Thank you to the Chicago Transit Authority and public transportation workers who are providing a safe and essential service to healthcare workers, first responders, and others during the COVID-19 pandemic. Your important work is part of the city’s history.

Explore Chicago through the 1894 diary of streetcar conductor Elmer Whiting in our Google Arts & Culture exhibit Ride Around Chicago: A City in Transition. As he traversed the city, his observations provide a glimpse into its complex and changing landscape just a year after the dazzling World’s Columbian Exposition. See it now.

A CTA train heads west on the elevated tracks above Lake Street, June 30, 1967. HB-30550, CHM, Hedrich-Blessing Collection

Google Arts & Culture is an online platform that puts the treasures, stories, and knowledge of more than 2,000 cultural institutions from eighty countries at your fingertips. The Chicago History Museum’s portal includes stories from throughout the city’s history. Take a look into the mind of couturier Charles James, explore the history of blues music in Chicago, tour the city’s culinary history through historical menus, and so much more! Explore our Google Arts & Culture Exhibits.

ABOUT THE CHICAGO HISTORY MUSEUM

The Chicago History Museum is situated on ancestral homelands of the Potawatomi people, who cared for the land until forced out by non-Native settlers. Established in 1856, the Museum is now at 1601 N. Clark Street in Lincoln Park, its third location. As a major museum and research center for Chicago and U.S. history, the Chicago History Museum strives to be a destination for learning, inspiration and civic engagement. Through dynamic exhibitions, tours, publications, special events and programming, the Museum connects people to Chicago’s history and to each other. To share Chicago stories, the Museum collects and preserves millions of artifacts, documents, images and other items that are relevant to the city’s history. The Museum gratefully acknowledges the support of the Chicago Park District on behalf of the people of Chicago.