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            Lockport Area

Visit Lemont's Past
Located in the Old Stone Church at 306 Lemont Street, the Lemont Area Historical Society is open weekend afternoons and some weekdays. Call 630-257-2972 for hours and visitor information.

The church, previously the Lemont Methodist Episcopal Church, was built in 1861 of local stone and is Lemont’s oldest surviving church structure. The small irregular pieces of stone used in its construction were “tailings”, or waste stone, donated from the nearby Brown Quarry. The church was used as a recruiting depot during the Civil War. In the 1890s, its minister led a reform movement, fighting against political corruption and the rampant liquor, gambling and prostitution just outside the Church’s doors in Lemont’s infamous “Smokey Row.” In 1970, citizens organized to preserve the church building and converted it to the Lemont Area Historical Society.