Aftermath of the tornado.
The best way to stay informed of new exhibits, and much else, is to join the Historical Society and receive our Ouilmette Heritage newsletter and email alerts of upcoming events.
We hope you'll visit us soon and often! We're open Sunday through Thursday, 1 to 4:30 p.m.
We feature both ongoing exhibits that you can visit again and again, and new, rotating exhibits that stay up for a limited time. Here are some of the things you'll want to look for when you come to visit us:
Wilmette’s earliest settlers knew a lakeshore of high, wooded bluffs overlooking a lake whose waves were steadily eroding away the bare shoreline. There were no harbors, no piers, no breakwaters, and only a few narrow strips of sand to serve as a beach. That landscape has changed dramatically over time, profoundly transforming the relationship between Wilmette’s citizens and their lakefront. The Wilmette Historical Museum’s new exhibit, “Cooler by the Lake,” takes a lighthearted but informative look at that relationship, from the village’s early days to the present.
Dazzling designs from the flapper era bring the Roaring Twenties vividly to life in this new exhibit from Costume Curator Jane Textor, featuring some of the rarest and mostcolorful dresses in the Museum’s collection.
The middle of the 1920s saw the emergence of the unshaped, daringly short garment known to all as “the flapper dress.” This simple cut presented designers with the perfect canvas for exuberant decoration: baubles and beads sparkled by night, to the jazzy rhythms of the Charleston and the shimmy. Enjoy these spectacular fashions from an era whose youthful gaiety still looms large in the popular imagination.
Celebrating the centennial of Wilmette’s Troop 1, the first Boy Scout troop west of Alleghenies, this exhibit includes familiar Scout memorabilia. A knotboard from 1928 demonstrates proper knot techniques, a 1925 poster advertises Camp Ma-Ka-Ja-Wan in Pearson, Wisconsin, a uniform jacket from 1915 displays achievement badges of the era, and a 1937 Boy Scout handbook teaches practical skills like first aid, how to build a fire and how to read a map.
On the first floor is this exhibit about the people who
settled Gross Point and Wilmette in the 19th century. Among the
rare artifacts on display are the medicine bag (complete
with vials!) of the Village's first doctor, Byron Stolp, the
surveyor's compass used to lay out Wilmette's
first streets, and a phrase-book that Gross Point's
German immigrants used to help them make their way across
America.
The Gross Point Village Hall had it all: clerk's office,
fire department, and police department—including four jail
cells. Thanks to this restoration you can find out how it felt to
be locked up in one of the gloomy old basement cells.
(Kids of all ages love this exhibit!) In the adjoining
cell, "Early Policing in Wilmette and Gross Point"
features antique equipment like handcuffs and a billy club, along
with lots of fun photos.
Wilmette's identity as a village
is defined by its historic homes and buildings, yet this heritage
has been disappearing at an increasingly rapid pace in recent
years. This exhibit uses photos and fragments to tell the stories
of some of the structures that have vanished forever from the
Wilmette landscape. Featured in the exhibit are the house built
on 11th Street by the notorious H. H. Holmes of The Devil in the
White City fame, the astonishing Benjamin Marshall house and
studio, the Carnegie Free Library, and many others-- all of them
reminders of earlier ways of life, and past sensibilities and
tastes, in our village.
Native Americans lived in the Wilmette area for more than 10,000 years. On display are examples of their finely-crafted, stone tools and ceramic objects, including the haunting "effigy head," one of the oldest and most famous artifacts in our collection. Don’t miss a chance to see locally-made objects that are thousands of years old!
Here in the old fire-hose bay we've chosen to tell a few stories that help to illuminate the special character of our community and its people. We begin with the tale of the Ouilmettes, from whom the Village got its name, and go on to tell about the controversial saloons of old Gross Point, the terrifying Palm Sunday Tornado of 1920, the long battle over "No Man's Land," the story behind Wilmette's miles of brick streets, and the creation of beloved Roemer Park. Adding to the exhibit are two special paintings created for the Village by local artist George Lusk in 1934. These enormous murals of Wilmette scenes—each painting is fourteen feet long—have not been seen in public for many years, and we're very glad to be able to put them on display again.