This small limestone building has played a part in the larger history of Orland. It is connected to the Rust family, an early and influential family in Orland, the Chiappetti family, who rose to prominence in Chicago’s historic Union Stockyards, and the Andrew Corporation, a global company that put Orland on the map in the 1950s. 

The Rust & Stahulak Families

In June 1873, Joseph Rust purchased the land that would eventually house the Andrew Corporation. In 1915, the Rust family built the small limestone building that you see in front of you to use as a smokehouse. According to legend, the limestone was mined from the stones used for the construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal; however, since Rust did not come to Orland until the early 1870, it is more likely that limestone came from the building of the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, a project that ran from 1887-1922. 

When Joseph Rust sold the land in 1916, it was sold and resold frequently until a man named Karl D. Stahulak bought it in 1920. The Stahulak family, who were immigrants from the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, and most likely of Hungarian descent, farmed the area until 1934, when they sold the land to the Orland State Bank. Later that year, Herman Gee, who was working as a bank clerk in the 1930s, sold the land to Fioremante “Fiore” Chiappetti.

Fiore Chiappetti

Fiore played an important role in the story of this building. In 1916, Fiore immigrated from Calabria, Italy to Chicago. He worked for the railroad. After work, he’d occasionally kill a lamb or goat for his family to eat. His co-workers and neighbors asked him if they could purchase meat from him. Word quickly spread about Fiore’s abilities, and he eventually quit his job at the railroad and opened a small butcher shop on Taylor and Jefferson Street in Chicago with his brother, Salvatore.

When Fiore Chiappetti opened his first slaughterhouse in the 1920s, the Chicago meatpacking industry had been flourishing for decades. Though there had been small slaughterhouses and cattle yards in the city before the nineteenth century, it was not until the 1860s that Chicago developed a consolidated stockyard district.

Chicago Union Stockyards

The expansion of railroads during the 1850s to the 1870s drove more business to Chicago due to its central location; this led to an increase in commercialization in the city center. Furthermore, during the Civil War, the federal government purchased meat to feed the troops only from the north – primarily from Chicago. As a result, the meatpacking industry quickly grew. On Christmas Day, 1865, the Union Stockyards opened with the following boundaries: 39th Street to the north, Halsted Street to the east, 47th Street to the south, and South Racine Avenue to the west. According to the Encyclopedia of Chicago, “by the beginning of the 1890s. . .the Union Stock Yard could hold more than 400,000 live animals at a time,” and, over the course of 1865 to 1900, more than 400 million animals were processed within it. By 1921, 40,000 people worked in the Union Stockyards, including Fiore and his family.

Fiore’s business was a great success, and he had saved a good deal of money in the bank by 1929. However, as the story goes, since the bank could not afford to pay him back his money when the Great Depression hit, he was instead offered a deed to a farm in Orland Park, which he accepted. In 1934, Fiore received a deed for the land that Karl Stahulak had sold back to the Orland State Bank only weeks before. He now owned a 400-acre farm on 153rd Street, where Crystal Tree Golf Course now stands.

That year, Fiore and Salvatore moved their business to Orland Park. On the farm, they grew corn, soybeans, and oats. Fiore converted the limestone building constructed by Joseph Rust into a slaughterhouse because it was cool on the inside during the summer. At this location, he processed lambs, calves, and cattle. The meat was sent to the Union Stockyards in Chicago and the bones were sent to Darling & Co. to be made into fertilizer. Fiore’s use of the building gave it the name we refer to today: the Chiappetti Slaughterhouse. Fiore’s business grew considerably after his move to Orland Park. To better expand their operation, in the 1940s, he and his children opened another slaughterhouse on Halsted Street in Chicago.

Andrew Corporation

On June 2, 1948, he sold his land on 143rd Street to the Andrew Corporation for $42,000 (approximately $548,000 in 2024). In addition to the land, the Andrew Corporation bought five outbuildings: the farmhouse, the tenant house, the large barn, the milk house, and the stone pump and slaughterhouse. The Andrew Corporation used the large barn as an electrical engineering and antenna laboratory from 1949-1960. Inside the barn, they built a full-size dual frequency antenna for the Empire State Building, which was installed in 1953. The slaughterhouse was used as storage.

Slaughterhouse Relocation

In 1986, the Village of Orland Park saved the slaughterhouse from demolition when the Andrew Corporation wanted to further develop their site and could no longer maintain and upkeep the building. The building was moved carefully along 144th Place from the Andrew Corporation property and placed in its current location.  Believing the location to be temporary, the building’s entrance is facing Humphrey Woods – the side you see from the path is the back! 

When Fiore passed away in 1973, his family upheld the legacy he’d created. Chiappetti Lamb & Veal ceased operations in Chicago in 2018. Many dub Chiappetti’s business as having been “Chicago’s last major slaughterhouse” in the old Union Stockyard community. The Chiappetti family is still active in the meat packing and food industries today, upholding the tradition Fiore began in the 1920s.