A Glimpse Back at Chicago's Communities and Neighborhoods

Introduction

Welcome to "A Glimpse Back at Chicago's Communities and Neighborhoods."

This special digital exhibit was created as part of the celebration of the 10th anniversary of Chicago Collections Consortium (CCC) in 2022.

To create this exhibit, we asked the CCC's member institutions to contribute items from their collections that celebrate a piece of Chicago's history. These libraries, museums, and non-profit organizations dug into their collections of books, letters, photos, maps and more and chose items that bring the stories of the past to life. Each item documents the history of the people and communities that have lived, worked, struggled, and persevered in this city for over 189 years.
 

How to navigate

Each piece of the exhibit tells a story of a person, community, event, or place in one of Chicago's neighborhoods. Neighborhood stories are organized by regions. To move through the exhibit, you can choose a region of the city from the Chicago Communities and Neighborhoods page. Using the orange buttons on every page, you can follow the path to see each community story in that region, or choose which stories you want to see first. Use the Table of Contents in the top left corner of the exhibit to navigate to any page. Choose any image in the exhibit to see a larger view and get more details about the object. To conduct a keyword search of the exhibit, select the magnifying glass icon in the upper-right corner of the page, type your search term, and hit "enter" on your keyboard.

A City to See

To begin your journey through Chicago communities, enjoy this video from the Chicago Film Archives, "Chicago: City to See in '63." The film by Margaret Conneely, a spoof of a travel video, takes you through 1960s Chicago to visit numerous neighborhoods and landmarks. You will see some of these sites elsewhere in this exhibit.
Video Running Time 12:37





Header image: Thirteen children playing on the jungle gym in the Mary Crane Nursery courtyard.

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