Hudson, IL

Hudson is a village in McLean County, five miles north of Normal and part of the Bloomington-Normal area. The 2020 census counted 1,753 residents. Horatio Petit laid out the village on August 13, 1836, during the central Illinois land boom, when the Illinois Land Association organized Hudson as a planned colony. Its original map had 30 blocks of town lots surrounded by larger out lots, and Broadway was drawn at 120 feet wide. That layout still gives older Hudson a spacious street pattern.

The railroad changed Hudson's prospects in 1854, when the Illinois Central line passed just west of town. Agriculture remained the base of the surrounding landscape, while the tracks opened a commercial edge and helped the village grow. Hudson's old town hall dates to 1916, and the boyhood home of publisher and Arts and Crafts figure Elbert Hubbard still stands at Broadway and Walnut Streets. Interstate 39 now runs along the western side, giving Hudson a modern transportation marker beside its nineteenth-century plan.