Bounded by the Fox River on the west and north, Kimball Street on the south, and Dundee Avenue on the east is a community known as the Northeast Neighborhood. Former farmland was shaped over time into the vast residential area seen today. The shaping was gradual and in response to housing needs brought about by forces outside the neighborhood. The northeast neighborhood was not a pre-planned idea, executed in phases; rather it was a neighborhood that gradually evolved out of the need for housing and moved just a step ahead of the businesses that needed workers.

Kimball Street on the south, was the dividing line between retail Elgin and residential Elgin. Houses built by working class people were built below North Division Street (now Jefferson Avenue), which was the north city limit until the 1880's, on Phineas J. Kimball's land. Housing styles from the 1860's and 70's are seen on the streets between Kimball and Jefferson, especially along Douglas Avenue, in the 400 blocks. Douglas Avenue and Spring Street, among other north/south streets, had their beginnings at Fountain Square in downtown Elgin and ran in straight lines north to the bluffs overlooking the Fox River. Businessmen who wished to live close to work, yet apart from it, built houses along Douglas and Spring, beyond Jefferson. The upper reaches of Douglas Avenue and Spring Street became known as the "Gold Coast" in deference to the large number of Elgin businessmen who called the area home.

A definite change is noticed as one crosses Lovell Street. The trees seem taller creating a massive canopy, the streets are wider, and the houses are farther apart; it "feels" different. The area was once called Lovell's Woods, "the once beautiful grove which for years was the mecca of picnickers of this city." Elgin Advocate, September 12, 1908, p. 1. The beautiful grove contained the popular Queen Annes of the pre-1900 area and then became filled with post-1900 Colonial Revivals, Four Squares, and Prairies.

The Watch Factory, Ludlow Shoe Factory, and Illinois Watch Case Factory greatly increased Elgin's population during the late 1880's/early 1890's. The city limit was moved farther north and Lovell's farmland was annexed to the city in various additions, providing more room for building. The shoe and watch case factories helped expand the northeastern part of the neighborhood. Members of the Elgin Improvement Company, an enterprise devoted to attracting businesses to Elgin, bought parcels of land in the northeast part of the neighborhood, just west of Dundee Avenue and north of Lincoln Avenue. The pattern of pre-1900 housing styles standing next to post-1900 styles and filled in with 1920's building boom styles repeated itself here.

A massive building boom in the 1920's saw brick bungalows and Tudors filling in the spaces among the Queen Annes and Italianates throughout the northeast neighborhood. The far northeastern part saw the greatest increase in these styles. Duncan Avenue, named for Thomas Duncon, first president of the Illinois Watch Case Factory, branched off Dundee Avenue from the factory. It became the connector to East Dundee. In 1938, a plan was devised to link Elgin and Dundee by a scenic highway and to open an entrance to the Elgin Botanic Garden (Trout Park), once the farm of P.B. Pratt

In 1940, the city limit of Elgin was extended again to accommodate land for residential use. The owner of the Oakhills Addition, at that time outside the city limit, decided to annex to the city. The Oakhills Addition was long Duncan Avenue, north of River Bluff Road. It was felt that Elgin would do better to include the Addition rather than become a city surrounded by subdivisions.

For a century and a half, the northeast neighborhood has evolved to become one of the most desirable and fashionable places to live in Elgin, as people rediscover the charm of older neighborhoods and a more traditional way of living.

- written by Mary Hill