Chicago Guide
Oak Park
Chicago's most famous suburb, Oak Park, ten miles west of the Loop, is the prime excursion in the outlying area. Revelling in the moniker of the "largest village in the world", the town prides itself on nurturing artistic genius: Ernest Hemingway was born and spent his youth in Oak Park, and Frank Lloyd Wright lived and worked here for twenty of his most productive years, designing twenty-five homes in the area and defining his architectural philosophy. Today Oak Park is at its most bohemian in the small arts district on Harrison Street, between Austin Boulevard and Ridgeland Avenue, which has a dozen or so galleries as well as cafés, restaurants and boutiques. But elsewhere the suburb is solidly bourgeois, with prettified Victorian homes fronted by English-style gardens.