National Public Housing Museum, Chicago

2025 Landmarks Illinois Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Preservation Award for Adaptive Reuse & the Richard H. Driehaus Legacy Award

In the spring of 2025, the National Public Housing Museum (NPHM) completed an adaptive reuse project that reimagined a historic site of public housing into a vibrant new civic and cultural destination on Chicago’s Near West Side. The museum transformed the last remaining building of the 1938 Art Deco Jane Addams Homes into its new home, raising $18 million to complete the massive, multi-year project. Embracing the power of place and memory, the museum preserves and interprets the collective histories and experiences of public housing residents and encourages visitors to envision a more equitable future. NPHM expands the definition of a house museum, sharing diverse stories of everyday people—not just well-known individuals—and offers a new model of creative placemaking and civic dialogue.

(Photo credit: Ryan Barayuga)

Additional Information

Funding sources for this monumental project are as diverse as the community it serves. The Power of Place Capital Campaign, led by co-chairs Sunny Fischer, Denis Pierce and Khaliah Ali, was a multi-year effort to raise $18 million for the building’s restoration. Government funding sources include $4 million from the Chicago Department of Planning and Development; $2 million from the Illinois Arts Council; $1.5 million from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, and $500,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Other support came from a diverse community of individual donors, as well as private foundations that include the Joyce Foundation, the Terra Foundation for American Art, the Alphawood Foundation, the Joseph and Bessie Feinberg Foundation, the Driehaus Foundation, the Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation, among others. In addition, 24 housing authorities representing municipalities throughout the country generously contributed to making this museum a reality. This includes the in-kind donation of the building itself from the Department of Housing and Urban Development via the Chicago Housing Authority.

(Photo credit: Barry Brecheisen)

Project Principals

• National Public Housing Museum, Owner
• LBBA, Architect
• Amy Reichert Architecture + Design, Exhibition Design
• site design group ltd., Landscape

(Photo credit: Barry Brecheisen)

Why is this place important to you?

Lisa Lee, Executive Director & Chief Curator, NPHM

The building that houses the National Public Housing Museum exists today because public housing residents saved it from demolition and created a museum to preserve their collective voices, memories and the histories of public housing nationwide. The Jane Addams Homes now serve as a vibrant museum, cultural center and site for resistance against erasure and forgetting.

The story of the Jane Addams Homes is a microcosm of the tumultuous history and continued promise of public housing in Chicago and the United States. The Jane Addams Homes were one of the first three sites for public housing in Chicago. John Holabird, one of Chicago’s leading architects—designer of the Board of Trade and many other magnificent Art Deco buildings—headed the team that envisioned the complex as a welcoming village of linked three-story brick buildings, which provided a convivial home for tens of thousands of working-class residents over the decades. Built under a Public Works Administration program, the development opened in 1938, and its history, the impact of federal and local housing policies on neighborhood demographics and the stories of residents from the 1930s through the 1970s are told through three restored Historic Apartments at the National Public Housing Museum.

(Photo credit: Joe Nolasco)

How did saving this place impact people in your community?

Lisa Lee, Executive Director & Chief Curator, NPHM

All of the National Public Housing Museum exhibits and programs amplify the voices and experiences of public housing residents, recognizing diverse histories as valuable cultural assets. As a site of conscience, NPHM activates the power of place and memory to ask what we haven’t yet learned from history in order to solve urgent issues around housing insecurity. Our creative placemaking efforts include public art and history exhibits that empower residents as co-curators, storytellers and artists engaged in innovative public policy efforts. These diverse narratives ensure that never again will a single story about people in public housing be told as if it were the only one.

The museum project also led to the restoration of a set of enchanting animal sculptures by Edgar Miller (1899–1993) that once were the focal point of community life in the Jane Addams Homes. The restoration, by conservator Andrzej Dajnowski and artisans at Conservation of Artists and Objects Studio, captures the original spirit of the animals, which were originally commissioned by the Works Progress Administration (WPA) in 1936. These playful animal sculptures created a gathering place in the courtyard of the housing project from when the first residents arrived in 1938 until the National Public Housing Museum removed the sculptures in 2007. The Animal Court was an important social hub at the Jane Addams Homes, and its legacy continues today at the museum. In the Alphawood Foundation Sculpture Garden, guests are invited to listen to ABLA residents tell their poignant memories of the Animal Court throughout its history.

Finally, through a unique partnership with the Chicago Housing Authority and Related Midwest, several families now call the building home. Attached to the National Public Housing Museum are 15 units of public and affordable housing, built as part of the multi-building Roosevelt Square development as an innovative mixed-use model.

(Photo credit: Dirk Matthews)