by bringing their garbage to the edge of town to competing companies’ waiting trucks. When the new Woodland Heights School opened in 1958, it had only six classrooms to accommodate the hundreds of community children. When four hundred children were required to take classes in split shifts, mothers marched in front of the school and the builder’s sales trailers to discourage buyers. The "Marching Mothers" were arrested for disorderly conduct.
