Chicago, Il

The UIC Renewal Project team aims to document the building of the University of Illinois Chicago campus as an urban renewal project of the 1960s, and the related histories and legacies of displacement and organizing on the Near West Side and West Side of Chicago. The area known alternatively as Taylor Street or Harrison-Halsted, as well as the West Side neighborhoods of Pilsen, North Lawndale, the Illinois Medical District, and Little Village, came to be defined as the sites of UIC’s “university community partnerships” from the 1990s onward. The team includes faculty members and students from the Departments of History, Gender and Women’s Studies, Black Studies, Global Asian Studies, Latin American and Latino Studies, Museum and Exhibition Studies, and Urban Planning. Our community partners include the North Lawndale Historical and Cultural Society, which chronicles the history of the North Lawndale community and educates the community about North Lawndale’s cultural assets, people, and architecture; the National Public Housing Museum, located in the last remaining building of the 1930s WPA-era Jane Addams Homes; the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, which itself was partly destroyed to make UIC; and Northside Action for Justice, a community organization involved in pushing back on urban renewal efforts on the north side for decades.