The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum presents PERENNIAL CITY: Experiments in Urban Gardening, the first exhibition to consider how immigrant communities and Hull-House residents shaped Chicago’s gardens and parks by transforming disused private land into shared spaces of cultivation.
Opening with a special reception on March 19, Perennial City brings together rarely seen photographs of Hull-House’s open-air schools, playgrounds, and rooftop gardens with archival materials, collection items, and newly commissioned works by Chicago artists. Set against the backdrop of rapid industrialization and city beautification campaigns at the turn of the twentieth century, these materials reveal how immigrants used gardening to claim health, dignity, and power in the urban landscape.
The exhibition is inspired by figures and groups such as Jens Jensen, Laura Dainty Pelham and the People’s Friendly Club, an intergenerational circle of Near West Side residents who, through agreements brokered by Hull-House, gained access to land and experimented with sharing property, labor, and care. These “perennial” concerns shaped early philosophies of urban design and civic life, with legacies that continue today.
Featuring original commissions by
@csiembra ,
@olly.costello.art ,
@relativitytextiles ,
@melissahpotter , and
@red_line_service_institute , Perennial City connects these histories to our lives now. Across installations, prints, painting, and living materials, artists explore land access, extraction, migration, and regeneration—asking how tending gardens has helped communities survive and imagine futures across generations.
What does it mean to grow a city together?
Who gets access to land—and at what cost?
What can immigrant histories teach us about urban futures?
Follow along here and visit our website for exhibition events, programs, and public conversations.
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Perennial City: Experiments in Urban Gardening is supported by the Efroymson Family Fund, Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Terra Foundation for American Art, the Building Climate Resilient Spaces for the Humanities at UIC project, and generous donors to the museum’s annual Neighborhood Social.
Design by
@hour.studio 
