National Public Housing Museum

 

National Public Housing Museum, 919 S. Ada St., Chicago

Of all the wicked problems facing western countries these days, housing may be the wickedest. The latest report from the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies shows (1) rental and owner-occupied housing prices at record highs, (2) unprecedented levels of homelessness, and (3) record amounts of claims from natural disasters (McCue 2025). Even in places where housing prices are in retreat, writes Strong Towns' Charles Marohn (2025), the result has not been great joy, but widespread pulling back by builders and financial institutions. 

In other words, the new National Public Housing Museum could not have opened at a better time. Located in Chicago's Little Italy neighborhood, near the University of Illinois Chicago campus, it exists on land once occupied by the Jane Addams Houses, the first public housing constructed in the United States (in 1938). Four residences from various decades of the Jane Addams Houses are recreated in part of the museum.

Admission to the museum is free.

Public housing brochures from around the country

Some possessions of public housing residents

There are a number of exhibits still under construction...

...but you can see the activism room, highlighting organized efforts of residents to improve conditions and/or prevent eviction...

Activism room

...and the music room, a library of recordings by former public housing residents. These include Miles Davis, Marvin Gaye, Kenny Rogers, and Barbra Streisand.

Music room

The heart and soul of the museum, however, is found on the tours of recreated public housing residences. These cost $25 (lower for seniors and students), and require reservations on the museum's website. There seem to be three tours, and I can't remember whether mine was "A," "B," or "C;" anyhow, your tour may have different content. (That's also the case at the Tenement Museum in New York.)

1940s: entrance to the Turovitz apartment

Turovitz family living room

Turovitz family kitchen

Displays are enhanced with oral histories; members of two of the families were present for the museum's grand opening earlier this year.

In the 1950s recreations, we saw a shadow play that included a crisp explanation of how housing policy, both public and private. through much of this period worked for whites and against blacks.

1950s: anti-integration protests

1960s: record player and 45s

living room TV console showing test pattern
(both the Sears Tower and the station's call letters are from the 1970s)

The biggest message of the Public Housing Museum experience was to humanize public housing residents. We meet real people, who have to deal with school and work and love and child-rearing just like everyone else, except more precariously. This is something worth remembering as government programs are mauled by the Trump administration gang, and as we collectively struggle with housing policy.

As seen above, the museum doesn't ignore public policy, but as a policy guy, I could have used a lot more. Public housing has gone through historical phases, from the early mid-rises to the infamous high rises to Section 8 vouchers, but the museum says very little about this history. It begs rather than addresses the question: Could public housing be the answer to some of the housing problems we face today?

It is bad form to critique any work based on what you wish it did, rather than what it does. Yet here I am, doing just that. I hope I've communicated that what the museum does, it does exceptionally well. It may be that future exhibits address policy more; that's an important part of the story, too.

MUSEUM WEBSITE: Welcome to the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago

RELATED POSTS:

"Everything is Connected, Including Housing Issues," 14 November 2024

"Metro Housing Update," 7 February 2024

SEE ALSO:

Charles Marohn, "What Happens When Housing Prices Go Down? (Because They Are)," Strong Towns, 21 July 2025

Daniel McCue, "A Year for the Record Books: The State of the Nation's Housing in Perspective," Joint Center for Housing Studies, 9 July 2025

"Supportive Housing Offers High-Impact, Cost-Effective Response to Homelessness and Opioid Use," Stanford Report, 27 June 2025

The struggle for justice

National Portrait Gallery (Wikimedia commons)

When Jane and I were in Washington last weekend we visited the National Portrait Gallery on the mall. Among their permanent and traveling exhibitions I was particularly moved by "The Struggle for Justice," an ongoing exhibition that 

...showcases the determined men and women--from key nineteenth-century historical figures to contemporary leaders--who struggled to achieve civil rights for disadvantaged or marginalized groups. (from the webpage).

The presentation implies, with some justification, that America's perennial effort to live up to its own ideals has been largely focused on inclusion of excluded groups of people. The premise is that the Framers of our Constitution got a lot right when they designed a political system "of the people, by the people, for the people" (quoting the Gettysburg Address). Injustice happened because they, and many Americans over the years, have had a crabbed understanding of who counts as people.

The stories of abolition, black civil rights and women's rights have been often told, and justly so. What is so moving is to see representatives of each movement here. mixed in with advocates for gays, the mentally handicapped, farm labor and Native Americans. It's quite a gathering--check the slide show on the museum's web page and imagine the whole bunch at the same bar--and to these could be added advocates for prisoners, survivors of violent crime, Catholics, religious minorities, transgendered, the physically handicapped and the mentally ill. Each of them stood up at one time or another to shout "We count, too!" They are truly American heroes. The tragedy is that the shouts needed to be made at all, not to mention how long it took for them to be heard over the steady drone of ignorance and prejudice.

"By Parties Unknown" by Hale Woodruff (1900-1980), at the Phillips Gallery in Washington DC

Inclusion isn't the promised land where all our social problems are solved. Inclusion is the baseline for national conversations over how our society will manage its common life. Without everyone having the opportunity to participate in that conversation, we create issues of legitimacy as well as effectiveness. Furthermore, I believe we are at a time in history where we don't have the option of living in separate spheres. The economy, the budget and the environment are forcing us together, whether we like it or not. We need to get used to that idea, and when we do, we'll find it is good for our souls, too.

Although the principle of inclusion is straightforward, it doesn't always provide clear decision rules on, for example, what to do about the class of immigrants known as the Dreamers. Moreover, it can be complicated or co-opted in practice. The week I saw the exhibit, the Trump administration issued a rule change allowing businesses not to provide female birth control coverage in employer-provided health insurance. Vice President Pence walked out of an NFL game in a surely-orchestrated protest against protesting players. In both cases, the officials sought to avoid the issue of inclusion either by claiming greater victimhood (do employers have a right-to-decide employees' health coverage that the government is violating?) or by simply changing the subject (respect the flag!). Meanwhile, a Seattle coffee house owner evicted some customers because prior to coming there they had been distributing anti-abortion pamphlets (Bollinger 2017). Not everyone is covered by the provisions of the Civil Rights Act, but the same principle of inclusion means we can have deeply-held disagreements without being enemies. According to the article, which is written from the hard-to-swallow perspective that the eviction was justified, the coffee house owner is gay, and surely has known exclusion I never have experienced. Still, we all have to live together. All of us.

The Smithsonian exhibit is optimistic, depicting an America living ever truer to its ideals--"striving upward towards perfection," to take one of my favorite John Wesley quotations somewhat out of context. May it be so.

SEE ALSO: "Strength Through Diversity," 1 March 2014