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SHELFORD

AX.GHW.14.05

A Hidden World City Supplement

LOCATION TYPE:    Regional Urban Anchor
POPULATION:       ~50,000 (city proper); ~80,000 (metro area)
REGION:           Eastern Illinois / Western Indiana corridor
GENRE CATALOG:    AX.GHW — Hidden World

The Mundane City

Shelford was founded because in 1851 someone decided to put a bridge here rather than six miles south.

The Harlow River crossing made it a supply depot for the agricultural flatlands spreading in all directions. The rail junction that came thirty years later made it a distribution hub. The university, established in 1889 to serve the region's need for agricultural and mechanical education, made it a city rather than a town.

It is not a pretty place but it possesses a kind of functional dignity that mid-western cities develop when they have been useful for a long time without becoming important. The downtown is a mix of 1920s commercial brick, 1960s civic architecture and recent streetscape improvements that have partially worked. There is a river walk that is genuinely nice for six months of the year. The other six months it is brutally cold and the wind off the Harlow makes it worse.

Shelford is a place that people are from rather than a place people move to. However, the university creates a steady intake of students that discover, four years in, they've put down unintended roots.