• Site of the original Kensington/Calumet Junction rail station
• Saint Salomea Church (now Salem Baptist Church)
• Front Avenue historic saloon district
• Metra Electric District corridor

Kensington began in 1852 as Calumet Junction, a small settlement of railroad workers at the point where the Illinois Central and Michigan Central lines met. The name was soon changed to Kensington, after the palace and gardens in London, though neighbors in the nearby Dutch settlement of Roseland had their own nickname for the rowdy little rail town: Bumtown.

That reputation only grew once George Pullman began building his model company town just north of 115th Street in 1880. Pullman famously banned alcohol within its own borders, so workers came to Kensington instead, and the saloons along Front Avenue thrived on their business; the 1894 Pullman Strike was even headquartered out of a Kensington clubhouse. Italian immigrants arrived in force through the following decades, and Kensington remained a vibrant Italian enclave until the 1970s, with Saint Salomea Church, now home to Salem Baptist Church, still standing as a marker of that era.

MY-NHD's Kensington collection is built for the rail town that gave Pullman's workers somewhere to go when the company town said no.