Deverra Beverly was the name of the ABLA Homes resident who conceived the idea that would become the National Public Housing Museum. ABLA was the acronym formed by the four Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) developments on the city's Near West Side—Addams Homes, Robert Brooks Homes, Loomis Courts, and Grace Abbott Homes, all comprising around 3,600 units. Beverly was the longtime president of the Local Advisory Council for Addams, which was built in 1938 and had 1,027 units in 32 buildings arranged about semi-enclosed courts with playgrounds and landscaping. Unlike later CHA projects that were mid- and high-rises with elevators, Addams was comprised entirely of low-rise walk-ups, both two-story rowhouses and three- and four-story courtyard buildings. 

Regardless of its architectural merits compared to its high-rise brethren across Chicago's South and West Sides, Addams and the rest of ABLA were part of the city's large-scale removal of public housing and its replacement by New Urbanist mixed-income communities that started in the latter half of the 1990s. Beverly backed then-Mayor Richard M. Daley's plan to demolish most of ABLA and help residents stay in the area, but around 2002 she also “secured a legal agreement with the CHA that guaranteed that an ‘interpretive exhibit’ devoted to public housing would be part of the future site.” Although she died in 2013 and would not live to see the realization of her dream, that “interpretive exhibit” would evolve into evolved into a full-fledged museum, incorporated in 2007, that would be housed in a three-story remnant of the Addams Homes at the corner of West Taylor and South Ada streets in the city's Little Italy neighborhood. It would take fifteen years after incorporation for construction of the museum to begin, followed by three years of construction before next month's opening.

The architect leading the adaptive reuse of the former public housing is Landon Bone Baker Architects (LBBA), the Chicago firm that made a name for itself a quarter-century ago with its handsome rehabilitation of the CHA's Archer Courts in Chinatown. For NPHM, LBBA and the wider redevelopment team have restored the existing masonry walls and concrete structure and installed a new roof, windows, and systems to meet the museum's needs. Changes to the outside are minimal, mainly consisting of a new canopy and entrance vestibule on Ada and signage signaling the presence of the museum on Taylor (see photo at top), so for the most part the character of the original, designed by famed Chicago architect John Holabird, is retained. The museum, which occupies the south half of the building (the north is set aside for future office space), has exhibition space, a recording studio, an “advocacy space” named for Deverra Beverly, and a museum store, but at the heart of it are three recreated historic apartments. Inspired by precedents such as the Tenement Museum on New York City's Lower East Side, the historic apartments will allow visitors to understand public housing by directly experiencing families' living spaces, with each of three apartments is recreated with furnishings to recall a different era from the 1930 to the 1970s.

The National Public Housing Museum will celebrate its grand opening over the weekend of Friday, April 4, to Sunday, April 6, 2025. Visit the NPHM website for details on the tours, exhibits, talks, and dance parties that will take place over these three days.