The Board of the Charnley-Persky House Museum acknowledges that the Charnley-Persky House sits on a threshold between ceded and unceded land that is the traditional homeland of the Potawatomi (Bodéwadmi/ Neshnabek).

“Chicago” comes from an Algonquian word commonly translated as “wild onion”; in Potawatomi it is Zhegagoynak. The landscape was significantly altered through construction, demolition, and episodes of landfill. Using urban refuse as fill to raise low-lying areas and to create new land was an essential component in Chicago’s growth.

The Pokagon Potawatomi were not the only Chicagoans whose claim to land was mediated by federal, state, or municipal bodies. Restrictive covenants, redlining, blockbusting—all of these practices and more unequally shaped Chicago.

Chicago’s Jackson Park was “the center of the world” between May and October 1893 when approximately 12 to 16 million individual sightseers visited and revisited the area to experience the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

Designed by Louis Sullivan with assistance from his junior draftsman, Frank Lloyd Wright, the Charnley-Persky House (1891-1892) is recognized as a pivotal work of modern American architecture. But its architectural significance is only the beginning of its story.

Willoughby J. Edbrooke and Franklin Pierce Burnham designed the Mecca Flats in 1891 as a new form of urban apartment living on Chicago’s developing south side. Bounded by 33rd and 34th Streets, Dearborn, and State Streets, the four-story Mecca Flats was the world’s largest apartment building when it opened in 1892.

A gift from the Imperial Japanese Commission to the United States, the tripartite Ho-o-den (“Phoenix”) Palace was one of the most popular attractions at the 1893 Fair. Masamichi Kuru, Government Architect of Japan, supervised a team of builders.

Simon Pokagon (c. 1830-1899) presented a copy of The Red Man’s Rebuke to the mayor of Chicago at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition’s Chicago Day.

Anti-lynching activist and journalist Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) headed up a group of writers who delivered this powerful protest about the lack of Black representation at the 1893 World’s Fair.

Many of the organizers of the World’s Fair lived in the Gold Coast neighborhood where the Charnley House is located. From two archaeological excavations we know that products introduced at world’s fairs were consumed by people in that neighborhood.

All the artifacts that were unearthed through the archaeological excavations at the Charnley House are important because they provide information about the people who lived there, but some objects are “special” in other ways.

Although the Mecca Flats were designed to be apartments, a certain number of rooms were set aside for use as a hotel during the 1893 World’s Fair.

In the years after the 1893 Fair demonstrated a more sanitary future for city dwellers, most Americans still did not have reliable access to safe water supplies.

What ingredients are there, exactly, in that vial of infant medicines? That bread flours feels strange—is it made from wheat, or is that chalk in it? These were not untypical questions for Americans before 1906 when there was no regulations on the safety of the various medicines and foods they purchased and consumed.

We often forget, in 21st-century Chicago, how many different people and institutions work every day to remove household and city waste. Many of us don’t even know where our trash ends up, but those in the 19th century certainly did.

Nancy Green and Sophia Hayden; Helen Charnley and Marion Stephens; Madame Nobia A. Franklin and Gwendolyn Brooks. These women, some better known than others, each highlight the social history that converges around the sites.

There were no children recorded in the decennial censuses as living in the home on 1365 N. Astor Street until the 1930s, when the children of James B. and Sarah Waller—James Jr. (3) and Robert (1)—were noted. But James and Helen Charnley had had three children—Douglas (born ), Helen (born 1876), and Bettie (born 1878).

The female servants who worked in the Charnley-Persky House and the women of the Mecca Flats, many of whom found employment in domestic positions throughout Chicago and its elite suburbs, reflect a distinct pattern of racial, ethnic, and national origins in domestic service.

Even the Charnley House was not immune to threats of destruction from urban renewal programs. In the 1970s, it was threatened with demolition when its current owners sought to cash in on the lucrative high rise apartments being built along the Gold Coast.

In Chicago many of these urban removal projects were instigated and aided by area universities—the University of Chicago, UIC, and, notably for tour focus on the Mecca Flats, the Illinois Institute of Technology—who sought to remove “blight” from their expanding campus environs.

The use of racial and often racist imagery to sell products has a long history in the US.

Over 28,000 artifacts—a subset of which are featured in this exhibit—were recovered from the two seasons of excavation led by Dr. Rebecca Graff of Lake Forest College.

The sources used in researching the exhibition are presented here, along with related links of interest.

Founded at Harvard University in 1940, the Society of Architectural Historians is a nonprofit membership organization that serves an international network of institutions and individuals who, by profession or interest, focus on the history of the built environment and its role in shaping contemporary life.