Roseland was settled in the 1840s by Dutch immigrants, who called the area “de Hooge Prairie”, the High Prairie, because it was built on higher, drier ground than the earlier Dutch settlement several miles further south of the Little Calumet River, which was called “de Laage Prairie”, the Low Prairie, now South Holland, Illinois.

The community was entirely agrarian until the late 19th century, when the town of Pullman, Chicago was built between Roseland and Lake Calumet. George M. Pullman planned a model industrial city built around a factory that manufactured his “Palace” railway coaches. Modern brick homes were built with electricity, plumbing and gas utilities. Skilled tradesmen from all over Europe immigrated to the town of Pullman with many settling in nearby Roseland. The Pullman Freight Car Works was built in the 1900s decade on 103rd Street, and survives to this day as a distribution center for flat-rolled steel.

Roseland was annexed into Chicago in 1892. The Roseland area became a very cosmopolitan community made up of multi cultural, ethnic and racial backgrounds. There was a large population of Italian Americans just east of Roseland in the Kensington community. While some Italians of southern Italian origins came to the area from the Little Italy neighborhood on Taylor Street, many other Italians who settled in the area came from the northern Italian regions of Piedmont, Tuscany, and the Veneto. All these Italians from varied regions of Italy helped to make the Kensington area, and the wider Roseland area, centers of South Side Italian life. Sant’ Antonio di Padua (St. Anthony’s) Church (built 1903) and its grammar school were key religious and cultural landmarks of the area. Supporting businesses flourished rapidly changing the farmland into commercial and residential communities surrounded by a number of industries. Stores on Michigan Avenue served the entire south side of Chicago.

Fortunes began to change in the 1960s when industry patterns lead to economic decline. Steel mills to the east were shuttered. Pullman scaled back production and eventually closed for good in 1981. The huge Sherwin-Williams paint factory closed for good in 1995. A period of rapid ethnic succession took place.

The much lauded mural “I Welcome Myself to a New Place: Roseland Pullman Mural,” by Olivia Gude, Jon Pounds, and Marcus Jefferson, 1988, was designed to unite the predominantly African American community of Roseland with its nearest neighbor, the predominantly white Pullman community.