Matteson () is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. The population was 19,073 at the 2020 census. It is a suburb of Chicago.
History
The area encompassed by modern Matteson was settled by Europeans in the late 1800s, primarily by settlers of German descent. Platted in 1855, Matteson had nearly 500 residents when it incorporated as a village in 1889. The village's namesake is Joel Aldrich Matteson, who served as Illinois' tenth governor from 1853 to 1857. The 20th century saw improvements in plumbing, the electrification of the Illinois Central Railroad, and the construction of today's school district, resulting in significant population growth: the village's population exceeded 3,000 by the late 1960s. Lincoln Mall opened in 1973, annexing 195 acres of land for the village in the process; the mall closed in 2014 and was demolished in 2018. Present-day Matteson is home to more than 20,000 residents and hundreds of businesses. It is near Ingalls Memorial Hospital and Advocate South Suburban Hospital, two major hospitals servicing Southland Chicago.
By 1995, Black Americans made up a significant portion of Matteson's residential population. Fearing white flight, the village launched a program to encourage white Americans to move to the village. This program and the underlying racial tensions in the village attracted national attention after Dateline NBC aired an hour-long documentary about Matteson entitled "Why Can't We Live Together?" on June 27, 1997, with the story being picked up by major national and local newspapers including The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Washington Post, and The Chicago Tribune. The village's attempt at integration was not successful: between 2000 and 2010, Matteson's Black population increased by roughly 85%, while 1,200 whites left the community, primarily for overwhelmingly white tract housing developments in exurbs like Manhattan. Most of the incoming Blacks were upper-middle-class and fleeing worsening conditions in inner-city neighborhoods on Chicago's South Side. As a result, despite the efflux of white residents, average household incomes increased in several census tracts in Matteson during this time<!--4,000-2,800-->.
Geography
According to the 2021 census gazetteer files, Matteson has a total area of , of which (or 99.64%) is land and (or 0.36%) is water. The village's topography is mostly flat.
Matteson is located in Chicago's Southland area. It is bordered by Park Forest and Olympia Fields to the east, Country Club Hills and Tinley Park to the north, Frankfort to the west, and Richton Park to the south.