Built in 1906. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2007.
From the record
“The Avery Coonley School (ACS), commonly called Avery Coonley, is an independent, coeducational day school serving academically gifted students in preschool through eighth grade (approximately ages 3 to 14), and is located in Downers Grove, DuPage County, Illinois. The school was founded in 1906 to promote the progressive educational theories developed by John Dewey and other turn-of-the-20th-century philosophers, and was a nationally recognized model for progressive education well into the 1940s.”
Wikipedia article Avery Coonley School, CC BY-SA 4.0.
One of 50 National Register listings published here for DuPage County · listed in 2007 · category: Building · built in 1906.
National Register reference number.07000477- the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.
The ground it stands on
3,959 words
This property stands in Downers Grove Township. History Of Dupage County (1857), published 1857 gives that township a chapter of its own.
The chapter covers the township.
Machine-read from a century-old scan, so
expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words,
stray characters.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The
federal wildfire occurrence database
lists 1 fire within 5 miles of Avery Coonley School
in 2005, burning under an acre in total. 1 started naturally. None was recorded as arson.
Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted
here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.
Reported cause
Fires
Natural
1
The most recent of
them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service
that recorded it.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists
3 workings within 5 miles of Avery Coonley School: 3 past producers.
None of them still produces. What was taken out: Stone, Sand and Gravel, Construction. Distance is straight-line from the
map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring
settlement's page as well.
Regional context, not property-specific
evidence. The National Weather Service names
Downers Grove, the town this property stands in, in 38 storm reports between 1997 and 2026: 23 thunderstorm wind, 7 hail, 3 flood, 3 flash flood.
No death or injury is recorded in these reports. Each account below is quoted exactly as the forecast office
filed it, from the NOAA Storm Events Database, and each date
opens the federal record of that event.
A brief EF-0 tornado touched down in DuPage county in Downers Grove. Maximum winds were estimated at 70 mph, with a path length of 0.25 miles and path width of 50-75 yards. A few hardwood trees snapped, one snapped a power pole and caused minor garage damage. Also a car parked underneath pole was crushed.
Tree limbs as large as 18 inches in diameter were blown down between the intersections of 63rd and Main Street and 59th Street and Fairview. Structural damage was also reported to roofs.
Numerous tree branches 18 to 24 inches in diameter were blown down. Power lines were blown down. The road was blocked on 63rd Street between Fairview Avenue and Belmont Road.
A brief tornado touched down near Fairview Avenue and 38th Street in Oak Brook. The first damage was noted along Ridgewood Court and 38th Street, where multiple trees had large branches broken. The tornado moved generally to the southeast, entering Downers Grove near Cumnor Road and 39th Street, where damage was noted to numerous trees. Minor damage was also noted to the cupola of a nearby residence. The tornado moved through the Longmeadow neighborhood, continuing to damage numerous trees. In some areas, the most significant tree damage was noted just above roof level. The tornado slightly intensified near 41st Street and Williams Street, where a few homes had minor roofing damage and numerous trees had large branches broken. Debris from damaged fences was blown in a somewhat convergent pattern toward 41st Street on opposite sides of the street. The tornado appeared to dissipate just southeast of this area as it approached Westmont. The peak wind of this tornado was estimated at 80 mph.
Widespread damage to trees on the north side of Downers Grove was determined to be the result of a severe straight-line winds with magnitude up to 70 mph.
Photos shared on social media showed portions of Hummer Park were flooded from the north branch of St. Joseph Creek. The park was designed to flood in heavy rain events. Rainfall of 4.78 inches was measured in Downers Grove with 2.87 inches falling in one hour ending at 7:45 am CST.
No historic map-sheet match is published
for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs
a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary.
Browse the county's mapped places while that work is
pending.
Listed places nearby
6 within 8 miles
Other National Register properties close
enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both
positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties
to their map sheets.
Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.
Storms. NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, Storm Events Database https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/stormevents/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105. Narratives are quoted verbatim from the National Weather Service report and are not edited or summarised.
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