Where to Stay in Decatur, Illinois

What is Decatur known for?

Lake Decatur and the Sangamon River give Macon County's largest city its edges, and the processing of agricultural and industrial commodities has kept the working economy going alongside them. Two campuses sit here. Millikin University and Richland Community College bring students in, while the Decatur Downtown Historic District and the Transfer House hold the older architecture, some of it carrying Frank Lloyd Wright's influence on the Prairie Style.

What are the main landmarks in Decatur?

Two districts carry most of it. The Decatur Downtown Historic District and the Decatur Historic District cover the streets where the city's architecture is protected, and the Transfer House stands apart from both as a building in its own right. The railway left a station.

Wabash Railroad Station and Railway Express Agency survives from the rail era, while the James Millikin House, Roosevelt Junior High School and Fans Field fill out a list that runs from domestic to civic to sporting.

What is the history of Decatur?

The Sangamon River came first. Decatur was laid out beside it in the 1820s and became the seat of Macon County, which gave the settlement the courts and offices that fixed a town on the spot. Then the railways arrived.

Wabash Railroad Station and Railway Express Agency records the period when the lines ran through the city, and the trade that came with them built the commercial fronts now inside the Decatur Downtown Historic District. Lake Decatur came later. The water added a shoreline to a city that had grown up on the river, and the processing of agricultural and industrial commodities gave the place a working economy that outlasted the rail age.

Two institutions took root. Millikin University and Richland Community College settled in Decatur, and the James Millikin House keeps the same name on the register of protected buildings. The architecture is the other inheritance.

Frank Lloyd Wright's influence on the Prairie Style shows across the houses of the Decatur Historic District, and the Transfer House, Roosevelt Junior High School and Fans Field belong to the same century of building.

Where is Decatur?

River and lake together define the ground. Decatur covers something over a hundred and twenty square kilometres of Macon County, with the Sangamon River running through it and Lake Decatur lying alongside the built-up area. Macon County spreads out around it.

The city holds the county's largest built area, and its edges run out into the farming country that supplies the commodity processing the economy depends on.

What is the climate of Decatur?

The lake sits under the same seasons. Decatur lies well inland in Illinois, and the temperate pattern here runs to real winter cold, a fast spring and summers heavy enough to matter along Lake Decatur and the Sangamon River. Autumn is the easy season.

Walks through the Decatur Historic District and afternoons by the water both work best then, once the summer weight has gone and before the cold shuts the shoreline down.

How do you get to Decatur?

The railway built the approach. Wabash Railroad Station and Railway Express Agency stands from the era when Decatur was reached by rail, and journeys into Macon County now come mostly by road across Illinois. The city is spread out.

More than a hundred square kilometres separate Lake Decatur from the far side of the built area, so a car helps in reaching Fans Field, Millikin University and the Decatur Downtown Historic District in one day.