• Calumet Park and Beach
• Eggers Grove Forest Preserve
• Chicago Skyway
• Former Republic Steel plant site

East Side takes its name plainly from its location on the east bank of the Calumet River, not from any position within the city of Chicago. Steel and heavy industry arrived along the riverfront in the 1870s and 1880s, and Republic Steel began operations here in 1901, drawing Slovenian, Croatian, and Serbian immigrants who built the neighborhood's earliest homes and churches within walking distance of the mills.

That mill would become a flashpoint in American labor history: in 1937, striking steelworkers organizing with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee clashed with Chicago police outside its gates in what became known as the Memorial Day Massacre, a pivotal moment in the drive to unionize the Chicago mills. The Chicago Skyway, built in the 1950s, now splits the neighborhood in two, and Calumet Park and Beach still gives East Side something few Chicago neighborhoods have: direct, uninterrupted access to Lake Michigan.

MY-NHD's East Side collection is built for a neighborhood that named itself after a river and never stopped being defined by the people who worked its banks.