Batavia and Geneva, IL.
After scruffy Aurora these next two stops on the Lincoln Highway heading north on Illinois 31 were a distinct pleasure.
First, the pretty little city of Batavia (also on the Fox River), a Chicago suburb. During the latter part of the 1800s Batavia was home to a number of American-style windmill manufacturers and became known as “The Windmill City”. In one of the photographs there is a windmill commemorating the city’s manufacturing past. Conestoga wagons were also made in Batavia. Now Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is there – the bottom quark and top quark were both first detected at the lab. Windmills and Conestoga wagons to quarks. Love it! In the first three pictures is Bellevue Place, formerly a private sanatorium for mental patients (now apartments), in Batavia, where President Lincoln’s widow, Mary Todd Lincoln, was taken (involuntarily) to stay for part of 1875 until she was released to the care of her sister.
The first six photos are Batavia, and the last five are from Geneva, the second of the three cities of what is called the “Tri-City Area” (the third being St. Charles) and also a Chicago suburb and on the Fox River, which made a very good impression as well. A very handsome and thriving downtown with the added attraction that some of the filming of the 2002 Tom Hanks movie “Road to Perdition” took place on State Street in Geneva (which also happens to be the routing of the Lincoln Highway). The server at the café where I stopped was there when they were filming.
