Over the last couple of years, we’ve reported on the construction efforts to build the first-ever American Writers Museum—a 11,000-square foot space at 180 N. Michigan Ave. in Chicago dedicated to chronicling the development of American literature. Its mission is to “engage the public in celebrating American writers and exploring their influence on our history, our identity, our culture, and our daily lives.”

That museum has finally opened its doors to the public this month—and so far, the response is positive.

Steve Johnson, writing for the Chicago Tribune, describes the American Writers Museum as “ambitious, far-reaching, and wise in its appreciation of writers and writing” despite its predictably incomplete survey of American literature and the limited space of the building. Located within Chicago’s “Cultural Mile,” the building is also within close distance to The Art Institute, Chicago Cultural Center, Millennium Park, and the Pritzker Military Museum, which will “further establish the area along Michigan Avenue south of the Chicago River as a cultural playground,” Johnson adds.

In a review for The New York Times, Jennifer Schuessler compares the museum to a “convivial shared apartment” with a homey, “push-and-pull between playful immersion and more traditional instruction.” Rather than focus on the solitary nature of writing, Schuessler says, the American Writers Museum seeks to immerse readers within the diverse history and community of American writers.

At the entrance to the museum, a short video introduces visitors to a map showing the locations of American writers featured in the museum. The Writer’s Hall comes next: a visual display of a hundred American writers on one wall, and a hundred American works on the other. At the end of the hall is a “Word Waterfall”—a video installation of quotes on what it means to be an American against a background of text. There’s also a children’s literature gallery, an exhibit dedicated to local Chicago writers, interactive word games, and kiosks for ranking works in the museum on Goodreads.

Temporary exhibits currently include a “greenhouse” of poems by poet and horticulturist W.S. Merwin and live plants created by artists Susannah Sayler, Edward Morris, and Ian Boyden; and another that features the first draft of Jack Keroauc’s The Road: a long scroll of paper on which Keroauc typed continuously.

The museum was founded by Malcolm O’Hagan, a retired executive of an engineering company from the Washington, DC area. After visiting the Dublin Writers Museum in his native Ireland, O’Hagan wondered why its American equivalent didn’t yet exist. Within months, O’Hagan incorporated the organization, and the rest is history.

O’Hagan himself said he wanted the museum to have a democratic feel. “American literary culture is uniquely democratic and sort of bubbles up from below,” he told the Times. “One of the mysteries of literary creation is that it’s made by men and women who are basically like us. If the museum can create that sense of intimacy and connection, that’s a great thing.”

Image Credit: American Writers Museum