Norwood Park is one of the 77 Chicago community areas. It encompasses the smaller neighborhoods of Big Oaks, Norwood Park East, Norwood Park West, Old Norwood Park, Oriole Park, and Union Ridge. The community area contains the oldest extant building in Chicago, the Noble–Seymour–Crippen House, built in 1833 and greatly expanded in 1868. Organized in 1873 as a township from the adjacent townships of Jefferson, Leyden, Niles, and Maine, and named after Henry Ward Beecher's 1868 novel Norwood, or Village Life in New England (With the "Park" added to account for another post office in Illinois with the Norwood name), Norwood Park was incorporated as a village in 1874 and annexed to Chicago on November 7, 1893.