As the World’s Fair loomed on Chicago’s horizon, architects Willoughby J. Edbrooke and Franklin Pierce Burnham built a 98-unit hotel to house visitors. After the exposition was finished, the Romanesque Revival building with a large central courtyard was converted into apartments and became known as Mecca Flats.
Chicago adhered to strict segregation codes in the 19th century, and Mecca Flats, located in the Bronzeville neighborhood at 3360 S. State Street, wasn’t immune. The complex originally only allowed white residents, before allowing Black residents in 1911. Quickly, the building became a site for creatives well-known in the Black Renaissance. Gwendolyn Brooks famously titled a book after the tenement, and luminaries Muddy Waters and Katherine Dunham called Mecca Flats home.
Although a historical beacon of Black creativity, the Illinois Institute of Technology razed the building in 1952. It was replaced by the Mies van der Rohe-designed S.R. Crown Hall.
While Mecca Flats are long gone, its memory lives on throughout Chicago, and thanks to the collective known as Floating Museum, a new artwork revives the cultural hub. “for Mecca” is a large-scale inflatable structure recreating the once-thriving complex in grayscale polyester. Scaled down, this iteration stretches 41 feet long, with a U-shaped passageway for viewers to walk through.
Floating Museum is co-directed by avery r. young, Andrew Schachman, Faheem Majeed, and Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, who share that the project offers a “tangible artifact” of Chicago’s lost history. They say:
“for Mecca” represents our collective interest in Bronzeville’s complex history. We can no longer view nostalgic images of Mies van der Rohe—enjoying a cigar in the emptiness of S.R. Crown Hall—without also imagining Mecca Flats, collapsed under his feet, and recalling the slow strategic displacement of the African American community signified by the presence of its absence.
The project also includes several nods to former South Side institutions, including the jazz dancehall Savoy Ballroom and the Regal Theatre, a popular night club and performance venue.
Debuting this past weekend at the original site, the project will travel around the city’s parks through the summer of 2026. “for Mecca” is the latest project in the collective’s Floating Monuments series, which seeks to uncover critical cultural and historical legacies within Chicago through public installations.
Find more from Floating Museum on its website.
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