page_title: Blue Island, Illinois
section_title: The American House
hierarchical_section_title: Blue Island, Illinois / History / Historic buildings and structures / The American House
caption_attribution_description: The Blue Island House Hotel
context_page_description: Blue Island is a city and a south suburb of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, located approximately 16 miles south of Chicago's Loop. Blue Island is adjacent to the city of Chicago and shares its northern boundary with that city's Morgan Park neighborhood. The population was 23,706 at the 2010 United States Census.
  Blue Island was established in the 1830s as a way station for settlers traveling on the Vincennes Trace, and the settlement prospered because it was conveniently situated a day's journey outside of Chicago. The late-nineteenth-century historian and publisher Alfred T. Andreas made the following observation regarding the appearance of the young community in History of Cook County Illinois, "The location of Blue Island Village is a beautiful one. Nowhere about Chicago is there to be found a more pleasant and desirable resident locality."
  Since its founding, the city has been an important commercial center in the south Cook County region, although its position in that respect has been eclipsed in recent years as other significant population centers developed around it and the region's commercial resources became spread over a wider area.
context_section_description: One of the oldest buildings in Blue Island, the American House was built in 1839 as the courthouse for Lake County, Indiana—a function it never actually had the chance to serve, as the county seat was moved from Liverpool to Crown Point in 1840. In 1844, the building was disassembled, sent by raft up the Little Calumet River, and reassembled in Blue Island.
  The building originally stood on the west side of Western Avenue north of Vermont Street, (where Three Sisters Antique Mall stands today. It was popular among Southerners who used it as a summer boarding house and with the contractors who built the feeder canal for the Illinois and Michigan Canal. After the Civil War it was used as a home for retired soldiers. Although it was built after the invention of balloon framing, the building is constructed using the timber framing method, evidence of which is still clearly visible in the basement and attic. However, while its Greek Revival roots are discernible, the building is much remodeled and serves today as a private residence.
  Greek Revival was the architectural style of choice in the early years of Blue Island's history. Many of the buildings that remain from those days have been similarly remodeled, but some of the most well-preserved examples of the style, albeit in a vernacular form, can be seen either in the Walter P. Roche House on York Street or the Henry Schuemann House on Western Avenue.
caption: Drawing of the American House Hotel, modeled after a sketch that appeared in Ferdinand Schapper's 1917 manuscript Southern Cook County and History of Blue Island before the Civil War.
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