Fuller Park

Fuller Park is number 37 out of Chicago’s 77 neighborhood divisions. It is named after a local park in the area called Fuller Park, which got its name from the Chief Justice of the United States, Melville Weston Fuller. It is a very small neighborhood spanning a total area of 0.71 square miles (1.84 km2).

Fuller Park hosts plenty of entertainment spots for the locals; there are plenty of options for dining, including the Louisiana Famous Fried Chicken. Shopping centers and grocery stores are also within walking distance in this relatively small community. Fuller Park has the most churches per 100,000 people of any Chicago neighborhood. The area also has plenty of sidewalks and parking lots for the locals. Residents of Fuller Park comment that the yards are well-kept, the streets are well-lit, and there is a holiday spirit to the neighborhood. 

The area also provides moderate commuting opportunities to the residents. It is conveniently located 5 miles (8.0 km) from the downtown Chicago Loop. Traveling via train takes seven minutes to travel from the neighborhood to Chicago’s business hub. A direct bus runs between State and Harrison/Ida B Wells Drive to State and 42nd Street.

Map

Fuller Park is surrounded on the north and south by Pershing Road and Garfield Boulevard, respectively. The Dan Ryan Expressway and Metra’s Rock Island District commuter rail line are east of the neighborhood. In contrast, the Chicago & Western Indiana Railroad lies westwards of Fuller Park. Guaranteed Rate Field (previously U.S. Cellular Field), where the Chicago White Sox play, is also directly south of Fuller Park.

The neighborhood is part of the 60609 zip code.

Population

According to the 2020 census, there are a total of 2,567 people living in the Fuller Park neighbourhood. 95.2% of these individuals are Native Americans, while 5.0% are foreign migrants. 

Fuller Park is the Chicago neighborhood that has seen the most population loss in the sixty years since the city’s maximum population in 1950 to 2010. Its population had dropped by 83 percent, from 17,000 in 1950 to around 3,000 in 2010. Fuller Park also had the highest “hardship index” (a composite of different social and economic variables) of all Chicago neighborhoods in 2013. 

The people of Irish ancestry moved to this neighborhood after the Civil War. An increasing number of culturally diverse people started shifting to this area afterwards. One can see people of different ethnicities residing in the narrow strip of Fuller Park even today.

According to the Chicago Metropolitan Area for Planning’s statistics, Fuller Park consists predominantly of blacks (90.3%) and Hispanics or Latinos (5.6%). The whites come third in number at 3.6%, with Asians and people of other sectors tying at 0.3%.

Real Estate

The Fuller Park neighborhood comprises 1,140 households with an average household size of 2.2 people. The majority of the houses are renter-occupied (76.8%), while the owners occupy only 23.6% of the properties.

16.2% of the housing units are single-family, detached, while most houses (33.6%) are two units. There is also a considerable percentage of three and four-unit houses (12.1%) in the Fuller Park neighborhood.

There are plenty of recreational sites in the Fuller Park community like Fuller Park and Malus Park. These parks offer year-round activities to the locals, including tennis and basketball courts, free libraries and picnic and grilling areas. This 10.5-acre parkland also has a fitness center, 2 gymnasiums, an auditorium and meeting rooms for the residents. 

Eden Place Nature Center, a three-acre environmental awareness and urban ecology center in Fuller Park, is also located in the neighborhood. Inaugurated by a group of community activists in 2003, the center was constructed on Brownfield property that was previously abandoned. The center has garnered numerous plaudits, including praise from First Lady Michelle Obama, recognition from Illinois Governor Pat Quinn as an “environmental hero,” and inclusion in a PBS documentary on neighborhood environmental efforts in large cities.

The market value of the neighborhood’s property experienced a 4.9% hike in January 2022; Fuller Park houses have an average market listing price of $75K. This amount is significantly less than the Chicago average of $335K. 

Schools

The literacy rate in Fuller Park isn’t commendable. 21.4% of individuals have less than a high school diploma, while the majority of people (42.2%) have a high school diploma. 16.8% of Fuller Park residents have attended college but don’t have a degree, while 9.8% have an Associate’s degree. Bachelor’s and postgraduate degree holders constitute the least percentage, 6.5% and 3.3%, respectively.

Nevertheless, there are some good schools for the children to attend. Here is a list of some top-ranked educational institutions in Fuller Park:

1- Hendricks Elementary Community Academy

Student population: 207 students in grades PK, K-8

Teacher-student ratio: 10-to-1

2- Phillips Academy High School

Student population: 599 students in grades 9 to 12

Teacher-student ratio: 13-to-1

3- Noble Street College Prep

Student population: 692 students in grades 9 to 12

Teacher-student ratio: 15-to-1

4- LaSalle II Magnet Elementary School

Student population: 546 students in grades PK, K-8

Teacher-student ratio: 14-to-1

5- Walt Disney Magnet School

Student population: 1,503 students in grades PK, K-8

Teacher-student ratio: 18-to-1

6- McDade Classical School

Student population: 176 students in grades K-6

Teacher-student ratio: 18-to-1

7- Stone Scholastic Academy

Student population: 616 students in grades K-8

Teacher-student ratio: 16-to-1

8- Northside College Preparatory High School

Student population: 1,078 students in grades 9 to 12

Teacher-student ratio: 18-to-1

Crime Ratings

With a crime rate of 13,456 per 100,000 people, Fuller Park was the most unsafe of Chicago’s 77 community districts in 2012. It lies in District 09, where one murder case was reported from February 14th to 20th. The residents of Fuller Park reported 11 robbery and 7 burglary cases in the local police stations. Theft and motor vehicle theft cases were recorded as 10 and 12, respectively.

History

Before being annexed by Chicago in 1889, Fuller Park was part of Lake Township. People of Irish heritage settled in the Fuller Park neighborhood after the Civil War, with many of them working for the railways or the stockyards. The Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railroad built a railroad roundhouse in the community in 1871. When the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 had ended, the city enacted stricter construction standards, and developers built beyond the city lines, notably in what is now Fuller Park, to avoid the costly building standards. Frame buildings at 4463 South Wells and 4233 South Princeton are among the 1870s’ surviving structures. At 5029–5045 S. Princeton, Chicago architect Henry Newhouse designed and constructed a succession of modest Queen Anne–style houses in the mid-1880s.

After that, the Town of Lake was acquired by Chicago in 1889. In the 1890s, Germans and Austrians accompanied the Irish as residents, and after 1900, African Americans began to arrive. A public health campaign among settlement house leaders in the early 1900s sought a plan to provide people with access to sunshine, air, and exercise. As a result, Fuller Park opened in 1912, with a field house constructed by Daniel H. Burnham and Company in the classical Greek revival style. 

The park was completely renovated in 1985 at the cost of $300,000. The rose garden was refurbished, new playground equipment was constructed, walkways were built, utility wires were buried, and picnic tables were replaced. The park’s four corner gates were paved with bricks etched with the names of the contributors. The city decided to let Community Resources for Children, a non-profit organization, sell the bricks as a fundraiser in the early 1990s.

Furthermore, in the early 1990s, a shopping mall was developed between the Dan Ryan Expressway and the Metra rails, immediately west of the Robert Taylor Homes and near Garfield Boulevard. 

African Americans, Mexicans, and Slavic laborers had displaced Irish and German employees by 1920. Fuller Park has traditionally been an impoverished neighborhood: in 1950, 24% of residents lacked access to indoor toilets. The Dan Ryan Expressway overran and separated the hamlet in the 1950s, displacing one-third of the inhabitants. The local economy was also collapsing in the 1950s when transportation and interstate highways rendered the centralized Union Stock Yard obsolete.

The Union Stock Yard was in decline during the 1960s, eventually closing in 1971 and resulting in the loss of many jobs in the stockyards region. Hundreds of southern African Americans traveled north each year simultaneously, but they met an isolated housing market that limited them to the city’s South and West Sides. Fuller Park’s population shifted from 80% white in 1945 to 97% black in 1970, with the overall population dropping from 17,174 in 1950 to 4,364 in 1990. Between 1975 and 1990, the stockyards area lost 41.5 percent of its jobs, including roughly 45 percent of all manufacturing positions.

Since 1969, no new public or private housing has been erected in the neighborhood. The city issued only 12 commercial development permits over the same time period. In the 1980s, Fuller Park received the fewest bank loans for house improvements of any Chicago neighborhood.

While many lifelong residents are unable or unwilling to leave, rental housing accounts for more than two-thirds of the community’s 2,000 units. The unemployment rate is almost 40%, and many households are headed by single moms. Nonetheless, the Fuller Park Neighbors’ efforts to recover the neighborhood’s rich architectural past continue. The park, featuring its centerpiece fountain, courtyard, and field house, is being renovated as part of these efforts.