Northfield Centennial
1926 - 2026
Northfield Centennial
1926 - 2026
Northfield turns 100 years old on October 23, 2026, and the celebration starts now!
We’ve created this website to tell our story as a town, and also keep you posted on special events and activities for your whole family that we’re planning as a Village.
Already, you can circle the date of Saturday, August 22, 2026, when a community-wide celebration with fireworks, games and music for adults and kids is being planned.
We’d also love to hear from you. What are your Northfield stories and memories? Any photos you can share with us? This is the place to post them.
We’re so proud of our Village, and how far we’ve come.
Welcome to our Northfield Centennial website!
Join The Celebration
August 22, 2026
From Cornfield to Northfield
More Information Coming Soon!
1831-1854
A Tale of Two Townships
Before there was Northfield, there was Northfield Township—and that begins the story of our town.
As remote an outpost as our Village was in the 1850’s, settlers did know their land was in Cook County, one of 54 counties organized in 1831 by the State of Illinois. (Today, Illinois has 102 counties.)
Also, as early as the 1860’s, settlers were already calling their new home “Northfield.”
That’s because, in 1848—a few years before our pioneers arrived–the State of Illinois gave settlers a say in how they ran their local government. They could either follow the dictates of a centralized Board of Commissioners; or, they could form their own township,
1855 - 1905
Searching for a Cow
“It seemed as though everyone was always singing or whistling.”
That was Julia Donovan’s fondest memory of Northfield, where she lived all her life. Her stories go as far back as 1855, the year her dad Dennis, a native of Ireland, who fled the Irish potato famine, trundled in a coal wagon with his wife and five children through Chicago, and then headed north, following the Green Bay Trail up past Northwestern University, just opening its doors that year. They kept journeying north, to Winnetka, where the Chicago and Milwaukee Railway had just laid its tracks. From there, the Donovan family headed west a few miles, across a tangle of trees and undergrowth, crossing Skokie Swamp.
They had come to Northfield.
1905-1926
What? Wau Bun?
It’s 1905, and everywhere you look, there’s change.
In Glenview and Shermerville (later to be Northbrook), teams of horses are hauling in the first gas, electric and telephone lines. To the east, Winnetka has been lighting homes for five years with the new Municipal Electric Utility plant. Profits from the plant help pay for the town’s teachers. Residents are getting clean water through a water tower the village has built at the foot of Tower Road. Phone service is just now being brought into homes.
And Northfield? Nothing is happening. It’s a 3.23 square-mile rural “no-man’s land,” sandwiched between a half-dozen booming North Shore towns. It has no downtown. No stores. No village. The local school is a one-room shanty. Money is tight for the dozen or so founding farm families who live here. Life’s a struggle, but Northfielders are proud of the land they own, and each other.
