Cottage Grove Heights
Real Estate and Neighborhood Information

Cottage Grove Heights was settled and incorporated into Chicago thanks in part to the railroad—specifically, the rail car building industry.

During the 1800s, George Pullman, the creator of the Pullman Palace Car (the comfortable sleeping and parlor cars for passenger trains), built a plant south of the city to manufacture his cars. So what if this Pullman guy put up a factory, you say? Well, we’d say the same thing if that had been all.

However, in addition to the large plant, Pullman built an entire company town that provided a place for his employees and their families to live—talk about short commute times! This planned community, aptly named Pullman, was heralded as an enormous success and garnered a number of "world’s best town" awards. Eventually, poor wages and high (company controlled) rents led to worker strikes, which then led to the government stepping in and selling the town of Pullman to Chicago in 1898. Even after the land became part of the city, the Pullman area was considered a very nice place to live. As a result, smaller residential enclaves sprung up around it, such as Cottage Grove Heights.

The Cottage Grove Heights neighborhood was named after Cottage Grove Avenue, which forms the western border of the community. The road was a former Native American trail that was dubbed Cottage Grove Avenue by Charles Cleaver. Cleaver was a wealthy factory owner who was in the smelly soap and lard-rendering business, which was (at the time) luckily located in a remote territory south of Cottage Grove Heights. As part of his numerous land holdings, Cleaver named Cottage Grove Avenue after the grove of trees that surrounded a cottage on his property.

Today Cottage Grove Heights remains pretty much what it was in its inception—a quiet residential neighborhood with tight neighborly ties and a reasonably diverse makeup. Commercial developments have been pretty sparse in the area, but it does provide a pleasant place to live, with easy access to other parts of the city.