Dearborn Park is a residential Chicago neighborhood in South Loop. It is part of the Loop and Near South Side community areas of Chicago. The area is known for its unique architecture, green spaces, proximity to the city's downtown area, and many cultural and recreational attractions. Early in Chicago history, this became an immigrant neighborhood before being ravaged by a fire in 1874; it was then bought up for railroad rights-of-way leading to Dearborn Station. When several rail-lines ceased service in the early 1970s, the trackage yards were removed and the area was redeveloped.

The Dearborn Park neighborhood comprises two distinct sub-areas: Dearborn Park I and Dearborn Park II. The former is in the Loop community area and is bounded by State Street to the east, Clark Street to the west, Polk Street to the north and Roosevelt Road to the south. The latter, located in the Near South Side community area, is directly south of Dearborn Park I, sharing the same east and west borders and bounded north by Roosevelt Road and south by 15th Street.

Dearborn Park, like most of Chicago, was originally the home of Ojibwe, Odawa, Potawatomi, Miami, and other Native American tribes and nations. The defeat of Sauk warrior and leader Black Hawk led to the ceding of the last Potawatomi lands around Chicago in an 1833 treaty, and Chicago was incorporated as a town that year.

Shortly thereafter, the neighborhood was developed by German and Irish immigrants who came to Chicago in the 1830s and 1840s to dig a shipping canal. Their initial shantytown of wood cottages soon grew to host Italian immigrants, as well as freed and escaped slaves.

By the 1870s, the neighborhood served as a home to many Jewish immigrants from Russia and Poland, as well as working-class and middle-class African Americans. The neighborhood, part of the infamous Levee District, had also earned a reputation for vice, with many "houses of ill-fame."

The neighborhood was unscathed by the 1871 Chicago Fire but was not so lucky with the 1874 Chicago Fire, which destroyed most of the buildings in the area.

In the aftermath of the 1874 fire, much of the land that is now Dearborn Park was purchased by real estate promoter John B. Brown and his associates, who saw the potential of southside access to the city by rail and acquired the land, principally for the Chicago and Western Indiana Railroad (C&WI) but other rail lines also bought nearby land. (Perhaps not surprising to those who live in Chicago, there were accusations of bribery and self-dealing regarding the acquisition of the land.) The investment in the rail lines culminated in the opening of Dearborn Station at the northern border of Dearborn Park in 1885, resulting in decades of economic growth in the area that reversed course into steep decline in the 1950s and 1960s. Dearborn Station ultimately closed in 1971.

The genesis of Dearborn Park emerged during a 1970 meeting of three Chicago business leaders: Thomas G. Ayers, President of Commonwealth Edison; Donald M. Graham, CEO of Continental Illinois; and Gordon W. Metcalf, CEO of Sears, Roebuck & Co.