North Harbor (East Chicago)

The now-demolished lakefront area of North Harbor was historically one of the few neighborhoods in East Chicago open to African American settlement.[4] Today, the neighborhood's residents are approximately 44% Hispanic and 53% African American.[1]

Dating to the early 20th century, North Harbor was originally platted and built to provide housing for workers at East Chicago's steel mills near to their workplaces.[2] More recently, the neighborhood's recent history has been shaped by a series of ambitious redevelopment projects. The Purdue-Calumet Development Foundation started urban renewal work in North Harbor in 1960.[5] By 1968, the project had pushed 1,528 families out of their homes.[5] Meanwhile, the construction of the Cline Avenue bypass cut off pedestrian access from North Harbor to the lakefront.[2] More recently, in the early 2000s, the administration of Mayor Robert Pastrick pushed forward an ambitious public housing project that was the subject of sharp criticism by Pastrick's successor George Pabey.[6] Pabey in turn, however, obtained $1.9 million in federal funding to revitalize the neighborhood, particularly the commercial district around Main and Broadway.[7] A notable result of these investments is that, even as local incomes have plummeted with the decline of industrial employment, the population density of the neighborhood has held steady.[2]

Notable historic structures in North Harbor include the Indiana Harbor Public Library, a Carnegie library built in 1913.