National Public Housing Museum

The National Public Housing Museum is a historical institution that will be opening at 1322 W Taylor St. in Chicago, Illinois, and currently is located at 625 N Kingsbury St. in Chicago. The museum is located in the last remaining building of the Jane Addams Homes of ABLA Homes, and will feature an oral history archive, public programming, and an entrepreneurship hub. Exhibitions will include restored apartment of three families who lived in the Jane Addams homes. The building that the museum is contained within opened in 1938 as the first federal government housing project in Chicago. It housed thousands of families over six decades and has been vacant since 2002 History The movement for conservation of a public housing building began in the 1990s with the announcement of the Plan for Transformation, a Chicago Housing Authority initiative to demolish 17,000 units of public housing and replace them with mixed-income housing. Residents, led by Deverra Beverly, a former commissioner for the Chicago Housing Authority, began and led the movement for the creation of a memorialization of their presence. Beverly and other public housing residents approached Sunny Fischer, a philanthropy professional and former public housing resident herself, with their proposal for a museum. Along the way, CHA residents were joined by "civic leaders, preservationists, historians, and cultural experts who also wanted to create a new architectural landmark to recognize an important historic site." This group came together to preserve and transform the current site of the museum, originally designed by a team of architects led by John Holabird. As the project moved forward, the museum maintained a commitment to uplifting the voices and narratives of public housing residents, and includes public housing residents as about a third of its board. Exhibits, collections and programming The mission of the museum is to “promote, interpret, and propel housing as a human right” . This mission manifests in the museums oral history-focused approach to storytelling and community development and programming.