Fuller Park

Located between the Rock Island Railroad Metra lines to the east and the Chicago & Western Indiana Railroad to the west, Fuller Park is less than a half mile wide and is one of Chicago's smallest community areas. The neighborhood, which gained popularity in the years after the Chicago Fire, was dealt a one-two punch that it has had a hard time recovering from beginning in 1950. The first of these, the construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway, had a profound effect on the overall landscape of the neighborhood. While the expressway provided a direct link from Fuller Park to Chicago's downtown, it also ate up a good portion of land, displaced more than a third of the area's residents, and essentially divided the neighborhood into two parts. Production at the nearby Union Stockyards was also beginning to slow down around the same time. Many neighborhood residents were employed in the stockyards, and the decline of the stockyards negatively impacted the economy of this already hurting community.