Halvorson Terrace

Map overview:Includes northern portion of Sweden Street, Bret, Sherry, Nansen, Paine, Alpine, Balsam, Howard, Dustin, Hermanson Streets and Pine Island and Williamson Avenues.


Includes northern portion of Sweden Street, Bret, Sherry, Nansen, Paine, Alpine, Balsam, Howard, Dustin, Hermanson Streets and Pine Island and Williamson Avenues.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Halvorson Terrace, located north of 11th Street and west of Main Street/Riverside Drive,  was an extension of Norwegian/Scandinavian Village developed by Alf H. Halvorson (1899-1973) largely in the 1950s.

Halvorson purchased the land for Halvorson Terrace from William Hermanson in the late 1940s or early 1950s. He platted the land in five plans (A-D) between 1950 and 1958. Covenants associated with the deeds required single family homes, prohibited commercial uses and dictated the quality of the houses. Two of the streets in Halvorson Terrace — Brett Street and Sherry Street — were named for his grandchildren. (Dustin Street came from his wife’s maiden name.)

photograph of Alf Halvorson (R) with Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen (L) in 1929 (Wikipedia)

Alf Halvorson (R) with Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen (L) in 1929 (Wikipedia)

Halvorson was a well-known Berlin businessman and winter snow sports promoter. He was a skier, ski jumper, coach and judge. He served as president of the Nansen Ski Club (at age 18), helped found the U.S. Eastern Amateur Ski Association (1922), served as the assistant coach of the 1932 Olympic ski team and was inducted into the National Ski Hall of Fame (1968). He served on the Berlin City Council in the 1930s, ran for mayor of Berlin in the early 1950’s (he was narrowly defeated) and during the Depression he was Berlin’s National Youth Administration (NYA) leader. In the late 1950s he was the president of the Hinsdale Raceway. He was best known as a promoter of Berlin’s (and the region’s) winter sports and was dubbed “the P.T. Barnum of snow sports.”

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