There is a phrase that shows up again and again in Downers Grove's local landmark applications: "Distinguishing Characteristic." It is the criterion the village's Historic Preservation and Design Review Board cites most often when approving a property for landmark status. What triggers the process is not a neighborhood's age or its name or its inclusion in a village survey from more than a decade ago. It is an owner choosing to file an application in the first place.
That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should, because Downers Grove has spent years talking about four residential areas in historic terms without ever giving any of them the legal protections the label implies.
The survey that didn't become a district
In 2013, the village commissioned a Historic Building Survey that documented 865 properties across four areas: Denburn Woods, Shady Lane Estates, the E.H. Prince Subdivision, and the Maple Avenue/Main Street corridor. The survey sits alongside a 2009 Historic Preservation Plan and an even older 1970s state architectural inventory, all folded into an interactive Historic Resource Application that lets anyone type in an address and see if their house shows up in the data.
What none of that paperwork does is create a historic district. According to the Downers Grove Historical Society's own preservation program page, the village's ordinance allows for two kinds of historic districts, contiguous and thematic, and as of the most recent public information available, no historic district has actually been created. The four surveyed areas were studied for potential significance. They were never designated.
That gap is easy to miss if you are touring a house in Denburn Woods and hear an agent or a neighbor describe the block as "historic." The word is doing a lot of unearned work. It suggests a layer of protection and oversight that, structurally, does not exist there.
What the survey areas actually mean for a buyer
If you are comparing a house in one of these four surveyed areas against a similar-vintage house elsewhere in town, here is the practical difference: nothing about the exterior of a home in Denburn Woods, Shady Lane Estates, the Prince Subdivision, or the Maple/Main corridor is restricted by that survey. You can replace siding, swap windows, repaint, or add on without a Certificate of Design Appropriateness review, because there is no district ordinance attaching to those boundaries. The survey is a research document, not a rulebook.
| Surveyed Area | Properties Documented (2013 Survey) | Current District Status |
|---|---|---|
| Denburn Woods | Part of 865 total | Not a designated district |
| Shady Lane Estates | Part of 865 total | Not a designated district |
| E.H. Prince Subdivision | Part of 865 total | Not a designated district |
| Maple Avenue / Main Street corridor | Part of 865 total | Not a designated district |
For a buyer who wants an older house with some architectural character but does not want a village board weighing in on a future roof replacement, that is genuinely useful information. For a buyer who assumed the "historic" label came with built-in protections against teardown or mismatched infill next door, it is worth recalibrating expectations before writing an offer.
Where the real restrictions actually live
The village's landmark program works in the opposite direction from a district. It is owner-initiated. A homeowner applies, the board reviews the application, and if approved, the property becomes one of the village's individually designated local landmarks. At a board presentation in September 2025, staff put the count at 33 local landmarks, built across a span running from 1840 to 1964. Since the village has been landmarking roughly one property a year since 2020, that number has likely grown modestly in the year since. The list is not limited to houses. It includes the Main Street Cemetery and two former train depots, with six of the landmarked properties within roughly a five-minute walk of the Main Street Train Station.
Once a property carries that designation, exterior changes go through a Certificate of Design Appropriateness review before they can proceed. The same board also reviews CODA applications for downtown-area buildings that are neither landmarked nor inside a historic district, evaluating those against the village's separate Downtown Design Guidelines rather than the historic preservation criteria. A 2025 board agenda made that distinction explicit for a Maple Avenue property under review, noting plainly that the building was neither a local landmark nor part of a Historic District, yet the same design-appropriateness process still applied. The upshot for a buyer is that CODA review is not proof by itself that a house is landmarked. Confirming actual landmark status on a specific address means checking the village's list directly, not assuming it from the type of review a property is undergoing.
Why the mismatch matters at the offer stage
The practical risk here runs in both directions. A buyer drawn to Denburn Woods or the Maple/Main corridor specifically because the area reads as protected and cohesive should know that cohesion is a product of the existing housing stock and informal neighborhood character, not a village ordinance. A buyer who falls in love with a specific older house should check whether that individual address appears on the village's landmark list, separate from whether it sits inside one of the four surveyed areas. The two questions have different answers, and only one of them affects a renovation budget or timeline.
Sellers of one of the 33 landmarked properties carry a related obligation to think through before listing. Prospective buyers doing their own diligence will eventually find the designation, and setting expectations about what exterior changes require board review, and what a Certificate of Design Appropriateness application actually costs in time, is better handled before an offer than during an inspection period.
For anyone comparing move-in-ready character homes across Downers Grove's older pockets, the fastest way to settle the question is the village's own address lookup tool, which draws on the 2013 survey data alongside the older historic inventories. It answers the survey question in seconds. It will not tell you whether a specific house is one of the 33 landmarks, since that list grows only through owner applications, so a direct check with the village's Community Development Department is still the more reliable step before you assume either protection or restriction applies.
A few questions worth asking before you tour
Does living in Denburn Woods, Shady Lane Estates, the Prince Subdivision, or the Maple/Main corridor mean I need village approval to change my home's exterior? No. None of those four areas has been designated a historic district. The 2013 survey documented the properties for research and planning purposes. It did not attach any renovation review requirement to them.
How do I find out if a specific address is an individual landmark? The village's Historic Resource Application lets you search by address against the 2013 survey and older historic inventories. Because the landmark list itself grows through owner-initiated applications rather than automatic surveys, confirming current landmark status is best done directly with the village's Community Development Department.
Could one of these four areas eventually become an actual historic district? The ordinance allows for it, and the stated goal behind the 2015 revision was to grow the number of landmarks and districts over time. As it stands, that expansion has happened through individual landmark applications rather than through district creation.
If you are weighing an older home in one of these Downers Grove neighborhoods against something newer, or trying to figure out what a specific property's designation status means for your renovation plans and your timeline, Paul Baker and Team Baker have spent years working through exactly this kind of local detail with buyers and sellers across DuPage County. Contact Us to talk through what a specific address actually carries before you write an offer.
