While trudging through the muddy roads of Shermerville, a village with a population of just over 300 people, residents in the early 20th century would see sparse businesses, two brickyards and a river running through the town. Turning 125 years old on Nov. 18, Northbrook, formerly known as Shermerville, is now filled with paved roads, houses and shops and has a population of around 35,222 residents according to the 2020 census.
“Frederick Schermer came to this country from Germany, as did many other German immigrants during the 1860s and 1870s,” said Ray Dykier, vice president of the Northbrook Historical Museum. “He owned much of the land in what would become downtown Shermerville, or Northbrook, after having bought it from the Sherman family prior to the railroad tracks being constructed.”
The village of Shermerville was incorporated on Nov. 18, 1901.
Shermerville basically had a reputation as a party town, as saloons per capita were high, so trainloads of city folk were constantly spending the weekend in Baron Sheen’s Grove, currently known as Village Green, and the townspeople were tired of the village’s reputation attracting people who were coming into town to go to the saloons, Dykier said.
Through a contest, the town was renamed Northbrook after the West Fork of the North Branch of the Chicago River, or the north brook that ran through town, Dykier said.
Shermerville was renamed Northbrook on Jan. 1, 1923.
During the Great Depression in the ‘30s, Northbrook had built a number of streets, but homes were not built on them until the early ‘50s, Dykier said.
Alumnus James Hoover (‘63) has been living in Northbrook since 1954.
“We were considered totally rural, and Northbrook had a ton of fields and farms and things like that that went on,” said Hoover. “ … It was the golf course that they built down by Techny and Sanders, where all of a sudden they converted the golf course into housing, and stuff just continued to go on and on and on.”
The population was 3,300 in 1950 and tripled to 11,600 in 1960 after the baby boom post World War II, Dykier said.
Filmmaker John Hughes graduated from Glenbrook North in 1968 and started filming in Northbrook in 1983 for his directorial debut of “Sixteen Candles.”
Hoover, a former firefighter, experienced the filming of Hughes’ movie, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” firsthand with his fellow firefighters during an inspection of buildings on Shermer Road by Village Green, Hoover said.
“When we walked out to the engine in the parking lot behind the shopping center, one of the guys on the crew pointed at the water tower and said, ‘What’s that?’” said Hoover. “We looked at the water tower and it was painted to say ‘Save Ferris,’ and we didn’t know why it was there. We had heard that a GBN gradwas making a movie in town, but we didn’t know what it meant at the time.”
According to Dykier, Hughes’ movies are just a love letter to Northbrook.
Northbrook’s yearlong 125th anniversary celebration is scheduled to culminate in a big birthday party on Sunday, Nov. 15, 2026 at Village Hall.
Northbrook’s Ad-Hoc 125th Anniversary Committee plans to partner with the Northbrook Arts Commission to have some art from local artists representing the community, have photographs from the Northbrook Historical Museum showing Northbrook over the years and take a photo with the Northbrook community, similar to the community picture taken after the first Northbrook Days.
“Northbrook is a community that really thrives on interconnectedness, and the people are what make Northbrook special,” said Stacy Oliver, chair of Northbrook’s Ad-Hoc 125th Anniversary Committee. “The anniversary is a good way for us to return to that and to find those connections within our community.”