DuSable Hall

This building contains classroom and office space for several humanities departments, and is the first facility on campus named for an African-American. An adventurer, trader, and the first settler of Chicago, DuSable's (1745-1818) father was a successful French businessman and his mother a former slave. DuSable received a formal education in France and returned to the New World to trade with and live among the Potawatomie Tribe of Native Americans in Northern Illinois. In 1772 he built a fur trading post on the Chicago River near Lake Michigan. This single cabin grew into a trading center and the DuSable family home marked the first settlement in the area now known as Chicago.