Uptown Norman Rexford came to Chicago from
Charlotte, Vermont in 1835 and in 1836 became the first permanent settler of Blue Island when he established the Blue Island House near the intersection of present-day Western Avenue and Gregory Street just north of the Western Avenue bridge. Before Rexford built the Blue Island House he had constructed a four-room log cabin in the wilderness at the north end of the Blue Island ridge that he intended as a tavern for wayfarers, but after a year realized that the place was not likely to be profitable for him and began to look for another site where he might have more success. Although farther from
Fort Dearborn and the settlement at
Chicago (which by that time was incorporated and had a population of several thousand persons) by about , the new inn was better situated because it was located on the Wabash Road (in Blue Island now Western Avenue), which was then a part of the Vincennes trail that went from Chicago to
Vincennes, Indiana. It was considerably larger and more refined than Rexford's previous venture, being a two-and-a half-story white frame building that also had various outbuildings to accommodate the needs of his guests. Because it was a day's journey from Chicago, within a few years the inn became the nucleus for a group of businesses that catered to the soldiers, cattlemen (with their herds) and other travelers who arrived by
stagecoach or otherwise frequented the Vincennes trail. Events hosted by the inn frequently lasted until the small hours of the morning, requiring an overnight stay before guests returned the next morning to their homes and places of business in Chicago and the hinterland. Through the 1970s, Blue Island's
central business district ("uptown" to the locals) was regarded as an important regional commercial center, with stores such as
Woolworth's, Kline's,
Sears,
Montgomery Ward,
Spiegel and
Steak 'n Shake. Today, downtown Blue Island is better known for its antique stores, art galleries, ethnic delicatessens and fine dining. Much of this shift in business activity has been brought on by "
big box" development outside of town that space constraints make it impossible for uptown to accommodate. However, several local businesses have served the area for generations: DeMar's Restaurant, for example, opened its doors in 1950; Jebens Hardware was established in 1876; and Krueger Funeral Home was founded in 1858. In the 21st century, the city and a dedicated group of volunteers, working with the Metropolitan Planning Council of Chicago and the
Center for Neighborhood Technology devised the
Blue Island Plan for Economic Development, which addresses not only the commercial expansion of the historic uptown business district, but also the continued improvement of the housing stock and industrial base. The Blue Island Opera House was built by Blue Island's first mayor John L. Zacharias to replace the Robinson Block, which was destroyed by the Great Blue Island Fire of that year. The opera house was host to
vaudeville and
repertoire shows until 1913, when it became the Grand Theater and a venue for
motion pictures. In later years the building was home to the Blue Island
Sun-Standard newspaper and Kline's Department Store. Although the auditorium has been remodeled out of existence, the building, with its award-winning exterior restoration, today provides both commercial and office space to the historic "uptown" district. The building has been designated as a landmark by the Blue Island Historic Preservation Commission It was designed by the American/Canadian architect Hugh Griffith Jones, who also designed Blue Island's first Greenwood School (demolished) and a commercial building with a flat above (c. 1895, extant, also now a city landmark) for Albert and Emma Schmidt at 312 (now 13022) Western Avenue. The architect's drawings for the opera house were used by Jones in the package he prepared to justify his successful application for membership in the
Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.
Moraine Valley Community College operates a satellite facility uptown.
The Blue Island Market For many years on the first Thursday of every month, Western Avenue south of the canal and to the city limits on 139th Street was host to an open-air market, the Blue Island Market, more commonly known as Market Day. The market was a place where farmers from a wide area surrounding Blue Island came to town to sell their wares to each other and to the public at large. As the postcard image to the right shows, items offered included produce, farm equipment, and livestock, with a local band thrown in to provide entertainment. Market Day began sometime in the last quarter of the 19th century and lasted until May 1924, when it was closed by the city council after a gradual influx of peddlers offering shoddy merchandise discouraged farmer participation and the market was deemed a public nuisance.
Brickyards After it was discovered in the early 1850s that rich deposits of clay surrounded the ridge, Blue Island became the center of a significant
brick-making industry that lasted for over a century. In the early years, these efforts were small, with the bricks being made by hand and the turnout created mostly for local use, but by 1886 the Illinois Pressed Brick Company (organized in 1884) was employing about 80 men and using "steam power and the most approved machinery", which allowed them to produce 50,000 bricks per day. By 1900, the Clifton Brickyard alone—which had opened in 1883 under the name of Purington at the far northeast corner of the village In 1886, the Chicago architectural firm of
Adler and
Sullivan designed a large complex for the Wahl Brothers brickyard (the main building of which was ) on the west side of the Grand Trunk tracks south of 123rd street. These buildings had been demolished by 1935, and all of Blue Island's brickyards were re-purposed by the latter part of the mid-20th century. The larger ones for a while become
landfills, and Illinois Brick Company's yard 22 is now the site of the Meadows Golf Club.
The Portland question do not exist to this day, and several of those that were constructed elsewhere deviate significantly from the way they are charted here. The section of Portland north of the township boundary line (the phantom line in the middle of the map) and west of Division Street was included within the boundaries of the village when Blue Island incorporated as a village in 1872. Some sources state that the city of Blue Island was once officially (or commonly) known as Portland. This claim is erroneous. • Norman Rexford became the community's first permanent resident when he established the "Blue Island House" at the southern edge of the ridge in November 1836, where in 1838 he became the settlement's first postmaster. related the following: "The north end of the bench of land on which Blue Island stands was originally covered with a dense forest, and from Chicago, before the view was obstructed by buildings, this timber presented a blue appearance like smoke. Water was like-mirrored forth by the mirage which almost always prevailed, giving the timber the appearance of land surrounded by water, and it was from this circumstance that the hunters called it Blue Island, which name was perpetuated by my brother getting a Post Office located there, which was also called Blue Island – so much for the name." • On April 13, 1839, Peter Barton and his partners (who included
Gurdon Hubbard and
John H. Kinzie) registered the plat of "Portland" with the state of Illinois. Portland had been laid out on land purchased from the federal government adjacent to the settlement of Blue Island which was situated south of Vermont Street (more or less) and east of Wabash Road (what is now Western Avenue uptown, again, more or less). The
Little Calumet River ran through the center of the platted area, and its promoters felt with this advantage that it would become a prosperous river town. They used their influence to have the local post office name changed from Blue Island to Portland (a circumstance that as time went by would be a source of aggravation to the people of Blue Island), and on May 1, 1839, this was accomplished. The post office, however, wasn't located within the platted area of Portland since there were no buildings in which to operate it, but in fact was on contiguous property to the west at the Blue Island House. Portland was never incorporated – it existed for many years by and large only as a
plat of survey. No buildings of any consequence were erected there for nearly half a century. While some of the street names from Portland remain (although sometimes not entirely on their original courses), any of them that
were laid out (and in fact a majority of them never were) waited in most cases for many years until they were needed. About half of the area was eventually annexed within what would become the corporate boundaries of Blue Island as time went by, and significant other sections of it became parts of the villages of
Calumet Park and
Riverdale, the Joe Louis the Champ golf course, and unincorporated
Calumet Township. According to John Volp, whose family had lived in Blue Island since 1862: "'Portland' did not become a river town. Neither did the name 'Portland' ever come into general use. In spite of all the efforts of its promoters to popularize the locality the people preferred to live on top of the hill and call the place 'Blue Island'..." recognizing the existence of Portland, but not as an incorporated entity. (Blue Island would not officially incorporate for almost another three decades – see below.) • On April 20, 1850, the post office name was changed to "
Worth", this time to coincide with the name of the township in which it was located. • The
Rock Island Railroad inaugurated service to the community in 1852. From the Chicago
Journal, May 27, 1852: "The work of laying ties upon this Road (sic) between Chicago and Blue Island will be commenced next week. Mr. H. Fuller... will complete the work in the course of ten or fifteen days. Two hundred and thirty-six men are now employed on it." In 2009, its owners received the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Award from Landmarks Illinois for the outstanding quality of the restoration work performed on the house during the previous four years. Because of its long history, the
built environment of Blue Island exhibits a broad range of
architectural styles and periods. Although largely built in the
vernacular tradition, the works of notable architects, including
Adler and Sullivan,
George Maher,
August Fiedler,
Oscar Wenderoth,
Robert Seyfarth,
Perkins and Will, and
Bertrand Goldberg, are featured throughout the community. The Bell/Hendriks house was designed and construction in 1947 for the Prize Homes competition which was sponsored and promoted by the
Chicago Tribune, and several thousand persons toured the "modified Colonial" home when it was built, with many of the visitors' comments reported in the newspaper during the month the house was open to the public for tours. Opening ceremonies were broadcast over
WGN radio, and plans of the house and of the other twenty-three prize-winning designs from the competition were the subject of an exhibition at the
Art Institute of Chicago the previous year. The oldest section of Blue Island's city hall, built in 1891, was designed by
Edmund R. Krause, who was the architect of the Majestic Building (along with its recently restored
Bank of America Theatre) in Chicago's
Loop The first buildings of Northwest Gas, Light and Coke Company in Blue Island were designed by
Holabird & Roche in 1902 (demolished). The city also has 22 houses known to have been built with mail-order kits sold by
Sears Modern Homes. There is one building in Blue Island listed on the
National Register of Historic Places, 27 are included as part of the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency's Historic Architectural and Archaeology Resources Geographic Information System, and 41 individual buildings and one district have been designated as local landmarks by the Blue Island Historic Preservation Commission. The city's newest development is Fay's Point, a gated community built at the confluence of the Calumet River and the Calumet Sag Channel on the site of the home of Jerome Fay, who had settled there in 1850. The
Libby, McNeill and Libby Building, which operated as
Libby, McNeill and Libby's main Midwest processing plant from 1918 to 1968, is a prominent historic remnant of Blue Island's industrial heritage, located three blocks south of downtown Blue Island on Western Avenue.
The American House One of the oldest buildings in Blue Island, the American House was built in 1839 as the courthouse for
Lake County, Indiana—a function it never actually had the chance to serve, as the county seat was moved from Liverpool to
Crown Point in 1840. In 1844, the building was disassembled, sent by raft up the
Little Calumet River, and reassembled in Blue Island. Once in Blue Island, the building originally stood on the west side of Western Avenue north of Vermont Street, (where Three Sisters Antique Mall stands today). It was popular among Southerners who used it as a summer boarding house and with the contractors who built the feeder canal for the
Illinois and Michigan Canal. After the
Civil War it was used as a home for retired soldiers. Although it was built after the invention of
balloon framing, the building is constructed using the
timber framing method, evidence of which is still clearly visible in the basement and attic. However, while its
Greek Revival roots are discernible, the building is much remodeled and serves today as a private residence. Greek Revival was the architectural style of choice in the early years of Blue Island's history. Many of the buildings that remain from those days have been similarly remodeled, but some of the most well-preserved examples of the style, albeit in a vernacular form, can be seen either in the Walter P. Roche House on York Street or the Henry Schuemann House on Western Avenue. When the American House was dismantled in the 1890s, Jacob Link cut and relocated half of it to its current location on Collins Street, where he converted it into a residence. Wadhams sold the house along with all of the property on which it was located, which included the American House and all of the land between what is today Western Avenue, Maple Avenue, Burr Oak Avenue and Vermont Street to Joshua Palmer Young (1818–1889), who, by himself beginning in 1848 and in a partnership with John K. Rowley that was established in 1866, played an important role in the development of the Chicago communities of
Beverly Hills,
Morgan Park,
Near West Side,
Washington Heights and
Englewood, as well as the suburban communities of Blue Island, South Lawn (now
Harvey),
Homewood and
South Holland. Young operated the hotel for a time and was otherwise active in local affairs. He served from 1878–1880 as the president of the village board, and was a founder of the Congregational church (now Christ Memorial United Church of Christ). He was one of the incorporators, a director and secretary of the Chicago, Blue Island and Indiana Railroad Company (now part of the
Grand Trunk Railway), whose charter was approved by the state of Illinois on March 7, 1867. The house is listed on the
National Register of Historic Places and is included in the State of Illinois' Historic Architectural and Archaeology Resources Geographic Information System.
USS Blue Island Victory On December 28, 1944, 91 days after her keel was laid, the USS
Blue Island Victory was launched from the
Bethlehem-Fairfield Shipyard in
Baltimore, Maryland. Dubbed "the Ugly Duckling of the
merchant marine" by President
Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Victory ships were armed cargo ships that were built during
World War II to transport troops and supplies wherever in the world their services were required. Of the 550 or so built, 218 were named after American cities. The USS
Blue Island Victory was a type VC 2-S-AP2, which was long, wide, and had a
draft. It was equipped with a gun on the stern for enemy submarines, a
anti-aircraft gun, and a 20 mm cannon. The
Blue Island Victory served variously as a troop ship and as a cattle transport ship, and saw service in the
Korean War. It was scrapped in 1972.
City hall The oldest portion of Blue Island's city hall was built in 1891 and designed by Edmund R. Krause, a prominent Chicago architect who among other buildings designed the 20-story Majestic Theatre building in
Chicago's Loop at what is now 22 W. Monroe Street (the theater, whose interiors were designed by
Rapp and Rapp, has been
renamed several time in the last fifty years – most recently in 2015 when it became the
PrivateBank Theatre). An annex to city hall was built in 1925 according to plans by the Chicago architectural firm of Doerr, Lindquist and Doerr. The design for the annex was apparently a conscious effort to complement the post office building across the street and built using similar brick and a closely related architectural style, although not on as grand a scale. The Blue Island Post Office was designed by
Oscar Wenderoth and built in 1914. Wenderoth was associated with the building of many government buildings of the period, including the Senate and House Office Buildings in Washington, D.C. Beginning in the 1870s, the water supply for Blue Island was supplied by three
artesian wells, whose water was pumped by a windmill to a storage tank that sat on top of a high stone tower behind the City Hall building. The city began to receive its water from
Lake Michigan in August 1915 after the water from the wells began to acquire a gaseous odor whose source was apparently the Public Service Company whose facilities were located about a quarter mile to the southwest, and the tank was subsequently removed.
Religion Although religious gatherings have taken place in Blue Island almost since the community was founded in 1836, the first denominational services took place in 1850 with the founding of the Central Methodist Church (predecessor to today's Grace United Methodist Church).
Etymology at the Glenwood Stage showing the geological formation of Blue Island (middle lower right) protruding above the waters. The city of Blue Island occupies the lower quarter of the island and the surrounding plain in its vicinity. The north-central section of the city of Blue Island is located at the south end of a glacial
moraine that once was an island when the waters from
Lake Chicago covered the surrounding area at the former lake's Glenwood Stage. Early pioneers gave the ridge the name because at a distance it looked like an island set in a trackless
prairie sea. The blue color was attributed to atmospheric scattering or to blue flowers growing on the ridge. The Chicago
Democrat, February, 1834 described it: "Nearly south of this town and twelve miles [19 km] distant is Blue Island. This name is particularly appropriate. It is a table of land about six miles [10 km] long and an average of two miles [3.2 km] wide, of an oval form and rising some forty feet [12 m] out of an immense plain which surrounds it on every side. The sides and slopes of this table, as well as the table itself, are covered with a handsome growth of timber, forming a belt surrounding about four or five thousand acres of beautiful table land. In summer, the plain is covered with luxurious herbage. It is uninhabited, and when we visited it, from its stillness, loneliness, and quiet, we pronounced it a vast vegetable solitude. The ridge, when viewed from a distance, appears standing in an azure mist of vapor, hence the appellation 'Blue Island'." ==Geography==