Homes for sale in
Calumet Park.

Calumet Park began as an appendage of neighboring Blue Island. Two to three hundred ethnically mixed residents, who originally called their settlement Caswell, incorporated as the village of DeYoung in 1912. Polish immigrants soon gained control of the village and renamed it, first to Burr Oak and then to Calumet Park in 1925, a name drawn from the Native American calumet, or ceremonial pipe. During Prohibition the village saw bootlegging and gambling activity that generated revenue for the small town.

The village stayed small, with about 1,593 residents in 1940, until the post-World War II era reshaped it. Interstate 57 was cut through the community, dividing it in two but giving residents direct access to the Loop, which fueled a building boom of small brick houses and pushed the population to 10,069 by 1970. As it grew it became close-knit, anchored by Seven Holy Founders Church and the Calumet Park Recreation Association, which built a public swimming pool and a small library in 1964. The community shifted from predominantly white to predominantly Black within a generation, and in 1996 it elected Buster Porch as its first African American mayor.