Seeming to stand guard at the Millbridge Road bridge over the Des Plaines River between Lyons and Riverside is a mysterious castle-like structure known locally as the Hofmann Tower. What is it and why is it there?
It was commissioned in 1907 by George Hofmann, Jr., whose family had operated taverns and picnic groves near the Des Plaines River in Lyons since the mid-1860s.
From the beginning of white settlement west of Chicago in the early 1830s, Lyons was a hospitality center. Convergence of multiple pioneer trails and proximity to the Des Plaines River prompted fur traders David and Bernardus Laughton to establish a tavern there in 1827. In 1828, the brothers established a sawmill and erected a dam to provide water power to the mill.
Additional taverns opened at the trail crossing in 1832, notably Joshua Sackett’s tavern in the triangle formed by the crossing of the pioneer trails. The site is bounded by present day Joliet Avenue, Riverwalk Drive, and Ogden Avenue. Additional taverns opened in the 1830s.
Lyons’ importance was enhanced with the opening of the Southwestern Plank Road in 1848, a prominent founder of which was Theodorus Doty, a Lyons tavern owner and aspiring land developer. The plank road attracted some settlement, especially among German immigrants.
In 1864, the CB&Q opened its railroad line and established the Lyons station (present day Riverside) one-half mile to the north of the taverns. Proximity to the cooling waters of the Des Plaines River, and transportation access from Chicago made Lyons a desirable place for picnic groves and recreational development. For German and other immigrants “recreational development” customarily meant beer gardens.
Among the German entrepreneurs were Valentine Hofmann and his sons, George Sr. and John, who bought land along the plank road in Lyons soon after the railroad was opened. John established a slaughter house at the present intersection of Joliet and Ogden Avenues. George, Sr. bought Theodorus Doty’s (and before that Sackett’s) Tavern and renamed it the Lyons Tavern. Valentine opened the Chateau Des Plaines picnic ground and tavern nearby. Chateau Des Plaines would survive through various iterations until the 1970s, by then known as Mangam’s Chateau.
By the early 1890s, George Hofmann, Jr. was in charge of the family properties in Lyons. He acquired the Chateau Des Plaines from his uncle Valentine, and repurchased the Lyons Tavern that his father had sold to Louis Leonhardt several years earlier. The tavern served beer from the Hofmann Brothers brewery that George, Jr. and family members operated on Chicago’s Near West Side.
Opening of a streetcar line between through Cicero and Berwyn to Lyons in 1897, boosted Hofmann’s business as well as firmly establishing Lyons as a recreational destination (especially with respect to consumption of alcoholic beverages). On summer evenings and weekends the streetcars were filled to capacity with patrons destined to Hofmann’s and other establishments.
As time went on, convenient access alone was not enough to attract visitors. Beginning in the 1890s, amusement parks with mechanized rides began springing up throughout Chicagoland. Something more elaborate than picnic groves and beer gardens would be necessary to assure success. Early in the twentieth century, George Hofmann, Jr. sought to create a unique destination.
With wealth derived from operation of the Hofmann Bros. brewery, George Jr. conceived of his own amusement and entertainment venue on the banks of the Des Plaines River, reportedly spending $400,000 (nearly fourteen million 2024 dollars) in developing an amusement and entertainment mecca. Using the Triangle property and adjacent land along the river bank, Hofmann created Niagara Park, with the tower as its central identifying feature.
Hofmann set about to modify and strengthen the existing dam, both to provide water power for electric power generation and to create an artificial lake for boating, swimming and winter carnivals with skating, curling and other ice games. Ultimately eleven motor boats cruised the lake and the upstream river and hosted evening Japanese lantern regattas.
The Triangle property and venerable Lyons Tavern were redeveloped to create the Lyons Theater (not to be confused with the later Lyons Theater several blocks south on Joliet Avenue), hosting Vaudeville acts, games, concerts, dancing, and moving pictures. Decorating the perimeter was a lighted concrete and iron picket fence. To the east, across Joliet Avenue was a beer garden and picnic grove, connected to the tower, boat marina and Triangle by an underground walkway.
Built to resemble an old-world European castle, the seven story, ninety-foot-high tower certainly served as Niagara Park’s unifying feature, but its overall purpose was rather undefined. It could have been meant to house the electrical generation apparatus, though Hofmann quickly decided that commercial purchase of electricity was more economical.
Park visitors could walk to the top for a breathtaking view of the surrounding landscape. An American flag stood on a 150-foot-high mast above its crenellated roof. The tower itself was illuminated by spotlights, while the roof top flag highlights by two banks of forty-five spotlights each.
Niagara Park and its iconic tower were doomed nearly from the moment they were opened. Upstream refuse and trash began to accumulate in the lake the dam had created. It was an era when the rapidly growing suburbs and industrial firms dumped raw sewage and effluents directly into the river. As the years went by, Hofmann’s lake became more and more polluted. Niagara Park’s final demise came in the early 1920s, following the passage of the Volstead Act, prohibiting sale or possession of alcoholic beverages – the raison d’etre for Niagara Park and the beer gardens in general.
The tower, the wharf, the Triangle and the beer gardens fell silent. Hofmann filed suit against upstream communities for the pollution. In the end, in 1941, a year before Hofmann’s death, he was awarded one dollar in damages. During World War II, the tower was used briefly for black-out tests, with the grounds hosting a Victory Garden. Following Hofmann’s death, the property was acquired, apparently reluctantly, by the Cook County Forest Preserve District.
Hofmann’s dam was reconstructed one more time in 1950, again to alleviate the build-up of sludge. In 2012, for environmental reasons, the 1950 dam was removed. For the first time since 1827, when the Laughton Brothers had built their dam, the river flowed unimpeded past the Hofmann tower site.
Various proposals have been put forth over the past several decades for refurbishment and or repurposing of Hofmann’s iconic tower. For the foreseeable future, the tower will stand as a mute monument to the by-gone era of Lyons’ recreation venues alongside the Des Plaines River.
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