History from Chicago's Former Steel Mill Neighborhoods: Access to the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum Collection

FAIN: PW-253800-17

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, MA 02139-4307)
Christine J. Walley (Project Director: July 2016 to October 2022)

Southeast Chicago, along with northwest Indiana, was once one of the largest concentrations of industry in the world. This former steel-making region was integral to key transformations in American history, including histories of immigration as well as labor struggles bound up with an emerging industrial economy. In the mid-1980s, the Southeast Chicago Historical Museum was founded as the regional steel industry was collapsing, and it became a central repository for area residents to collect and preserve artifacts relating to the industrial, social, cultural, and environmental history of this once economically vibrant region. The proposed project will implement detailed plans for digitizing, processing, and providing access to, a portion of this incredible wealth of materials, while also developing long-term preservation strategies. It will allow for the creation of an interactive website to make this collection accessible to scholars, residents, and the public.