Homes for sale in
Harvey.

The land that became Harvey traces to an 1871 to 1872 syndicate that platted the South Lawn community, and a railway grade built in 1874 for the Grand Trunk Western Railroad helped spur early industrial development. In 1889 Turlington W. Harvey, a Chicago lumber baron and close associate of evangelist Dwight Moody, made large land purchases that he transferred to the Harvey Land Association. On April 12, 1890, local voters incorporated the new town as one of the temperance towns, intended as a model community built on Christian values and patterned after the company town of Pullman. The town took the Harvey name to honor both Turlington Harvey and Harvey Hopkins, who had established the first significant local industry, a mowing machine factory, in 1880. The village was elevated to city status by referendum on April 15, 1895, and a public library was established in 1903.

Heavy industry dominated Harvey's economy for most of its history. Major employers included the Whiting Corporation, which operated in Harvey from 1894 until 2000 making cupola furnaces, overhead cranes, and locomotive repair equipment, along with American Stove, Bliss and Laughlin cold-rolled steel, Wyman-Gordon, and Allis-Chalmers, which had acquired the Buda Engine Company in 1953. Sinclair Oil opened a research laboratory in Harvey in 1948, and the city reached its peak population around 1980. Like other Rust Belt communities, Harvey was hit hard by deindustrialization and the restructuring of the steel and similar industries, which drove losses in jobs and population. The Dixie Square Mall, opened in 1966 and closed in 1978, became nationally known as the filming site of the car-chase scene in The Blues Brothers.