Blue Island, Illinois

Blue Island is a city in Cook County, Illinois, located approximately 16 miles (26 km) 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 (1884), "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. In addition to its broad long-standing industrial base, the city enjoyed notable growth in the 1840s during the construction of the feeder canal (now the Calumet Sag Channel) for the Illinois and Michigan Canal, as the center of a large brick-making industry beginning in the 1850s, which eventually gave Blue Island the status of brick-making capitol of the world. Beginning in 1883, Blue Island was also host to the car shops of the Rock Island Railroad. Blue Island was home to several breweries, who used the east side of the hill to store their product before the advent of refrigeration, until the Eighteenth Amendment made these breweries illegal in 1919. A large regional hospital and two major clinics are also located in the city.

Blue Island (novel)

Blue Island (French: L'Île bleue) is a 1988 novel by the French writer Jean Raspail. The narrative is set in Touraine during World War II, where a charismatic boy gathers his friends on an island, where they play war games which become increasingly more interlinked with reality. The book was published in English in 1991, translated by Jeremy Leggatt.

The book was adapted into the 2001 television film L'Île bleue. The film was directed by Nadine Trintignant.

Reception

Kirkus Reviews described the books as "a touching story about coming of age under less-than-ideal circumstances. ... [T]he dovetailing here of adolescent bravado and cynicism with historical drama makes for a mostly satisfying mixture."Publishers Weekly called it a "spellbinding fable", and wrote that "this is no myth-like Lord of the Flies. Contemporary history is an ever-present element, as German troops advance, France falls apart, the government evacuates Paris and refugees flood the countryside. ... Raspail (Who Will Remember the People) narrowly avoids sentimentality in this powerful depiction of an end to innocence and illusion."

Blue Island station

Blue Island is a Metra train station. It is the terminal station of the Metra Electric District line from downtown Chicago, Illinois to Blue Island, Illinois. It is in fare Zone D.

The Vermont Street Metra station on the south side of Vermont Street serves Metra's Rock Island District, which service splits at that station creating a spur Suburban Line which services stations in Blue Island, Morgan Park, Beverly Hills, Brainard and Auburn/Gresham, with some rush-hour trains heading north-east on the main line. Blue Island and Vermont Street stations share the same parking facilities and bus connections.

Bus connections

CTA

Pace

External links

Media related to Blue Island (Metra) at Wikimedia Commons

Blue Island (film)

Blue Island (Italian title Due gocce d'acqua salata) is a 1982 film directed by Luigi Russo (going under the pseudonym John Wilder) and Enzo Doria, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Dardano Sacchetti. Filmed in the Seychelles, it stars Fabio Meyer, Mario Pedone and Sabrina Siani. Like the film Paradise of the same year, it was inspired by the success of the 1980 release The Blue Lagoon.

Plot summary

After an airliner crashes over the ocean, two young passengers, Bonnie (Siani) and Billy (Meyer), meet in an inflatable life raft. Apparently the only survivors, they make it to a tropical island, but soon learn that they are not entirely alone.

External links