During the Great Depression, the United States government embarked on an ambitious era of public housing, creating almost 1.5 million units nationwide under the Housing Act of 1937.
One of the first sites to go up in Chicago was the Jane Addams Homes. Built in 1938, it was named for the trailblazing reformer who was a staunch advocate for women, immigrants and the poor. She established the first settlement house in the U.S., and played a role in securing the site for what the federal government called a "demonstration public housing project."
Located on Chicago's Near West Side in the city's historic Little Italy neighborhood, the original Jane Addams Homes had 32 buildings and was part of a larger complex made up of three other public housing structures: Robert Brooks Homes, Loomis Courts and Grace Abbott Homes. The development was known as ABLA, an acronym of their names. Most of those buildings were demolished long ago.
This month, the only remaining building of the Jane Addams Homes begins its long-awaited second act, as the National Public Housing Museum, billed by its founders as the first ever museum solely dedicated to the story of public housing.
Preserving the history of public housing
The museum occupies a three story red brick building on a corner of Taylor Street, the neighborhood's main commercial corridor. Inside and out, everything looks brand new. Its curvy, art-deco metal balconies are freshly painted. Large, multi-paned windows flood the interior with light. The museum's name is stenciled on the exterior in bright blue, white and yellow lettering.
When the Addams Homes were first built in 1938, public housing held promise for many people. Returning veterans, immigrants and others found community there. Many still do. By the 1960s and '70s, public housing came to be seen in a negative light, as places where poverty, crime and segregation were concentrated and persisted. Disinvestment left the buildings in disrepair.
In the mid-'90s, Chicago began to tear down its public housing, demolishing around 25,000 units. Knowing what that meant for the thousands of people then living in ABLA, a group of public housing residents waged a long and hard won fight to save one of the buildings. Led by resident activist Deverra Beverly, who died in 2013, they hoped it could be a place to honor and share their story. It took decades before their idea for a museum was approved. Abandoned and vacant since 2002, a lot of work was required to bring the building back to life.
Building anew
Peter Landon is the museum's architect. His firm has worked on many public housing projects and he knows the building and its history well, including the original plan by famed Chicago architect John Augur Holabird Jr., founder of the still active firm Holabird & Root. Still, when Landon began working on this space 18 years ago, he was surprised.
"I just thought wow, this is so great. The proportions are so good. It is classic affordable housing in the sense that it is modest but nice," said Landon, adding, "As we got more familiar with it, we realized we've got to save this thing as much as we can."
The architects did have to make some big changes. They brought the first floor down to ground level, removing the original staircase entrances that were neither accessible nor welcoming. Floor to ceiling glass walls now wrap around the ground floor exhibition space, making it feel part of the lively street scene outside. The original courtyard structure of the complex was designed to integrate playgrounds and green space. The current courtyard is now home to a set of recently restored animal sculptures, designed by artist Edgar Miller in 1937.
A place called home
Artists continue to play a vital role in this museum. There are large murals inside and out. The "Living Room" spaces hold a collection of 1930s posters, extolling the virtues and potential of public housing. In the entrance, ephemera salvaged from the building – bits of wallpaper and paint chips – are framed like works of art.
Executive Director Lisa Yun Lee, who previously ran the Jane Addams Hull House Museum on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago, says the National Public Housing Museum is part of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, meaning the effort to preserve history is also meant to demonstrate present commitments. Historic materials offer new opportunities for interpretations.
" All of this history was the inspiration for our programs, for our commitment to art and everything."
Inside there are permanent and rotating exhibition spaces, including one dedicated to the '70s-era television sitcom, Good Times, which portrayed a tight-knit Black family living in a fictionalized version of Chicago's former Cabrini-Green Homes public housing complex. Sound is a key component of the museum. There is a recording studio and oral history archive and a small space called the "REC Room," where visitors can spin one of dozens of records made by people who lived in public housing.
The heart of the museum is a trio of apartments on the second floor, outfitted in historic period furnishings, conveying life at Jane Addams from the 1930s to the 1970s. In the small living room of one unit, a green striped couch sits next to an end table covered with framed family photos and a page from a war ration book. The kitchen has a checkerboard linoleum floor. In another, shoes cluster in the doorway and a towel hangs in the bathroom. These small and precise details evoke the presence of the real people who lived in the development across the decades.
Oral histories also bring their past to life. Lisa Yun Lee activates a recording, which emanates from a vintage, cathedral-style radio. Inez Turovitz and her niece, Tina Turovitz Birnbaum, share stories of their family and how the economic turmoil of the Great Depression brought them from Chicago's South Side to live in the Jane Addams Homes.
Shifting perceptions about public housing
Downstairs, Education Ambassador Gentry Quinones leads a group through the "History Lessons" exhibition, a collection of objects on loan from current or former housing residents, who also wrote the labels. Many are humble, like a coiled up, green garden hose and yellow rotary dial phone, its cord stretched long from years of use. Quinones points to another case with a few small snapshots.
"As you can see here we have Supreme Court Justice Sonya Sotomayor," Quinones says with pride. "She told her story of living in the projects in New York City, and she was gracious enough to share some pictures with us."
Lisa Yun Lee says through these exhibitions and related programs, the museum wants to change the narrative about public housing then and now, without resorting to exploitative images or stories of suffering, which she describes as "poverty porn."
"How do you tell traumatic stories so that you don't retraumatize people?" she asks, adding, "How do you tell these tragic stories so that people listen with empathy?"
For Lee and her staff the answer is simple: Start with the experiences of residents. In addition to being a place to display their objects and oral histories, the museum offers a paid workforce development program for public housing residents. Some, like Gentry Quinones, have gone on to work at the museum. Public housing residents own and operate the museum store and some may end up living in one of 15 mixed-income housing units in a wing of the building separate from the museum.
Francine Washington is on the board of the museum and was part of the early effort to secure the building. She says the museum does reflect her experiences as a public housing resident. She hopes it challenges stereotypes.
" I love this place, this is a place called home," proclaims Washington. "People get to see our plight, to see that we had the same blood types. We want the same thing in our life that you want."
The future of public housing
While public housing may have changed over the years, the need for it has not gone away. The museum's board chair Sunny Fischer, who was one of the first funders to support the original advocates, says the museum will be a place to generate ideas about housing policy, through regular "Case Studies" exploring past and present examples of public housing.
"We need to house millions of people," she says. "So what can we learn from all the good things that happened in public housing and all the bad things that happened?"
More than 100,000 people are on the waiting list for public housing in Chicago and it can take years or even decades to get in. Lee says intervening in that reality is part of the museum's mission — to be an advocate for housing as a human right.
"We believe that in order to preserve history, you have to make it relevant to the most critical social justice issues of today," says Lee. "There is no way that we can actually address any of the social issues that we want to unless we go back in time and ask, 'What have we not yet learned from history?' "
That's a question that Lee and others hope the National Public Housing Museum will help people answer. For now though, having achieved what once seemed an impossible dream, they are ready to celebrate.
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