Harvey

Harvey was founded in 1891 by Turlington W. Harvey, a close associate of Dwight Moody, the founder of the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. Harvey was intended as a model town for Christian values and was one of the Temperance Towns. It was closely modeled after the company town of Pullman.

The city had its greatest growth in the prosperous postwar years, reaching its peak population in 1980. But it suffered losses in jobs and population through restructuring of steel and similar industries in the late 20th century.

In the 2000s and 2010s, Mayor Eric Kellogg attempted to boost Harvey's economy, with little success. Kellogg offered developers millions of dollars in incentives to revive the long vacant Dixie Square Mall. The city granted a developer $10 million in incentives to redevelop the Chicago Park Hotel, but he abandoned the project before completion, leaving the building gutted.

In February 2018, Harvey became the first city in Illinois to have its revenue garnished by the State in order to fund the city's pension liabilities. The city laid off employees in order to deal with the changes.

The former Dixie Square Mall (completed 1966, abandoned 1978, demolished 2012) appeared in the 1980 film The Blues Brothers as the scene of a car chase. Set builders made the abandoned mall look to be functional just long enough for cinema viewers to see its reconstructed interior destroyed. The building stood abandoned for years as the neighbourhood slowly died due to a combination of "white flight", street crime and the exodus of most of the local middle class.