St. Simeon Mirotočivi, a Serbian Orthodox church located in East Side.The Illinois–Indiana State Line Boundary Marker near the end of Avenue G.
East Side, until recently, was socially and economically dominated by the Calumet River and the jobs it supported. In fact, the community got its name from its location on the east side of the Calumet River, not because the neighborhood is located on the eastern side of the city.[3] A cluster of riverside docks and slips allowed materials to be loaded and unloaded onto adjacent railroad lines, and the river itself was lined with steel mills. Republic Steel began operations along the river in 1901. The Republic mill was the site of frequent union unrest, culminating in the Memorial Day Massacre of 1937 and the successful drive by the United Steelworkers to organize the Chicago mills. The State Line Generating Plant was built in 1929 in bordering Hammond, Indiana, and closed in 2014.
Many of the neighborhood's residents in this period were families of Slovenian, Croatian and Serbian heritage, who had emigrated from Europe to work in the steel mills and take related jobs. Especially after unionization, the neighborhood became a stronghold of the Chicago Democratic Party machine of Mayor Richard J. Daley. The neighborhood's longtime alderman, Edward Vrdolyak, became a noted Chicago "power broker" after the senior Daley's death. Today, the area is largely Hispanic.
In the 1950s, East Side was divided in two by the Chicago Skyway. The riverside steel mills and heavy industries went into serious decline between the 1970s and the 2000s, and are no longer the mainstay of the neighborhood.[4]
Qualities
Much of East Side's homes are the Chicago-style bungalow, and the southeast portion of East Side contains many newer homes built after 1980. Most of the neighborhood was built north of 108th Street by the 1930s, with expansion to the south occurring in the 1940s and 1950s as new industries opened up along the nearby Calumet River. There are proposed plans to expand East Side's Calumet Park and Beach, and to extend the existing lakefront bicycle path to new lakefront parklands in adjacent South Chicago, connecting Calumet Park to Rainbow Beach, the South Shore Cultural Center, and Jackson Park.
Boundaries
East Side is bounded by Calumet River to the North and West, State Line Road (4100 E) to the East, and 126th street (12600 S) to the South.
Economy
There are approximately 1,560 jobs in the East Side community area.[5] East Side has a "hardship index" of 53.9 based on its levels of unemployment, education, per capita income level, poverty, crowded housing and dependency. This ranks in the middle of Chicago community areas.[6] Poverty is roughly on-par with the Chicago citywide average, but crime is somewhat higher than average. The headquarters for the Port of Chicago, which operates Foreign Trade Zone #22, is located at 3600 East 95th Street.
Frank Murphy - pole vaulter who competed in the 1912 Summer Olympics.
William A. Rowan - member of the Chicago City Council (1927-1942) and U.S. Representative from Illinois (1943-1947). He resided at 10741 South Avenue B while a member of Congress.[11][12]
Edward Vrdolyak - lawyer and longtime member of the Chicago City Council who was head of the Cook County Democratic Party before running unsuccessfully for Mayor of Chicago as a member of the Illinois Solidarity Party and later as a Republican.[14]
