For nearly a century, Calumet Park sat wedged between a steel mill and an electrical power plant, a small but vital connection for southeast siders and the cooling breezes of Lake Michigan.
It served as a patch of green in a community dominated by belching smokestacks and the grinding sounds of freight trains.
Today, the industry that surrounded the Chicago lakefront park is all but a memory, but it seems fitting that the park’s fieldhouse is now home to a link to the community’s past.
Here is the Southeast Historical Museum, a repository of old photographs, yellowed newspaper clippings, furniture, clothing and other artifacts that illustrate the history of the working-class communities of South Chicago, the East Side, South Deering and Hegewisch.
The museum and others like it are important treasuries of information for the Chicago area. In the back rooms of libraries and in the basements of churches is a growing wealth of community and ethnic history. Unlike the history found in textbooks or mainstream museums, this is the history that tells the stories of city neighborhoods and suburban parishes.
“In the past, these were histories that were ignored,” says Janis Harman, past president of the Northeastern Illinois Historical Council, a group that represents about 50 community history organizations, most of which have some sort of museum facility.
“What I think is amazing and wonderful is how many of these little museums exist and the desire people have to preserve a community’s history and memories,” says Russell Lewis, the Andrew W. Mellon director for collections and research at the Chicago Historical Society.
“I think that what these facilities do is give people in the communities a chance to get a hold of history by realizing history is not always about the generals and the big shots,” says Rod Sellers, coordinator of the museology program at the Southeast Historical Museum.
“People can relate to what they see in these museums,” he adds. “Sometimes things like this get slighted in the textbooks.”
Some of these museums have evolved from small efforts to collect neighborhood history to community icons: The DuSable Museum of African-American History on the South Side, the Prairie Avenue House Museums just south of the Loop, Schaumburg’s Volkening Heritage Farm and Spring Valley Nature Sanctuary, and Naperville’s Naper Settlement now draw thousands of visitors each month. They employ several staff members and have hundreds of volunteers.
But most, like the Southeast Historical Museum, are run by a handful of volunteers and have shoestring budgets, pulled together by bake sales, community donations and occasional grants.
The Southeast Historical Museum was opened in 1985 after members of the Southeast Historical Society negotiated with the Chicago Park District for space in the fieldhouse at 9801 S. Avenue G. It is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Thursdays.
Crammed into the room at the fieldhouse are thousands of photos, most showing everyday life: Snapshots of families sitting on their front porches on warm summer nights before air conditioning, and proud businessmen in front of their tiny storefront in buildings that were torn down decades ago.
There are also materials that capture some of the community’s more momentous events, such as newspaper photos and stories of the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre, in which 10 striking Republic Steel workers were shot to death during a march in a field outside the East Side plant. There are also items delineating the area’s strong working-class background.
All of this is cared for by a handful of volunteers, says Sellers, most of whom have been with the museum since its start.
“It goes beyond putting in the time to care for the museum,” says Sellers. “They have a love for the stuff there.”
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In an inconspicuous two-story double storefront at 6424 N. Western Ave., similar work is taking place at the Rogers Park/West Ridge Historical Society Museum.
In this quiet working-class section of Chicago’s far North Side, folks have been working the past decade to chronicle the neighborhood.
“Like many other Chicago neighborhoods, we have a unique and exciting history,” says Mary Jo Doyle, executive director of the organization.
The museum’s latest project is a book entitled “Chicago’s Far North Side: An Illustrated History of the Rogers Park and West Ridge Communities.”
“You would not believe the work that has gone into it,” says Doyle. “But it will be a good accompaniment to the museum.”
Those who know the museum say it wouldn’t be there without Doyle. She served as the organization’s president for 16 years until the museum opened in its current location. Then, she was hired on as the facility’s executive director.
The museum is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays and from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursdays.
And while the society’s membership is now in the hundreds, Doyle is quick to point out that a good deal of the work is done by a small number of longtime volunteers.
Doyle and several others formed the society in 1975. They gathered historical documents and other materials relating to Rogers Park and West Ridge, and Doyle ran the museum from her house. Students and historians would often visit her home to do research on the neighborhoods.
“They would often be fascinated by the materials we had found,” says Doyle. “And before we had the museum, we would set up booths at street fairs. Before we could get our materials unpacked, people would be going through the boxes to look at things.”
At the museum, the group has collected 7,000 neighborhood photos, some dating to the 1870s. There’s also furniture from the past from local houses, terra cotta from the defunct Granada Theater, local business memorabilia such as store signs.
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Not far from the Rogers Park museum, the staff and volunteers at the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian – Kendall College are gathering a different type of history.
Housed in a two-story brick building at 2600 Central Park Ave., the museum houses more than 10,000 American Indian objects going back to the Paleo-Indian period.
“As a small museum, our mission is to give people in the community a sense of ownership in their own history and culture,” says museum director Janice Klein. “Because of our size, we can add a personal touch to a person’s visit. Here we’ve been known to get things out of storage to show people.”
The museum opened in 1977 after a donation of North American Indian objects from local realty firm owners John M. and Betty Seabury Mitchell. It was housed in two rooms at Kendall College until it moved to its current location three years ago.
It is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays, until 8 p.m. Thursdays, and from noon to 4 p.m. Sundays.
The museum is run on a $150,000 budget. Klein has a sense of humor about the facility’s shoestring budget. At a recent gathering of museum exhibitors, she put on a seminar entitled “Scotch tape and photo copies: How to Exhibit on Very Little Money.”
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Located next to a drive-through bank’s parking facility, the small red brick cottage at the intersection of 183rd and Martin Streets in Homewood usually goes unnoticed by most passersby.
Inside the 1891 house, however, is a treasure trove of history. Run by the Homewood Historical Society, the Dorband-Howe House (named after its two owners) gives visitors a taste of another time. The interior of the house is filled with turn-of-the-century furnishings, some of which came from the home’s previous owners.
There’s also thousand of photos and documents collected by the society, such as information on Homewood native John Miller, considered the Thomas Edison of the roller coaster.
“It’s wonderful to watch people discover what we have here,” says Elaine Egdorf, curator of the museum and former president of the Homewood Historical Society.
Egdorf and her late husband, Jerry, started the society in 1980 and a few years later came across the home. The previous owners of the neighboring bank wanted to demolish the home to make way for a bigger parking lot. The house was eventually turned over to the village, and the society leases it from the village for $1 per year.
During the late 1980s and early 1990s, the couple and other group members lovingly restored the home, repairing plaster walls, taming an overgrown garden and collecting period furniture.
Open 1-3 p.m. Tuesdays and Saturdays, the museum greets thousands of visitors each year, says Egdorf, who proudly notes that many of them are students.
“The kids will take a look at the kitchen here and they won’t believe their eyes,” she says. “Many will wonder where the family hid the TV. It’s wonderful that they can be exposed to this type of learning.”
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For more information on the Southeast Historical Museum, go to orion.neiu.edu/7E(tilde)reseller/. For more information on the Rogers Park/West Ridge Historical Society, go to www.rpwrhs.org/. For more information on the Mitchell Museum of the American Indian, go to www.kendall.edu/docs/museum.htm. For information on community history museums in general, go to the Northeastern Illinois Historical Council at members.aol.com/saremis/private/neil/index.htm.
