Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Harvey, IL

Harvey is a city and south suburb of Chicago in Cook County, founded in 1891 by Christian leader Turlington W. Harvey, a close associate of evangelist Dwight Moody, the founder of the Moody Bible Institute.

Harvey began as one of Illinois's 'Temperance Towns' — voters organized it in 1890 as a model community built on Christian values, closely modeled on the company town of Pullman.

Harvey grew so fast in its first years, passing 5,000 residents within about three years, that it earned the nickname the 'Magic City.'

Harvey was elevated from a village to a city in 1895, when Jonathan W. Matthews was elected its first mayor.

Harvey had a population of 20,324 at the 2020 census, down from a peak of 35,810 in 1980, when it was a blue-collar manufacturing powerhouse known as the 'Gateway to the South Suburbs.'

Harvey counts about 7,512 households in recent Census Bureau estimates, and the 2010 census found its households were split almost exactly evenly between homeowners and renters.

Harvey was home to the Dixie Square Mall, which opened in 1966, closed in the late 1970s, and was briefly restocked and refilled with stores so the famous mall car-chase scene in the 1980 film 'The Blues Brothers' could be shot inside it.

The Dixie Square Mall stood abandoned and decaying for decades after the Blues Brothers filming before it was finally demolished in 2012, and its Dixie Highway site now holds the Harvey police station and other new buildings.

Ingalls Memorial Hospital, now part of UChicago Medicine, was founded in Harvey in 1923 by industrialist Frederick Ingalls and dedicated to his wife Jeanette, opening as a 50-bed hospital serving local factory workers.

Most Harvey students attend Thornton Township High School, home of the Wildcats, one of the oldest and largest high schools in Chicago's south suburbs.