Biohazard Cleanup Near West Forest View Forest View, IL

Forest View is a small village in Cook County, in Stickney Township, immediately southwest of Chicago and adjacent to the city's Garfield Ridge neighborhood.

The village was founded on December 10, 1924, when 46 inhabitants voted unanimously to organize their own government; Forest View was incorporated the following month, and all of its first elected officials were veterans of World War I.

Forest View is nicknamed 'The Cinderella Village.'

The founders reportedly named the village for the beautiful wooded and flowered prairies just west of the newly incorporated area.

During Prohibition, Forest View became a stronghold for Al Capone and his brother Ralph, who housed bootleg liquor distilleries in local homes and garages, until residents pushed back to dismantle the Capone operations and retake their village.

Forest View's population was 792 at the 2020 census, up from 698 in 2010, packed into just 1.30 square miles — making it one of Cook County's smallest municipalities.

In 1949 Commonwealth Edison began building the 600-megawatt Ridgeland Generating Station on Ridgeland Avenue in Forest View, giving the tiny village an outsized industrial tax base.

Much of Forest View is an industrial corridor along the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal, while its residential blocks are landlocked with little room to expand; the village lies about 9 miles southwest of the Loop and roughly 2.5 miles northwest of Midway Airport.

After World War II the village annexed the Clearing District south of the canal, a major transportation and industrial hub, and enjoyed a housing boom in the early 1950s under developer Walter Baltis.

Forest View shares the Stickney–Forest View Public Library District with neighboring Stickney; the library opened in 1955 and its permanent building at 43rd Street and Oak Park Avenue was completed in 1961.