Douglas, located on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 is one of 77 well-defined Chicago community areas

Community areas of Chicago

Community areas in Chicago refers to the work of the Social Science Research Committee at University of Chicago which has unofficially divided the City of Chicago into 77 community areas. These areas are well-defined and static...

. The neighborhood is named for Stephen A. Douglas

Stephen A. Douglas

Stephen Arnold Douglas was an American politician from the western state of Illinois, and was the Northern Democratic Party nominee for President in 1860. He lost to the Republican Party's candidate, Abraham Lincoln, whom he had defeated two years earlier in a Senate contest following a famed...

, a famous Illinois politician, whose estate included a tract of land given to the federal government. The Douglas tract later became the infamous Civil War Union prison camp, Camp Douglas

Camp Douglas (Chicago)

Camp Douglas, in Chicago, Illinois, was a Union Army prisoner-of-war camp for Confederate soldiers taken prisoner during the American Civil War. It was also a training and detention camp for Union soldiers. The Union Army first used the camp in 1861 as an organizational and training camp for...

, located in what is now the eastern portion of the Douglas neighborhood. Another part of the Douglas estate at Cottage Grove and 35th, he gave to the Old University of Chicago

Old University of Chicago

The University of Chicago, now known as the Old University of Chicago , was a school founded by Baptists in Chicago in 1857...

.