Morgan Park is located south of the Beverly neighborhood and north of the Chicago city border, and includes Mount Greenwood Cemetery.

Thomas Morgan became the area's largest landholder[5] when he purchased all of the property between what is today 91st St. on the north, 119th St. on the south, Western Avenue on the west, and roughly Vincennes Ave. to the east.

Morgan's son Henry was for a time the village president of Hyde Park before that community was annexed to the City of Chicago in 1889.

Because of its ecclesiastical associations (George Walker's father was affiliated with the old University of Chicago and Walker himself would play an influential role in the creation of the present University of Chicago, both of which were founded by organizations with Baptist connections) Morgan Park prohibited the sale of alcohol east of Western Avenue when it was incorporated as a village in 1882 – a ban which stands to this day.

This in early times was covered with long grass and thick underbrush, and was not only a very discreet hiding place, but a very formidable fortress for horse thieves.

These notable gentry were rather nocturnal in their habits, as they traveled during the night and by day were wont to refresh themselves in Horse Thief Hollow.

Today the house is owned and maintained as a memorial to Paul P. Harris and his wife, Jean, and as an inspiration for Rotarians around the world.

There was a serious attempt made by the Blue Island Land and Building Company to have Morgan Park become a great center of learning, an effort which was successful to a degree in that it brought to the community Morgan Park Academy (founded in 1873 as Mt Vernon Military & Classical Academy), the Chicago Female College (established 1875), Baptist Union Theological Seminary (which relocated to Morgan Park from Chicago in 1877 and where the noted educator William Rainey Harper was granted a professorship at the age of twenty-three[27]), and the American Institute of Hebrew.

[28] There was also an effort made in 1888 to bring the new University of Chicago to the community, although that project developed in another direction when its primary benefactor, John D. Rockefeller, indicated a preference for the significantly larger site at 57th Street and Ellis Avenue in Hyde Park that was donated by Marshall Field.

[29] It was thought by virtue of its size and its location in what was then the city proper that that property would allow for a much grander vision, and the "proposals (in Morgan Park) were at once laid aside in view of the greater plan".