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Our 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.

    Care to Look

    A museum display case with paint chips and a fragment of a wall

    Architectural Encounters

    Photo by Jenny Fontaine/UIC

    Exhibition

    • Throughout interior and exterior of the museum

    • Free

    Preserving artifacts from the Jane Addams Homes

    All objects have stories to tell. If you care to look—really look at any object, they reveal important information about the past as it continues into the present. 

    Throughout the National Public Housing Museum, you will encounter objects that were salvaged from the original Jane Addams Homes building that now serves as our home. You are invited to consider what these preserved artifacts from the building have to say about the style, culture, and history of public housing.

    These objects also serve as a constant reminder that our museum building used to be domestic spaces, homes where people once lived and loved.  The objects invite you to expand the horizon of what we consider worth preserving in society.

    Rusted metal mailboxes with several names written and crossed out.
    Mailboxes in situ
    Yellow wall with bits of red paint peeling off of it. On the wall, a sign reads 'FALLOUT SHELTER'.
    Fallout shelter sign in situ
    Rusted trash chute in a brick wall.
    Garbage Chute in situ

    More exhibitions

    Explore what’s on view
    A map with a red line and silhouetted figures are projected on a wall

    Historic Apartments

    Three recreated apartments at the heart of the National Public Housing Museum showcase the stories of diverse families who lived in the Jane Addams Homes.

    Read more
    Museum visitors look at a midcentury high school letterman sweater

    History Lessons

    History Lessons offers intimate glimpses of life in public housing through everyday objects and personal memories.

    Read more
    A person tends a flower garden in front of a brick high-rise apartment building, an image from the exhibit Living in the Shade

    Living in the Shade

    Explore the role of open space—large lawns and tenant gardens, paved paths and play spaces, shady seating areas and public art—in creating more livable, healthy, and thriving communities.

    Read more

    Exhibition Resources

    Additional resources available at the front desk.

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