Wabash Avenue YMCA

Address: 3763 S. Wabash Ave. Year Built: 1911 - 1913 Architect: Robert C. Berlin Date Designated a Chicago Landmark: September 9, 1998

An important center of community life, this Young Men's Christian Association facility also provided housing and job training for new arrivals from the South during the "Great Migration" of African-Americans in the first decades of the 20th century. A notable aspect of the building's diverse history was the founding here, in 1915, of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, one of the first groups devoted to African-American studies. The building was expanded to the south in 1945. It closed as a YMCA in the late 1970's. It is one of nine structures in the Black Metropolis-Bronzeville Historic District.