All About York Center Co-op

In 1947, an idea for establishing a cooperative community was conceived by a man named Louis Shirky, a member of the Church of the Brethren.

Map of Co-op

He learned that a DuPage county dairy farm, owned by the Goltermann family,  was for sale, just to the south of the town of Lombard in an unincorporated area of the county known as York Center. Fourteen families raised $30,000 to purchase the property and began the work of creating their own neighborhood.  Louis Shirky envisioned the new community as a “housing cooperative based on open membership to “all persons of good will,” one vote per member, religious and political neutrality, continuing education, and sale at market value.”

The bylaws were written by a Black attorney, Theodore “Ted” Robinson, who lived in Chicago with his wife, Leya, a Jewish social worker, and their two daughters. When the Robinsons applied for membership in the community, however, some families that lived there objected. His wife recalled that Ted wrote a letter pointing out that the community was at a crossroads and had a decision to make about their interpretation of an open community.  Ted and Leya withdrew their application so that the community could make a decision. At the next meeting, the motion to exclude Blacks was defeated and the Robinsons were invited to join the community.  Ted Robinson and his wife, Leya, moved to York Center Cooperative to raise their children and participate fully in the community they helped create. Ted received an award from the Chicago Housing Council in 1965, when he was recognized through his work for the Illinois State Department of Labor for devising a rent supplementation plan for low-income families in private housing. He died in 1972. Leya Robinson continued living at their home in the cooperative, working until her retirement as a well-respected educator and dean at Willowbrook High School in Villa Park.  She died in 2005.

Chicago Daily Tribune, December 8th, 1960

The cooperative began to have troubles with the Federal Housing Authority (FHA) who stated the unpaved roads in the community created a blight situation. The members of the cooperative consulted with Thurgood Marshall, then an attorney with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) who saw this as an illegal move by the FHA to deny grants or money to interracial communities. In 1949, President Harry Truman signed an executive order declaring such discrimination illegal. Another lawsuit in 1960, Gale v. York Center Community Cooperative, Inc. went all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court regarding inheritance rights. In order to obtain a mortgage, homeowners held the title to the property. Once the mortgage was signed, the title was conveyed to the cooperative. The case was presented before the Illinois Supreme Court which ruled in favor of the cooperative, finding that the restraints and written agreements were valid.

An article from the Chicago Tribune noted that there were about 70 families living in the York Center Cooperative with 15% Black, 12% Asian, and the remainder were white. Some of the families were interracial and all of them came from a variety of religious or non-religious backgrounds. Membership in the nearby Church of the Brethren was not a requirement to live in the neighborhood.  The membership committee screened applicants by looking for people who were fiscally responsible and interested in living in a multicultural community. The families at the cooperative, as part of their membership, were required to work in the community for a set amount of time performing chores such as lawn mowing in the community park. If they were unable to do labor, the cooperative set a fee in lieu of the work hours. The children in the cooperative attended Lombard schools and went to York Community High School in Elmhurst in the early years. When Willowbrook High School was built in 1959, the teens then began going to school there.  

York Center Community Nursery School

The York Center Cooperative was legally dissolved circa 2010.  While many of the original families have moved on, there are homeowners there that once belonged to the cooperative community.  The main road around the home is named Rochdale Circle, in the spirit of the Rochdale Principles that helped form the idea of a cooperative community that had the ideals of a small-town neighborhood regardless of race, religion, or politics.

There is a quiet hush of country life still to be found despite the dense development surrounding the community.

Written by Lombard Historical Society Archivist: Jean Crockett