Colorful balloon launches are a highlight of the "Eyes to the Skies" annual Fourth of July festival. Back before Chicago proper was even an actual city of its own, settlers were branching out from the urban center on the lake.
Two of those settlers were two brothers, James and Luther Hatch, who set up a farm near where Ogden Avenue is today. Schoolhouses, churches, taverns and a railroad depot soon followed, turning Lisle into a thriving community. However, Lisle didn’t become a part of DuPage County until 1956, when it was officially incorporated into a village.
West suburban Lisle
Village of Lisle
925 Burlington Ave.
630-271-4100
Official Web site: http://www.vil.lisle.il.us/
Natural gas: NICOR, 888-642-6748
Electricity: ComEd, 800-334-7661
Water Service: Village of Lisle, 630-271-4131
Refuse/Recycling: Village of Lisle, 630-271-4125
Cable: Comcast, 866-594-1234
Lisle Area Chamber of Commerce
http://www.lislechamber.com/
630-964-0052
Population: 21,182
Median household income: $65,821
Median house price: $219,200
Lisle has become a center for industry, technology, and education. Benet Academy has been serving high school students for 112 years (recently, one of their alumni, Diablo Cody, won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for her film “Juno”). Benedictine University provides continuing education on a 108-acre campus and is home to a professional women’s softball team, the Chicago Bandits, featuring Olympian Jennie Finch.
Residents of Lisle are economically and ethnically diverse – with 80% white residents, Lisle also has a large Asian community as well as Latinos and African Americans. Lisle is a working-class area as well as a home for the middle-to-upper class, with most of the residents and families having an income of $60,000 to $100,000.
Housing prices are part of why CNNMoney.com rated Lisle in their top 20 places to live in the USA. The median home price is under $290,000 and the average property tax bill is about $5,500. New construction of single-family homes can reach into the seven-digit range, and new condominiums and town homes average in the mid-$200,000s but can get into the $600,000 area.
Homeowners come in all ages, with a pretty equal distribution of owners in their 20s and 30s all the way up through homeowners in their senior years. There is also a large community of renters in Lisle, making up almost 50 percent of occupied housing.
