Chicago History Museum

Founded in 1856, the Chicago History Museum upholds its legacy as one of the city's oldest cultural institutions with more than 22 million artifacts blown in from the city's storied past. Permanent exhibitions include Chicago: Crossroads of America, which sends visitors on a journey through a re-created jazz club and features a replica of an original L car and the monkey bars that its passengers hung from during commutes. Collections of dioramas detail the story of the city's growth from a barren nineteenth-century trading outpost to the bustling, youthful city that hosted the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Exhibitions centered on Abraham Lincoln offer an in-depth look at his campaign and election in 1860, and Lincoln's Chicago shows visitors a vision of the city as the 16th president saw it: from 7 feet, 6 inches in the air.