• Shop Building (Up-Top)
• Carver Park
• Altgeld Gardens Memorial Wall
• George Washington Carver Primary School

Altgeld Gardens takes its name from John Peter Altgeld, the reform-minded Illinois governor of the 1890s, honored when the Chicago Housing Authority developed this far South Side community between 1944 and 1945. Built by the federal government to house African American war industry workers and returning World War II veterans, Altgeld Gardens ranks among the first public housing developments in the United States, its curving streets and low-rise brick rowhouses laid out along the Little Calumet River.

At the heart of the community stands the Shop Building, known to generations of residents as “Up-Top,” a sweeping Midcentury Modern structure designed by architects Keck & Keck that once anchored the neighborhood's commercial life. Nearby, Carver Park, named for George Washington Carver, and the community-painted Memorial Wall stand as enduring markers of a neighborhood built and sustained by the people who called it home.

Altgeld Gardens' story of resilience and self-built identity is one MY-NHD is proud to carry onto a shirt: wear the history of a South Side community that built its own landmarks, block by block.