Stony Island Avenue

Stony Island Avenue is a major thoroughfare in the city of Chicago, designated 1600 E in Chicago's street numbering system. It runs from 56th Street south to the Calumet River. Stony Island continues sporadically south of the Calumet in the southern suburbs, running alongside the Bishop Ford Freeway, sometimes as a frontage road. It terminates at County Line Road on the border of Will and Kankakee Counties.

Running roughly parallel to the Illinois Central Railroad, Stony Island Avenue forms the western boundary of Jackson Park, former home of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and current home of the Museum of Science and Industry. Buildings of the University of Chicago line its western side, as does the national headquarters of the historically African-American Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority. Between 59th and 60th streets the Midway Plaisance runs westward to connect Jackson Park to Washington Park a mile away. Shortly after leaving the Hyde Park neighborhood, sits Hyde Park Career Academy at 63rd St. At 73rd Street is the Nation of Islam's Mosque Maryam. Where Stony Island meets 79th Street, the diagonal South Chicago Avenue and ramps of the Chicago Skyway it forms one of the most dangerous intersections in the US. At about 92nd Street it passes to the west of the geographical feature for which it was named, a stony hill that was once an island when the glacial Lake Chicago covered the area thousands of years ago. Early pioneers gave this hill, located in the present day neighborhood of Calumet Heights/Pill Hill, Chicago at 41°43′42″N, 87°34′47″W, the name Stony Island because at a distance it looked like an island in set a tractless prairie sea. (See also the nearby Blue Island). South of 95th Street Stony Island Avenue enter the heavily industrialized region of Lake Calumet.

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