• Chicago State University (former ICRR roundhouse site)
• 95th Street/Chicago State University Metra Station
• Perry Public School
• The Burnside Triangle rail corridor

Burnside takes its name from Ambrose Burnside, the Union Civil War general who later served as an official of the Illinois Central Railroad, which built a station here at 95th Street after the war. The surrounding swampland north of Lake Calumet stayed largely undeveloped until the 1890s, when the ICRR built a roundhouse and repair shop at 95th and South Park Boulevard and developer W.V. Jacobs subdivided the surrounding triangle into housing for the railroad workers who followed — Hungarian, Polish, Italian, and Ukrainian immigrants drawn by jobs at the Burnside Shops and the nearby Pullman Company.

That rail geography still defines the neighborhood today. Chicago State University now occupies the old roundhouse site, served by the 95th Street/Chicago State University stop on the Metra Electric Line. Perry Public School, one of the only city institutions built inside Burnside's tight boundaries, anchored the small community for generations. The neighborhood itself is still hemmed in on all sides by the same three rail lines that shaped it, a geography locals still call "the Triangle."

MY-NHD's Burnside collection is built for a neighborhood defined by its edges — bounded by rail on every side, and shaped from the start by the people who kept those trains running.