North Park University, Illinois (Campus History Series)

North Park University was founded in Minneapolis in 1891 to provide basic education for Swedish immigrants and theological training for students entering the ministry. The school moved to the North Park community on the outskirts of Chicago in 1894. Since that time, the cornfields and cabbage patches in the area have given way to stores, bungalows, and apartment buildings, and the campus now covers 30 acres in a bustling urban neighborhood. The school has become an ethnically and racially diverse Christian university and seminary offering degrees in a wide range of disciplines and enrolling 3,300 students from across the country and around the world. It is one of the few evangelical Christian universities in the United States located in a major city.

John E. Peterson is a graduate of North Park University and Theological Seminary and a former member of the university's board of directors. Peterson is also the author of The Kansas City Athletics, Omaha Railroad Passenger Stations, and The College World Series. He worked with Anne Jenner, director of the F.M. Johnson Archives and Special Collections, to capture the history of the school through photographs from the collections.