Leather Archives & Museum In Rogers Park Kicks Off $2 Million Renovation

ROGERS PARK — Keep your chaps shiny, leather buffs.  

The Leather Archives & Museum broke ground June 1 on a $2.2 million renovation that will expand the museum’s gallery space and create an ADA-compliant entrance. 

Set to be completed in May, the renovations will also include a community event space and upgrades to the museum’s archives with climate controls and additional storage. The facility will be closed through the duration of the renovation project.

“It’s an amazing place, and no one who comes in there leaves without being impressed with this history and the fact that this history is saved,” said Gary Wasdin, executive director of the Leather Archives & Museum. “I think having a beautiful space that’s designed for it is kind of that next level of telling the world this is important and this matters.”

The museum will also update its interior with furnishings evocative of kink and fetish culture, like walls with a darker, richer color palette and leather-wrapped benches, handrails and light fixtures, said Wasdin.

Out Of The Closet And Into The Museum 

When Chicago gay activist Chuck Renslow started the Leather Archives & Museum in 1991, it was little more than a collection of boxes in his office closet, Wasdin said. 

In 2000, the museum moved to its current location, a former synagogue at 6418 N. Greenview Ave. The museum’s board began discussing renovations only a year later, but Wasdin said it wasn’t until he joined the museum in 2018 that it felt like updates were finally on the horizon.

“This is not the kind of organization that has a lot of foundations or government support,” Wasdin said. “Our community is passionate and supportive, but we don’t necessarily have the deep philanthropic pockets that that many communities have. So, you know, it’s taken more time, but we’ve been incredibly fortunate.”

In 2019, the museum hired Chicago-based Space Architects + Planners to handle the redesign, but the COVID-19 pandemic soon put the work on pause. 

Plans resumed in 2025, but museum higher-ups still weren’t sure if it was the right time to begin fundraising given the attacks on LGBTQ+ rights across the country, Wasdin said. 

“We sort of thought for a while … that maybe there was no way we would raise the money at this time in history,” Wasdin said. “But it’s kind of motivated people in the other direction, to understand how important it is to support queer organizations, and most especially fetish art.”

The museum’s building was designed in the 1950s and has many stairs that make navigating the space difficult for wheelchair users or those with mobility challenges, Wasdin said. 

“The number of people who aren’t able to visit grows significantly every year, so that kind of was the big main point, and that’s about half of the work that we’re doing,” Wasdin said.

‘Into The Stars’ 

The museum will continue to host monthly programs during the closure, though they will be off-campus. Those programs include kink education classes, gear night socials and fetish figure drawing classes at Chicago’s LGBTQ+ archive, Gerber Hart Library, just around the corner from the Leather Archives & Museum. 

The museum celebrated its closure with a big party last month to coincide with International Mr. Leather, a convention that sees thousands of leather aficionados pack the Congress Hotel every Memorial Day weekend.  

“We had a big reception just so people could come up and be together and be in the space and kind of celebrate everything that got us to this point,” said Wasdin. “And the incredible history of 35 years of community support and work that gave us the strength to be able to do this.”

People often come into the museum seeking connection and community, said Wasdin. It’s become a place to remind people they aren’t alone. 

“There are artists, there are writers, there are researchers, or scholars, there are clubs. To have all that in a building that reflects the celebration and joy of the kink and fetish communities, I think, is just going to really kick us into the stars.”

Updates about the museum’s renovations and a link to contribute to their renovations cost can be found here.