Good things are in the works for Chicago’s South Side Roseland neighborhood, including construction of a $48.3 million mixed use affordable housing project and new Red Line stop. But the community will always bear a history of white flight, racial division and disinvestment.

Much has been written about Roseland’s rapid transformation in the 1970s from an area that was predominantly white to one where residents were predominantly Black, due in part to job losses and local steel mills shutting down, but also due to Realtors stoking racism to convince longtime residents to sell.

Many who left and are alive today had no say in the matter, however. They were teens or even younger at the time. And much like anyone who moves away from their childhood home, they enjoy sharing memories of where they once lived.

No one seems to realize this more than Dan Bovino, who grew up in Roseland and now lives in Lansing with his wife Sue.

He has cultivated an impressive following in the Chicago area and elsewhere among those wanting to share not only fond memories but photos of Roseland’s past.

In 2010, Bovino, a retired conductor and switchman for the Illinois Central railroad, met for lunch with a couple of friends who also grew up in Roseland.

As a Fenger High School student in 1970, Paul Petraitis and a classmate shot a film about Roseland, which was later incorporated into a documentary. C.J. Martello has written extensively about the community. Bovino shares their interest in local history and now is president of the Lansing Historical Society.

The lunch discussion convinced Bovino to begin researching the history of Roseland and posting photos from his childhood on his Facebook page.

“People started sending in photos,” he said. “ It got big fast.”

His original collection of 200 photos of the Roseland community and areas nearby has grown to several thousand photos in 15 years. “I have around 13,000 followers, and about 25% are from Roseland,” he said.

Besides posting favorite recollections online, Bovino also gives informal photo presentations at local libraries and historical societies. During these, he shares personal recollections of specific locations, like Palmer Park, where he used to climb on a doughboy statue honoring World War I veterans, which is no longer there, or a once bustling Michigan Avenue, known to locals as “The Ave” and a prime place for cruising.

Bovino starts his presentations by showing historic images of the community’s early days in the mid-1800s — a Dutch family living in a sod hut, farm fields and prairie stretching to a southern horizon punctuated by the Pullman marketplace tower, and a composite of photos of the community’s nine Dutch founders — one, Jan Ton, was active in the Underground Railroad Network and offered refuge on his farm to freedom seekers before slavery was abolished amid the Civil War. There’s another image of Dutch settlers wearing wooden shoes.

On a recent Chicago map, the area’s north border slopes southeastward from Eggleston and 87th to 95th street at what were once the Illinois Central, now Canadian National, tracks. The tracks form the community’s eastern border and separate it from Pullman, running south to 115th street, the southern border. Halsted Street serves as the Western border north to 103rd where the border pulls back east to Eggleston.

Bovino mentioned a post office established in 1861 by Postmaster Garis Vandersyde, who was appointed by President Abraham Lincoln.

The post office identified the area as a town called Hope, but community leaders eventually opted to rename it something on the order of “the land of roses,” Bovino said, for all the roses that flourished there.

The name Roseland stuck, even after the community was annexed into Chicago in 1890. Either way, becoming part of Chicago offered access to better infrastructure for sewers and roads, Bovino said.During the 20th Century, waves of Swedish, Irish, German, Polish and Italian immigrants arrived. Over time, a business district of sturdy brick and elaborately decorated terracotta facades sprang up. So did an assortment of frame houses bearing front porches with fancy gingerbread trim and plenty of brownstones and brick homes.

A lot of homes were clad in shingles made of asbestos, which many people covered with siding, Bovino said.

During Bovino’s 18 years in Roseland, his family lived in a brick home, and later a frame home. The brick home at 113th and Prairie remains but the older wooden frame house is gone, he said.

Like that home, others in the community have disappeared as well.

“There are fewer houses now on the 119th and 118th blocks of Lafayette,” Bovino said at a recent presentation at Calumet Historical Society. “It’s reverting back to prairie, but there are other parts of Roseland that are great. Sheldon Heights, near Fenger High School, looks like it never had a bad day.”

Bovino also showed photos of local stores, restaurants, churches and favorite hangouts from the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. Many were taken by a local dentist, Dr. Gene Osello.

An Italian Catholic, Bovino attended Mendel Catholic Preparatory High School. His parents met at a popular bowling alley called The Rosebowl and celebrated their marriage with more than 400 guests at Turner Hall, a banquet venue.

“I was born a year later in 1953,” Bovino said. “It was a race to have children. My father was the oldest of nine.”

Bovino also shared images of family gatherings with aunts and uncles crammed into a small kitchen, and one of neighbors hanging out together on a front porch. “There was lots of porch sitting with neighbors back then, instead of people just waving and driving by,” he said.

A circa early 1960s image taken on the day of first holy communion ceremonies shows a long line of girls wearing white dresses and veils. “When people said be fruitful and multiply, that’s what they meant,” Bovino said.

Of St. Anthony Catholic Church, he said, “The steps were made of marble, and nobody knew how slippery they would be. Lots of people fell.”

He also mentioned that parishioners formed a parade procession following the delivery of the church’s 12 marble columns to be installed inside the church. The truck could not make it under a nearby underpass and had to be routed an extra mile out of the way with congregants following on foot.

Bovino showed many photos of churches, representing a variety of Christian denominations — First Reformed Dutch, Lutheran, Methodist, Evangelical, Baptist and related ethnic groups.

A member of Holy Rosary Irish, he said, “Even now if I say I went to Holy Rosary, people ask, ‘Holy Rosary Irish or Holy Rosary Slovak?’”

Besides the fun and games at church carnivals, he said, “You could get clams on the half shell with hot sauce and sheets of pizza bread the ladies rolled out.”

Bovino also showed a Chicago Park District Field House at Palmer Park painted with colorful WPA murals, and Griffith Natatorium, where at one time boys and girls were not allowed to swim together.

Pictures of formidable looking local schools followed, along with Roseland Theater, Gately’s Peoples Store at 112th and Michigan Avenue and nearby S.S. Kresge’s, also Root Brothers hardware store, a local jeweler, Panozzo Brothers Funeral Home, and Pullman Bank.

The department store photos stirred memories for Marcia Zmuda, now a resident of South Holland and one of 57 people who attended the Calumet Historical Society presentation.

“I remember Roseland as a wonderful place to live and be raised,” she said. “I remember going to the Gately’s Peoples Store, and my first job was as a store clerk at the Kresge’s.”

Bovino was partial to the special breads made at Panetti’s Italian Beef. Another popular fast-food place, Pit Chicken, he said, “was a cruising spot like something out of American Graffiti.”

He also recalled going to the Rexall Drugstore’s soda fountain for milkshakes.

Of the KarmelKorn Shoppe located at 113th and Michigan, he said, “They’d open up the windows to draw people in with the smell.”

Of the Jays Potato Chip factory once located in North Pullman just over the IC tracks from Roseland, Bovino said, “Everybody knows Jays Potato Chips. If the wind was right, you could smell the chips frying, or the Sherwin Williams Plant (in Pullman), or the dump (landfill).”

The photo Bovino showed of a potato chip bag bearing an old logo with the original company name Japp’s, prompted a member of the audience to comment about the name change. “After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, people stomped the bags in the stores,” the woman said. “That was the fastest turnaround of any company name. It went from Japp’s to Jays within a week.”

For Bovino’s presentation, people occupied every chair at Calumet Historical Society.

“We generally have a good turnout for our meetings, but this one was really good,” said Mike Wolski, president of the 204-member Calumet Historical Society which frequently hosts historical presentations that focus on Calumet City but also the Calumet region. “Some of our members are from Roseland and we reach out to people beyond our membership.”

One of the last and more recent images Bovino shared was of tidy Roseland homes surrounded by picket fences lined with showy rose blossoms. “And this is a photo of people living there now, just enjoying their homes,” Bovino said.

Along with good things in the works for Roseland, the image harkens back to the community’s original name — Hope.

Susan DeGrane is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.