Aurora

The Galena Hotel, originally known as the Fox River House, is a historic hotel in Aurora, Illinois. It is the oldest hotel still standing in the... city. By the 1850s, Aurora was a major manufacturing and milling center in the Fox River valley. The Chicago-Galena State Road, which carried stagecoaches from Chicago to northwestern Illinois, passed through town and provided a means of commerce. The first Fox River House was constructed in 1857 along this road for A. N. and G. Pierce. A fire destroyed the hotel in 1860. E. D. Huntoon purchased the vacant lot two years later to rebuild the hotel. The hotel was known as an important local gathering place. Huntoon ran the hotel for twenty-six years until selling it. The new owner renamed the hotel the Northwestern Hotel in 1888. It was renamed to the Grand Hotel when sold to a Mrs. Jones in 1907. The Koummoutseas family purchased the hotel in 1961 and again renamed it the Galena Hotel. It is the oldest hotel still standing in Aurora. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on May 4, 1976. The structure is four stories tall plus a basement. The brick and limestone were locally fired and mined.
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Andrea Lynn Evans is an American Emmy-nominated actress. Evans is most recognized for her portrayal of Tina Lord on the ABC soap opera One Life to... Live, a role she played from 1978-81 and 1985–90, returning from June 11, 2008 to November 25, 2008., and finally on September 27, 2011 to November 15, 2011. She also appeared on the soap operas The Young and the Restless, The Bold and the Beautiful, and Passions. As a child, Evans appeared in beauty pageants, and later regional theater and commercials. She graduated early from high school and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. While there Evans was cast as an extra in the 1978 Brian De Palma film The Fury, and the same year in the miniseries The Awakening Land. Casting director Mary Jo Slater soon got Evans the role of Tina on One Life to Live, where she stayed until 1981. Evans then went on to portray Patty Williams, Paul Williams' little sister and Jack Abbott's wife, on The Young and the Restless from 1983-84.
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Carl Thomas is an American R&B singer. Thomas attended Aurora East High School. Thomas sang around Chicago and became a member of The Formula.... He branched out however, and traveled to New York where he sang at clubs during open-mic nights. One such performance caught the eye of Sean "Puffy" Combs who signed Thomas to Bad Boy Entertainment in 1997. With the single "I Wish" released in late 1999, topping the R&B charts for six consecutive weeks, creating strong interest Emotional his debut album was released April 18, 2000. On the strength of this single, and the album's other singles, "Summer Rain" at #18 and the title track "Emotional" at #8 on the R&B charts: The album was certified platinum with over 1 million in sales. Later rapper Jay-Z's "I Just Wanna Love U " featuring Pharrell sampled Thomas' "I Wish" on his 2000 album The Dynasty: Roc La Familia. His second album, Let's Talk About It, was released March 23, 2004. Although two singles She Is and Let's Talk About It were released they charted poorly.
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John Scot Barrowman is a Scottish–American actor, singer, dancer, musical theatre performer, writer and television personality. Born in... Glasgow, he grew up in Illinois following his family's emigration to the U.S. Encouraged by his high school teachers, Barrowman studied performing arts at the United States International University in San Diego before landing the role of Billy Crocker in Cole Porter's Anything Goes in London's West End. Since his debut in professional theatre, Barrowman has played lead roles in various musicals both in the West End and on Broadway, including Miss Saigon, The Phantom of the Opera, Sunset Boulevard and Matador. After appearing in Sam Mendes' production of The Fix, he was nominated for the 1998 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Actor in a Musical and, in the early 2000s, returned to the role of Billy Crocker in the revival of Anything Goes. His most recent West End credit was in the 2009 production of La Cage aux Folles. Aside from his theatrical career, Barrowman has appeared in various films including the musical biopic De-Lovely and musical comedy The Producers .
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Stana Katic is a Canadian film and television actress. She is best known for her portrayal of Detective Kate Beckett on ABC's Castle. Katic was born... in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, to a Serbian father and Croatian mother, who both immigrated from Yugoslavia. Her father is from Vrlika, and her mother is from the surrounding area of Sinj. Katic later moved with her family to Aurora, Illinois. She spent the following years moving back and forth between Canada and the United States. After graduating from West Aurora High School in 1996, she studied acting at Chicago's Goodman School of Drama. She has four brothers and one sister. Katic played the character of Hana Gitelman in Heroes, Collette Stenger in 24 's season 5, and Jenny in the film Feast of Love starring Morgan Freeman. She also played Morgenstern in Frank Miller's film The Spirit, Corrine Veneau in the Bond movie Quantum of Solace , and Simone Renoir in the third installment of The Librarian franchise, The Librarian: Curse of the Judas Chalice.
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Dave Johnston is a banjo and singer most notable for being a member of the progressive bluegrass group Yonder Mountain String Band. Johnston first... started learning the banjo during his years at the University of Illinois. The practice produced results; within one year, he was already playing concert. It was during this time that he met Jeff Austin, a future member of Yonder Mountain String Band. Johnston soon went on to form several short-lived musical groups including the Giblet Gravy and The Bluegrassholes, the latter of which collapsed after some band members wanted to complete college first, rather than play in a band. Believing he was in need of further musical development, he headed westward and ended up in Boulder, Colorado. Johnston later moved again, but this time to Nederland, Colorado, where Jeff Austin also lived. Johnston eventually met both Adam Aijala and Ben Kaufmann at a local club in Nederland, and went on to form the Yonder Mountain String Band with them and Jeff Austin in 1998.
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Paul Callistus Sereno is an American paleontologist from the University of Chicago who discovered several new dinosaur species on several... continents. He has conducted excavations at sites as varied as Inner Mongolia, Argentina, Morocco, and Niger. He is a professor at the University of Chicago and a National Geographic "explorer-in-residence." The son of a mail carrier and an art teacher at Prairie Elementary, Paul grew up in Naperville, Illinois and graduated from Naperville Central High School. Sereno's most widely publicized discovery is that of a nearly complete specimen of Sarcosuchus imperator at Gadoufaoua in the Tenere desert of Niger. Fossils described by Sereno or his team include: Dinosaurs Other fossil reptiles On August 14, 2008, it was revealed that Sereno had uncovered the large Stone Age cemetery Gobero in the Nigerien Sahara, and together with a team of archaeologists had worked on it the last eight years. He has been named one of People magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People . Dr.
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Phillip Edward Van Lear is an American actor. He plays corrections officer Louis Patterson on the show Prison Break. He has also played in various... other movies such as: Barbershop 2: Back in Business, Chicago Cab, Night of the Lawyers, A Family Thing and Thieves Quartet. He also starred alongside Oprah Winfrey, in the film There Are No Children Here, where he plays a thug and a vandal hell-bent on corrupting youth for his own personal gain. Van Lear was born in Aurora, Illinois.
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Sheila Scott-Wilkenson is a film actress.

Rae Ritke is a film actress.

Timothy Brennen is a film actor, producer and screenwriter.