From Joel Matteson's Farm Town To Amazon's Robotics Hub
Matteson was platted in 1855 by German settlers farming the prairie at the intersection of the Illinois Central Railroad and the trail that would later become US-30 (Lincoln Highway). The village's namesake is Joel Aldrich Matteson, who served as Illinois' tenth governor from 1853 to 1857. The Matteson station opened in 1863 — six years before the village's first official year of growth, and 26 years before incorporation. The village formally incorporated in 1889 with fewer than 500 residents.
Matteson grew slowly through the late 19th and early 20th centuries — from 451 residents in 1880 to 736 in 1930 to 1,211 in 1950. The 20th century brought plumbing, electrification of the Illinois Central Railroad (now Metra Electric), and the construction of the modern school district, but population didn't crack 3,000 until the late 1960s. Postwar suburbanization eventually transformed the village — by 1990 the population had reached 11,378, and by 2020 it stood at 19,073.
The defining commercial event came in 1973. Lincoln Mall opened on August 9, 1973, at the corner of Cicero Avenue and Lincoln Highway, and the village annexed 195 acres around it to capture the retail tax base. With anchor tenants Carson Pirie Scott, Montgomery Ward, Wieboldt's, and JCPenney, Lincoln Mall became one of the major regional shopping centers in Chicago's Southland. For forty years it defined Matteson's commercial identity — until anchor closures, the rise of e-commerce, and a botched 2006 redevelopment project led to its closure on January 7, 2015. Demolition began May 8, 2017, and the entire mall was leveled by the end of summer 2017. The 195-acre site is now planned for mixed-use redevelopment.
Matteson's racial transition is a documented part of the village's history. By 1995 the Black population had grown substantially, and the village launched a controversial program to encourage white residents to stay — a program profiled by NBC Dateline in "Why Can't We Live Together?" on June 27, 1997. The story ran in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Christian Science Monitor, and The Chicago Tribune. The demographic transition continued anyway: between 2000 and 2010, the Black population grew approximately 85% while roughly 1,200 white residents left. What set Matteson apart from many similar transitions, however, was that household incomes actually rose during this period — because incoming Black families were upper-middle-class professionals relocating from Chicago's South Side. Today Matteson is one of the most established upper-middle-class Black-majority suburbs in the Chicago region, with a median household income of approximately $98,600 — above the Illinois median.
The third era began in October 2021. Amazon ORD5 at 7001 Vollmer Road opened as the first robotics fulfillment center in Cook County: 855,000 square feet (the equivalent of 64 football fields), 4,500 Amazon Robotics drives moving yellow product pods to associate stations, with capacity to ship one million customer orders every 24 hours. The first customer order shipped November 4, 2021. Amazon owns the building (developed by Atlanta-based Seefried Industrial Properties); the facility employs over 1,000 people directly, generates approximately $3.5M in property taxes annually for local schools, and has anchored a corridor of warehouse and logistics employers. "This particular project is clearly an economic engine that will attract hundreds of jobs to our town," said Matteson Village President Sheila Chalmers-Currin at the announcement. The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration also operates its Midwestern Regional Service Center in Matteson; Valspar runs a paint manufacturing facility.
Modern Matteson is 19,073 residents across 9.32 square miles, served by two Metra Electric main-line stations (Matteson and 211th Street/Lincoln Highway), with US 30 running east-west, I-57 running north-south, IL 50 (Cicero Avenue), and IL 43 (Harlem Avenue) crossing inside village limits. School districts split the village: Matteson School District 159 and Matteson School District 162 serve PK-8 across different parts of town, both feeding into Rich Township High School District 227. Notable residents and natives include Congresswoman Robin Kelly (IL-2), who lives in Matteson; former NBA forward Kendall Gill, who grew up here; current NBA guard Tyler Ulis; former NFL guard Jon Asamoah; rappers Dreezy, Sir Michael Rocks, and Gerald Walker; and U.S. Army Brigadier General Charles Brewster Wheeler. The village's sister city is Pune, India.
Lincoln Limo Inc serves Matteson because the village's mix matches the kind of service we're built to provide. A working community with two Metra stations, a major Amazon facility generating professional and corporate visitor traffic, an upper-middle-class residential base of Black professionals and families, and a redevelopment future that's still being written — this is a community that values reliable, professional black car service for the trips that matter. Same driver, same Escalade ESV, every booking, year after year.