From ‘Charleston’ to St. Charles: A Mill Town on the Fox
St. Charles was founded in March 1834 by Evan Shelby and William Franklin on the east bank of the Fox River, near what is now Baker Memorial Park, and was originally named ‘Charleston.’ The settlement was renamed St. Charles in 1839 after early settler Steven S. Jones discovered another downstate Illinois town already used the Charleston name. Its earliest industries -- lumber mills, gristmills, and wool carding mills -- ran on water wheels at a man-made dam on the Fox River, and by 1950 the town's industries had grown to include flour, grist, paper, and carding mills, an iron foundry, condensed-milk and pottery factories, and a linseed and castor oil plant.
A Century of Mill-Era and Leisure-Era Construction
St. Charles's building stock spans the mill era and the 1920s “Roaring Twenties” period, when the Arcada Theatre and Hotel Baker turned the town into a Chicago-area leisure destination, alongside Pottawatomie Park, created in 1912 as the first designated public park in Illinois. Homes and commercial buildings from these eras were built well before modern moisture-control expectations, so an assessment here has to account for original construction methods that never anticipated today's humidity-control standards.
Mold Remediation Options for St. Charles Properties
The Fox River Runs Through the Whole Assessment
St. Charles adopted “Pride of the Fox” as its slogan in 1969, and that same river that shaped the town's mill economy remains the starting point for understanding where moisture risk concentrates in older St. Charles properties today.