Muddy Waters’ former home in Chicago will be renovated into a museum and community center, the Hyde Park Herald reported Tuesday.
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has awarded a $ 50,000 grant to transform the six-time Grammy-winning blues musician’s brick home, located at 4339 S. Lake Park Ave. in the city’s North Kenwood neighborhood in the MOJO Museum of Muddy Waters. The grant comes through the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund.
Led by Waters’ great-granddaughter Chandra Cooper, MOJO’s renovation project will include a neighborhood museum attached to a community center. In addition to exhibits with a focus on waters and blues, the space will include a small venue, a recording studio, and a community garden.
“We want to be able to support older artists as well and as a little place where people can go down to the basement and do some recording,” Cooper told the Hyde Park Herald“Because while it was not a recording studio downstairs, it was a rehearsal studio, we would like to incorporate it into the overall experience.”
Waters bought the house in 1954 and used it for the next two decades as a rehearsal space; died in 1983. In 2013, the Department of Buildings deemed Chicago property unsafe, and the building was threatened with demolition.
“It was very significant to get this grant from the trust because it’s really saving this house from any deterioration,” Cooper said.
The Muddy Waters MOJO Museum project It is expected to be complete in two years.
