Berwyn () is a suburban city in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is coterminous with Berwyn Township, which was formed in 1908 after breaking off from Cicero Township. As of the 2020 census, the city had a total population of 57,250. It is part of the Chicago metropolitan area.
History
Before being settled, the land that is now Berwyn was traversed by Native American trails. The most important trails converged near the Chicago portage, and two notable routes crossed what is today Berwyn. A branch of the Trail to Green Bay crossed Berwyn at what is now Riverside Drive, and the Ottawa Trail spanned the southern end of the city.
In 1846, the first land in "Berwyn" was deeded to Theodore Doty, who built the Plank Road from Chicago to Ottawa along the Ottawa Trail. The trail had been used as a French and Indian trade route and more recently as a stagecoach route to Lisle. This thoroughfare became what is now Ogden Avenue in South Berwyn. In 1856, Thomas F. Baldwin purchased of land, bordered by what is now Ogden Avenue, Ridgeland Avenue, 31st Street, and Harlem Avenue, in hopes of developing a rich and aristocratic community called "LaVergne". However, few people were interested in grassy marshland. Mud Lake extended nearly to the southern border of today's Berwyn, and the land regularly flooded during heavy rains. The only mode of transportation to LaVergne was horse and buggy on the Plank Road.
To encourage people to move to LaVergne, Baldwin sold an strip of property to the Burlington and Quincy Railroad in 1862. The rail line opened in 1864, but the train did not stop regularly in the area. The railroad refused to build a station, so the residents of the area constructed LaVergne Station on Ridgeland Avenue in 1874.
In between the two settlements, there was little except for a few farms. The area between 16th and 31st streets was not settled. There were only two paths by which to travel between the two settlements, and today these paths are known as Oak Park Avenue and Ridgeland Avenue. Although Berwyn was chartered as a city in 1908, it was not until the 1920s that this middle portion of land was developed.
Geography
According to the 2021 census gazetteer files, Berwyn has a total area of , all land. Bordering cities include Oak Park to the north, Cicero to the east, Stickney to the south, Lyons, Riverside, North Riverside, and Forest Park to the west. Geologically, Berwyn is predominately composed of Glacial Lake Bottom from the Wisconsin Glacial Episode, the most recent glacial period. A beach ridge of sand and gravel, made during one of the stages of Lake Chicago, is also present in the city. This is most easily identified as Riverside Drive. The elevation change due to the ridge is clearly seen on the 2800 block of Maple Ave. Prior to the settlement of Berwyn, the land was grassy marshland. The body of water that connected the South Branch of the Chicago River to the Des Plaines River was a shallow waterway or a muddy slough (depending on the season) known as Mud Lake. Mud Lake extended nearly to the southern border of today's Berwyn, and the southern end of Berwyn flooded regularly during heavy rains in its early years.