Free National Public Housing Museum exhibit. Tour the future home of The National Public Housing Museum at the former CHA housing project Jane Addams Homes.
Where: National Public Housing Museum, 625 N Kingsbury St, (773) 245-1621
When:. July 15- November 21, 2021 Monday-Friday, 10 am to 5 pm, Free and open to the public.
Toward Common Cause: Njideka Akunyili Crosby
NPHM and the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) are displaying artwork by MacArthur Fellow Njideka Akunyili Crosby. This is part of Toward Common Cause: Art Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, a multi-site exhibition exploring questions of ownership and rights of access. Other exhibition sites are the Smart Museum, the Minnie Riperton Apartments, one of CHA’s senior residence buildings, and NPHM, formerly the Jane Addams Homes.
About the National Public Housing Museum
The National Public Housing Museum is the only cultural institution devoted to telling the story of public housing in the United States. Its mission is to preserve, promote, and propel the right of all people to a place where they can live and prosper — a place to call home.
The last info I heard, in October 2016, was that the NPHM had won approval from the CHA to begin rehabilitating the historic “last building standing” at the Jane Addams Homes 1322 W. Taylor St., to become the museum’s new home. Apparently that has stalled and the museum is at it’s current location on Kingsbury.
Photo from National Public Housing Museum
About the future museum:
- The Museum will lease half of the CHA-owned building on a long-term, $1-a-year lease.
- The NPHM is raising additional funds for the build-out, planning a first phase opening and preview exhibit for October 2017 as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
- The museum will interpret the American experience in public housing.
- It will highlight the role that public housing has played in the lives of Chicagoans, while preserving and rehabilitating a historic building and transforming it into a vibrant community asset.
- The plan is to renovate four apartments to show what it was like to live in public housing in the different decades.
- Once complete the museum will trace the Addams homes from the home for a Jewish family in the late 1930s, when the development opened, to the 1970s, when an African-American family moved out.
- A public opening is projected for the fall 2018.
About Jane Adams Housing Project
- Designed by John Holabird in 1938.
- Jane Addams homes were part of ABLA homes and once had 987 walk-up units and 52 row houses,
- ABLA homes were comprised of 32 buildings and 3,596 units including the Robert Brooks Homes (built in 1943), Brooks Extension (built in 1961), Loomis Courts (built in 1950), Grace Abbott Homes (built in 1955), and Jones Apartments (built in 1963).
