A community whose borders everyone agrees on
Mount Greenwood is one of the few Chicago community areas whose boundaries residents, the city and academics mostly agree on: 103rd Street on the north, 117th Street on the south, Pulaski Road on the west and Sacramento Avenue on the east. Suburbs wrap around three sides, with Evergreen Park to the north, Oak Lawn to the west, and Merrionette Park and Alsip to the south. Beverly and Morgan Park sit to the east. Inside are three neighborhoods: Mount Greenwood itself, Mount Greenwood Heights and Talley’s Corner. The whole area uses one ZIP, 60655.
Single-family blocks from 1940 to 1970
Most of Mount Greenwood’s land, about 748 acres, is single-family housing, and most of it went up between 1940 and 1970. Multifamily buildings take up only about 19 acres. In practice, the car is more likely to be in a driveway, a garage or at the curb in front of a house than in an apartment lot.
Each of those is easy, but tell us which one. A car in a closed garage needs the door open and a clear path out. One in a driveway behind a second vehicle needs that vehicle moved. Whether it runs or not makes no difference to the pickup.
Keys and papers are the other two things people worry about. Missing keys are fine. If the title is gone, tell us what you still have for the junk car, a bill of sale, a registration or an insurance card, and we’ll say on the call which of those Illinois rules accept for a scrap sale. Sorting that out before the truck leaves saves everyone a second trip.
Getting there along 111th Street
From our base at 11616 S Yale Ave, the truck runs south on Princeton Avenue, west on 115th Street, south on Ashland Avenue, onto Monterey Avenue and then west on 111th Street. It’s about five miles. 111th is Mount Greenwood’s main commercial corridor, and new shopping centers have gone up along it since a TIF district was created in 2009.
The street also passes Mount Greenwood Park, the 24-acre site the Park District bought in 1949 after the local civic council pushed for it. The fieldhouse dates from 1966, the pool from 1973, and a refrigerated ice rink is used for winter skating. At the southeast corner of 111th and Pulaski is the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences, built on land Peter Ouwenga farmed until the mid-1980s, the last farm in the city.
103rd Street and the Kedzie cut-off
One detail is easy to miss. The city’s Winter Overnight Parking Ban covers 103rd Street from Torrence Avenue west only as far as Kedzie Avenue. Mount Greenwood’s northern edge runs along 103rd, so the ban reaches just the short stretch between Sacramento and Kedzie on the northeast corner. West of Kedzie, 103rd isn’t on the ban list. On the covered part, nobody may park from 3 am to 7 am between December 1 and April 1, snow or no snow.
Cemeteries, campuses and other landmarks
Mount Greenwood has so many cemeteries that it was once nicknamed the Seven Holy Tombs; St. Casimir Catholic Cemetery is one of them. Saint Xavier University moved here in 1956. Three Catholic high schools, Brother Rice, Marist and Mother McAuley, are in the community, along with Mt. Greenwood Elementary, Cassell Elementary and the Keller Regional Gifted Center. The Mount Greenwood branch of the Chicago Public Library holds a notable Irish heritage collection. CTA buses 103, 112, 52A and 53A all serve the area, and they make easy references when you describe where the car is.
There’s no Metra station inside Mount Greenwood. The nearest are on the Rock Island District line: 103rd Street and 107th Street in Beverly, and 111th Street and 115th Street in Morgan Park. If you’re giving directions from the east, those stops are a fair starting point.
Before you hand over the keys
Before choosing any buyer, read our guide on how to vet a junk car buyer for the questions to ask, and ask them of us too. Towing is always free, and we also buy flood and fire damaged cars.
Mount Greenwood’s neighbours to the east
Mount Greenwood’s eastern neighbours are Beverly, up toward 103rd Street, and Morgan Park, where our trucks follow Monterey Avenue on the way in. Both share the Blue Island Ridge.
To start, request an offer with a few details about the car.