Packingtown Museum Grand Opening

For the past few years, a group of Chicago history enthusiasts have been working on creating a museum to commemorate the heritage of the Chicago Stockyards area in a former packinghouse. The Packingtown Museum will host its official grand opening on March 28th from 3-6PM.

This facility is dedicated to preserving, interpreting, and presenting the industrial history and cultural heritage of Chicago’s Union Stock Yard and its surrounding neighborhoods. Through a combination of exhibits and educational programming, the museum strives to connect Chicago's industrial past to its future and inform contemporary conversations about labor, immigration, food production, community development, and the economy.

The Packingtown Museum is housed at The Plant, a former meatpacking facility that is being repurposed as a collaborative community of food businesses committed to material re-use and closed-loop systems. The Plant is owned and operated by Bubbly Dynamics, LLC, which directs the design and build-out of tenant spaces, common areas, and major projects to increase efficiencies of the building and site.

Established in 2002, Bubbly Dynamics is a social enterprise whose mission is to create replicable models for ecologically responsible and sustainable urban industrial development. Bubbly Dynamics’ first building, the Chicago Sustainable Manufacturing Center, was renovated based on these principles and has been home to tenants involved in a variety of light-industrial uses. Bubbly’s second project, The Plant, takes the concept further and is working to demonstrate the benefits of closing loops of waste, resources, and energy for food-producing businesses.

The story of the development of the Union Stock Yards, the people who worked in them, and the neighborhoods that grew up around it includes chapters on organized labor, the role of immigration in fueling the growth of city and economy, and the changing relationship between people, machines, and food. All of these historical themes are relevant to the political and social dynamics of Chicago and the United States today. Through a better understanding of and appreciation for this 150-year history, we can be more engaged and thoughtful participants in the present and future that is unfolding right in front of us at The Plant.

You can read more about this museum in this article which originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times:
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2018/11/9/18480002/packingtown-museum-seeks-to-tell-how-chicago-became-hog-butcher-for-the-world