On a quiet stretch of East Schaumburg Road, behind an unassuming strip-mall facade, the air smells of cumin and cardamom. Trolleys roll out of Patel Brothers heavy with okra and methi, and next door a tandoor breathes heat into the afternoon. This is the everyday geography of the Indians in Schaumburg, a community that turned a planned, prosperous suburb thirty miles northwest of the Loop into one of the most consequential South Asian centres of the American Midwest.
The Place
Schaumburg sits in Cook County, in the band of affluent suburbs that fan out along Interstate 90 between Chicago and the Fox River. It is a place built almost entirely on purpose. When residents incorporated the village in 1956, fewer than 130 people lived there.
What followed was one of the great suburban growth stories in the country. The village expanded by roughly 400 percent between 1970 and 2000, anchored by retail, corporate offices and good schools. Today around 77,000 people live here, and nearly a quarter of them are Asian, a share far above the Illinois average.
Schaumburg is orderly and green, a town of cul-de-sacs, office parks and a manufactured town square. For tens of thousands of Indian families, it became the version of the American suburb they had imagined from afar.
How It Became Indian
The story of Indians in Schaumburg cannot be told without two engines that made the village what it is: a shopping mall and a technology company.
Woodfield, Motorola and a corporate corridor
Woodfield Mall opened on 9 September 1971. Built jointly by Sears and Marshall Field’s, and named for former Sears chairman Robert Wood and Marshall Field, it was for a time the largest shopping mall in America, with close to 190 stores by 1973 (Woodfield Mall, Wikipedia).
The mall pulled jobs, roads and people toward Schaumburg. Then in 1976 Motorola moved its headquarters to the village, eventually building a sprawling campus across I-90 from Woodfield. A corporate corridor took shape along the interstate, dense with engineering, telecommunications and consulting firms.
That corridor needed engineers. By the late 1980s and 1990s, as India’s IT revolution sent a generation of graduates abroad on F-1 and H-1B visas, the northwest suburbs of Chicago offered exactly what they were trained for: software, hardware and systems work within commuting distance of family-sized homes.
The timing was almost perfect. The expansion of the H-1B programme, the scramble to fix the Y2K bug, and the boom in telecommunications all landed in the same decade. Schaumburg, ringed by office parks rather than factories, was hiring precisely the kind of worker India was producing in volume.
An engineer who arrived for a contract at one of the corridor’s firms could rent first, then buy, then sponsor a sibling or a spouse’s parents. Each arrival made the next one easier. The suburb filled not through a single wave but through thousands of small, deliberate household decisions.
From Devon Avenue to the suburbs
The first Indian Chicago had been an urban one. For decades the heart of the community lay on Devon Avenue in West Rogers Park, a dense ribbon of sari shops, sweet stalls and grocers on the city’s North Side.
As families grew and incomes rose, many followed the classic American arc outward. They wanted bigger houses, garages, quiet streets and, above all, the schools. Schaumburg, with its strong public districts and easy highway access, became a natural landing place for those leaving the city behind.
The grocers followed the families. When Patel Brothers, the Gujarati-founded chain that had become an institution on Devon Avenue, opened on East Schaumburg Road, it signalled that the suburb was no longer an outpost. It was a destination of its own.
A second Indian Chicago
By the 2000s a distinct South Asian world had taken root in Schaumburg. Telugu-speaking software professionals, Gujarati entrepreneurs and families from across India filled the subdivisions around Roselle and Schaumburg Roads.
Restaurants opened to feed them. Temples in the wider Chicago area gave them places to worship. Cultural organisations multiplied, until the village began to host some of the largest Indian-American gatherings in the Midwest. What had once been a single grocery run from the city had become, within a generation, a community with its own institutions, in the way that Edison in New Jersey and Cupertino in California did on the coasts.
The character of this suburban Indian world differs from the older urban one. There is no single crowded high street here, no continuous wall of shopfronts. Instead the community is dispersed across subdivisions and stitched together by a handful of nodes: a grocery plaza, a banquet hall, a weekend temple drive, a community centre. You have to know where to look. But once you do, the density is unmistakable.
The Landmarks
Patel Brothers, 873 E Schaumburg Road. The anchor of Schaumburg’s so-called Little India, this branch of the famous Gujarati-founded grocery chain stocks everything from fresh okra and methi to spices, sweets and freshly baked naan. For many suburban families it replaced the weekend pilgrimage down to Devon Avenue.
Raj Palace, 855 E Schaumburg Road. A few doors from Patel Brothers, Raj Palace serves North Indian cooking built on the same spices sold next door: cardamom, cumin, mustard and fresh ginger and garlic. Its owner once described the little run of shops simply as “pretty much, you know, like Little India.”
National India Hub, 930 National Parkway. Inaugurated on 15 June 2024, this 110,000-square-foot centre is billed as the largest Indian community service centre in the United States. Founded by Harish Kolasani, it houses more than sixty service organisations under one roof, from healthcare and mental-health support to children’s education and senior recreation.
Annapurna Simply Vegetarian, Schaumburg. A suburban branch of the well-known Devon Avenue vegetarian kitchen, Annapurna brings street-food favourites like dahi puri, crisp shells heaped with chickpeas, tamarind, yoghurt and chutney, to families who once had to drive into the city for them.
Woodfield Mall, 5 Woodfield Mall. The retail giant that built modern Schaumburg has itself become a stage for Indian life. In recent years it has hosted Diwali celebrations with fashion shows, music and food, a sign of how thoroughly the festival has entered the suburban mainstream.
Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago, 10915 Lemont Road, Lemont. Founded as an organisation in 1977 and opened to the public on 4 July 1986, the temple complex on a hilltop in Lemont serves the entire metropolitan area. Its Rama and Ganesha-Shiva-Durga shrines, community centre and vegetarian cafeteria draw Schaumburg families south for weddings, festivals and worship (Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago).
The Schaumburg Road shops, East Schaumburg Road. Beyond the grocers and restaurants, the strip has gathered the supporting cast of immigrant life: a travel agency, a beauty salon and other small businesses serving an Indian and Pakistani clientele. Together they make the everyday errands of a community possible without leaving the suburb.
Where They Came From
Schaumburg’s Indians are not from any single corner of the subcontinent, and that breadth is part of the story. The community draws heavily on Gujarat, whose entrepreneurial families built much of the grocery and motel economy that knit Indian America together, and on the Telugu-speaking south, whose engineers powered the IT migration of the 1990s and 2000s.
Many arrived first as students on F-1 visas, then stayed on H-1B work permits in the technology and consulting firms of the I-90 corridor. Others came through family reunification, joining relatives who had already established themselves nearby.
The result is a pan-Indian suburb where Diwali, Independence Day and regional festivals are all observed, and where Tamil, Telugu, Gujarati, Hindi and Punjabi are spoken across the same school car parks.
That mix sets Schaumburg apart from older enclaves built around a single region or language. A Gujarati grocer, a Telugu software lead and a Tamil-speaking doctor may live on the same street and send their children to the same school, sharing a broad Indian identity that sharpens around food, festivals and cricket more than around any one mother tongue.
Schaumburg Today
The clearest measure of the community is in the schools. In Schaumburg Community Consolidated School District 54, which ranks among the top districts in Illinois, roughly a quarter of students are now Asian, a category in which Indian families are heavily represented. The older children move on to Township High School District 211 campuses such as Schaumburg High School.
The cultural calendar has grown to match. The National India Hub now hosts a large annual Diwali Mela, and Schaumburg has become the staging ground for India Fest, an Independence Day celebration that has drawn thousands and parades dozens of community organisations through the suburb. Cricket pitches, dance academies and language classes fill the weekends.
It is not a self-contained ethnic enclave in the old urban sense. Schaumburg’s Indian life is woven into a thoroughly suburban one, of soccer practice and office parks and trips to Woodfield. But the density of grocers, temples within reach, restaurants and institutions makes it, alongside neighbouring Naperville, one of the twin capitals of Indian Chicago’s suburban age.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Indians live in Schaumburg, Illinois?
Schaumburg has a population of around 77,000, of which close to a quarter is Asian, a share well above the Illinois average. Indian families form a substantial part of that Asian population, making the Indians in Schaumburg one of the larger South Asian communities in the Chicago suburbs.
Where is Schaumburg’s Little India?
The informal Little India sits along East Schaumburg Road, centred on a strip that includes Patel Brothers grocery at 873 E Schaumburg Road and the Raj Palace restaurant at 855 E Schaumburg Road, along with travel agencies, salons and other shops serving the Indian and Pakistani community.
Why did Indians settle in Schaumburg?
The Indians in Schaumburg were drawn by the technology and consulting jobs along the Interstate 90 corridor, anchored by Motorola’s arrival in 1976, and by the village’s highly regarded public schools. Many were engineers who came on H-1B visas during India’s IT boom and chose the suburb for its space and stability.
Is there a Hindu temple near Schaumburg?
The main regional temple is the Hindu Temple of Greater Chicago in Lemont, opened to the public in 1986, which serves the whole metropolitan area with shrines to Rama, Ganesha, Shiva and Durga. Schaumburg families travel there for festivals, worship and weddings.
What is the National India Hub in Schaumburg?
The National India Hub, at 930 National Parkway, is a 110,000-square-foot community centre that opened on 15 June 2024. Founded by Harish Kolasani, it houses more than sixty service organisations and hosts cultural events including a large annual Diwali Mela.
How does Schaumburg compare to Devon Avenue?
Devon Avenue in West Rogers Park was the original urban heart of Indian Chicago, a dense street of shops and restaurants. Schaumburg represents the community’s suburban chapter, where families moved for larger homes and stronger schools, and where the grocers and restaurants eventually followed them out from the city.
If your family’s story passed through Schaumburg, or any of the places Indians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a village in Gujarat or a city in Andhra Pradesh, to a brick house off Roselle Road and a weekly run to Patel Brothers, to wherever you are now.