Cook County, 19 miles south of the Loop. In 1889, Turlington Harvey, a wealthy Chicago lumberman and banker, organized a real estate syndicate to develop the industrial suburb of Harvey, Illinois. The Harvey Land Association advertised in the national religious press, promoting the suburb as a low-key community offering steady work for a skilled labor force. To achieve this goal, the association encouraged several manufacturers to establish factories in the city. The tracks of the Illinois Central Railroad separated the residential and industrial parts of the community.
The founders envisioned Harvey as a model city, a combination of capitalism and Christianity. Investors provided residents with high quality city services similar to the neighboring Pullman. Unlike Pullman, however, Harvey encouraged homeownership by offering potential residents a variety of house plans. By 1900, the town had 5,395 residents, a bank, and 11 industrial enterprises. In 1895, however, the residents voted by a small majority to license saloons, putting an end to the temperance experiment.
During the first decades of the twentieth century, industrialists and local merchants worked in tandem. Thanks to their efforts, Harvey created an excellent public school system, centered on Thornton High School. In the 1920s, industrialist Frederick Ingalls founded a community hospital whose board brought together prestigious members of the community. The development of the Young Men’s Christian Association also brought together the interests of outsiders to industry and the local community.
During the 1920s, Harvey’s population grew from 9216 to 16374. The development created a modest downtown and housing for industrial workers of various classes, as well as upscale residences for local merchants and white-collar workers traveling to Chicago. To a large extent, Harvey remained an evangelical Protestant community. The first Roman Catholic church, Ascension, founded in 1899, was a small, predominantly Irish parish. Poles attended mass in nearby Poznan until 1914, when they established St. John the Baptist. Despite the growth of the Catholic community, Protestants retained control of the city through the adoption of a commission form of government in 1912, which replaced county-elected aldermen with commonly elected commissioners.
In the 1930s, Harvey experienced an economic crisis. Two local banks closed, and the city could not maintain basic services because most residents could not pay their property taxes. However, the high school basketball team, led by Lou Boudreau, became the state champion in an incredible winning streak.
Development resumed after World War II. In 1948, Sinclair Oil established a 38-acre technology-oriented research and development center to develop new products. By 1960, Harvey’s population had reached 29,071, with many residents employed by local businesses. In 1966, the Dixie Square shopping center opened on the western edge of town, containing 41 stores.
From 1960 to 1980, Harvey changed dramatically as the African American population grew from 7 percent to 66 percent. This change led to racial violence at Thornton High School and to race riots in 1969. At the same time, Harvey lost its industrial and commercial base. The closure of Dixie Square became a symbol of the city’s worsening social problems. Many residents who had received HUD loans could not pay their mortgage payments, leading to abandoned homes. The crime, unemployment, and poverty rates in Harvey were among the highest in the suburbs. The city tried to redevelop industrial sites and improve its reputation as a residential city.