Located just 13 miles west of downtown Chicago, Brookfield is a close-in suburb combining the best of city and suburban living. The Village offers cultural amenities and easy access to downtown Chicago, while providing families the great schools and conveniences of suburban living.
Brookfield is a vibrant diverse community of 19,085 individuals supporting a variety of churches, good schools, an excellent library, low taxes, convenient transportation, and extensive parks and recreation programs. We are committed to economic development, modernizing, building, and making our neighborhoods better and safer. Whether shopping, dining, or enjoying the world-class Brookfield Zoo, you will find our village a remarkable and friendly place. A great place to live, raise a family, shop, and do business, Brookfield is truly a community in every sense of the word.
Brookfield station was originally built in 1889 as Grossdale station, when Samuel Eberly Gross, a Chicago lawyer, began selling building lots platted from farms and woodlands he had acquired along both sides of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad line. Brookfield itself was originally known as “Grossdale,” and the station was the first building Gross erected in the new subdivision. In 1981 the original station house was moved across the tracks onto the corner of Brookfield Avenue and Forest Avenue, and now houses the Brookfield Historical Society. The current Brookfield station serves as a standard commuter railroad station, while the old Grossdale station has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982.
Brookfield Zoo, also known as the Chicago Zoological Park,[2][3] is a zoo located in the Chicago suburb of Brookfield, Illinois. It houses around 450 species of animals in an area of 216 acres (87 ha). It opened on July 1, 1934,[4] and quickly gained international recognition for using moats and ditches instead of cages to separate animals from visitors and from other animals. The zoo was also the first in America to exhibit giant pandas, one of which (Su Lin[5]) has been taxidermiedand put on display in Chicago’s Field Museum of Natural History. In 1960, Brookfield Zoo built the nation’s first fully indoor dolphin exhibit, and in the 1980s, the zoo introduced Tropic World, the first fully indoor rain forest simulation and the then-largest indoor zoo exhibit in the world.
The Brookfield Zoo is owned by the Cook County Forest Preserve District and managed by the Chicago Zoological Society. The society sponsors numerous research and conservation efforts globally.
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| Date opened | July 1, 1934 |
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| Location | Brookfield, Illinois, United States |
| Coordinates | 41.832671°N 87.833462°WCoordinates: 41.832671°N 87.833462°W |
| Land area | 216 acres (87 ha) |
| No. of animals | 2300 |
| No. of species | 450 |
| Memberships | AZA[1] |
| Public transit access | BNSF Hollywood |
| Website | www |
