The Elmhurst History Museum is an award-winning regional history museum at 120 East Park Avenue, housed in the Glos Mansion, the former home of Elmhurst’s first village president. The museum preserves and shares Elmhurst’s local history through over 15,000 three-dimensional artifacts, more than 10,000 historic photographs, 300 linear feet of personal, business, and city records, and a library of over 500 books. The second floor features an immersive journey through Elmhurst’s past with artifacts, rare photographs, an interactive tabletop map, and a documentary film. They also operate the Churchville Schoolhouse, a restored National Register property in Bensenville.
Origin Story
Here’s your rewrite:
The Elmhurst History Museum opened in January 1957 as a community initiative to preserve the heritage of a rapidly growing suburb. Its first home was a single room on the third floor of the Glos Mansion, which at the time also housed Elmhurst’s City Hall. The mansion itself was built around 1892 for Henry L. Glos, Elmhurst’s first village president. In 1965, the museum moved to the Wilder Mansion at Wilder Park for more space but returned to the Glos Mansion in 1975 with dedicated exhibition rooms.
Over the decades, the collection grew from a handful of donated artifacts into a professionally managed archive of over 15,000 objects, 10,000 photographs, and hundreds of linear feet of records. In 2016, they rebranded from “Elmhurst Historical Museum” to “Elmhurst History Museum,” a deliberate shift to signal that the museum isn’t just about preserving the past but about making history accessible and engaging for present-day audiences.
