Along Route 20, right as you pass the sign for Udina (you-DINE-ah), an unincorporated community right past Elgin, you arrive at an intersection which raised my eyebrows.
As I made the left onto Plank and drove around the bend(er), and continued past the next street on the left, Russell Road, I wondered if this could have been the work of some passionate fan of the early 1900s Philadelphia Mackmen, tasked with naming streets in northern Illinois.
Plank was a lefty! Coombs was a righty! OK, it doesn’t work quite the same when approaching from the other direction, but play along with me here. There was even a Lefty Russell who made 13 appearances for the White Elephants in 1910-12.
Could it be? For a few years, I’ve wondered but never took the time to find the answers. Until yesterday, when I visited the Elgin Historical Museum.
David & Rebecca at the Museum knew exactly where I needed to look. I cracked open The Story of Udina by John Russell Ghrist (1995) and there were numerous chapters devoted to roads.
“DeKalb historian Phyllis Kelley states that there was a William Plank family from New York. They lived in Sycamore Township, and the entire road from Route 23 to Udina was called Plank Road after the family…”
That was half of it, but what about Coombs? Luckily later in the same paragraph…
“Coombs Road is named after another farmer who lived on the northeast corner of what is now Coombs Road and Brindlewood Lane.”
So much for that. No need to continue searching for Bender Lane or Morgan Drive. Maybe I should have watched for ducks Waddelling across the street.
But I did not leave disappointed. I started talking baseball with David, who works in the research library at the Museum. He asked if I’d ever been to the Century Oaks West neighborhood of Elgin. I had not, and he handed me a newspaper clipping from the Elgin Courier News from November 6, 1990, which covered the origin of a few familiar-sounding street names throughout Elgin.
In 1972, realtor Jerry Hoover got a call from the Elgin city official in charge of reviewing street names and was told he needed to come up with street names prior to the plan commission meeting later that night.
It was around 3:30 or 4 o’clock in the afternoon, as he was listening to a Cubs game on the radio. And the rest is history.
Of course I had to go check it out for myself, and sure enough there it was.
Cool story. Only thing is, the timeline doesn’t match for these streets to all have been named in 1972.
Sheffield is a street which borders Wrigley Field. Fine. But the players/manager involved:
Years with Cubs:
- Ernie Banks: 1953-71
- Milt Pappas: 1970-73
- Whitey Lockman (manager): 1972-74 (named Cubs Manager midseason ’72 after Durocher stepped down)
- Rick Monday: 1972-76
- Bill Madlock: 1974-76 (Made MLB debut with Rangers in 1973)
- Bobby Murcer: 1977-79 (with Yankees in 1972)
- Dave Kingman: 1978-80 (Played for Giants in 1972)
Either Hoover misremembered the year in question or perhaps after a few initial streets were named in 1972 (Banks reasonably could have been added in 1972 because he’s Mr. Cub after all), others were added in subsequent years. Regardless, it was neat to see a group of baseball-inspired street names instead of names of trees or states or presidents.
The Hardball Voyager 