• Hull House (National Historic Landmark, 1889)
• Maxwell Street Market site
• St. Ignatius College Prep (established 1869)
• Chicago Fire Academy (site of the Great Fire's origin)

Near West Side holds an unusual distinction: the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 itself started here, in an Irish immigrant shantytown near the river, before it swept north and destroyed most of the city's core. The neighborhood rebuilt as a dense landing ground for waves of Irish, Italian, Greek, Jewish, and other immigrants working in the industries along the river, and in 1889 social reformers Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr opened Hull House here to serve that population directly.

Hull House, now a National Historic Landmark, still stands as the birthplace of the American settlement house movement, while the site of the old Maxwell Street Market — once the largest open-air market in the United States and a cradle of the Chicago blues sound — continues on nearby in a smaller form.

A neighborhood that watched Chicago's fire begin at its own doorstep, then spent the next century rebuilding around waves of newcomers — Near West Side's history is written in continual reinvention. MY-NHD's collection carries a piece of that forward.