American Center for Design
description: esigners beyond Chicago and the Midwest, and its leadership began to include a mix of local and national board members. In 1989, as a result of this growth and enlarged geographic focus, STA changed its name to the American Center of Design (ACD). The organization continued to focus on design education and the elevation of public taste in graphic design, in addition to addressing the relationship of design and business through conferences, publications, seminars, and other programs. ACD was particularly concerned with new technologies, research, and ideas affecting the design profession. It explored these topics at its “100 Show,” a national curated design competition organized annually; through essays and criticism published in its design journals, including “Design Year in Review” and “People, Not Markets,” and in its “Quarterly Practice” newsletter; and at its “Annual Surfaces” conferences for professionals from the design and business sectors, the first of which was held in November of 1993. ACD also offered an annual conference every spring from 1991 to 1996 for students of design. These involved portfolio reviews and presentations by professionals in the field. ACD’s 1995 publication Interact included a CD-ROM with integrated content, demonstrating the organization’s interest in exploring new modes of interaction between print and digital design. ACD was recognized among I.D. (The International Design Magazine)’s inaugural “I.D. Forty” issue in 1993. Its editors highlighted the organization’s commitment to “generating debate about the focus, values, and judgments instrumental to the future of good design” and described ACD as “a rare resource of information” for designers. As ACD’s national visibility grew, it lost its local footing, membership among Chicago designers waned, and its financial future became tenuous. These difficulties were compounded as a growing number of new organizations and programs devoted to graphic design began to take hold in both busin…
source: “American Center for Design’s ‘Interact’ CD-ROM.” I.D. 42, no. 4 (August 1, 1995): 91. American Center for Design Records, 1927–1944, Chicago History Museum Research Center. Blauvelt, Andrew. “Calling for the New Imagists.” Eye 5, no. 17 (June 1, 1995): 84. Comberg, David. “Living Surfaces.” I.D. 43, no. 1 (February 1996): 90–91. Coupland, Ken. “The 100 Show: The Sixteenth Annual of the American Center for Design.” Graphis 50, no. 294 (December 1, 1994): 22. Coupland, Ken. “The 100 Show: The Nineteenth Annual of the American Center for Design.” Graphis 56, no. 328 (September 1, 2000): 12. Coyne, Patrick. “The ACD Conference on Interactive Media.” Communication Arts 36, no. 8 (February 1, 1995): 135–140. Daniels, Mary. Graphic Display. Chicago Tribune, February 9, 1992. “Design Student Grant, Miwa Wang, Institute of Design.” Statements 6, no. 3 (March 1991): 31. Dewey, Rob. The Society of Typographic Arts: A Seventy-five Year History. Edited by Jack Weiss. Chicago: The Society of Typographic Arts, 2002. Ehrenberg, Jennifer. “A Cold Eye: Dues and Don’ts.” Print 53, no. 3 (May/June 1999): 16–17. “Furthering the Faith: American Center for Design.” I.D. 1 (February 1993): 46. Hanson, Cynthia. “Taking a Wipe at Art.” Chicago Tribune, December 6, 1992. Heller, Steven. “Katherine McCoy, Educator, Designer, Writer.” Print 52, no. 4 (September 1998): 38. “Honorary Member Bill Moggridge.” Design Statements 9, no. 2 (June 1, 1994): 19. Kouri, Charles. “In a Changing World.” Statements 6, no. 2 (December 1, 1991): 18. “Living Surfaces.” I.D. 48, no. 5 (August 1, 2001): 78. Margolin, Victor. “Design History in the United States, 1977–2000.” The Politics of the Artificial: Essays on Design and Design Studies. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002. McMillan, Sam. “Report from ACD: Design for the Internet.” Communication Arts 38, no. 8 (February 1, 1997): 131–136. Middleton, R. Hunter. “Twenty-five Years of STA History.” Print, March 1953. Mirapaul, Matthew. “Designi…

American Furniture Mart
description: Built in 1924, the American Furniture Mart was a leader in home furnishings and innovative marketing in Chicago. Providing record square footage for the display of furniture manufactured by hundreds of factories from across the nation, the American Furniture Mart facilitated connections between producers, retailers, and consumers. By offering a space dedicated to the meeting of manufacturers, distributors, and clients, the American Furniture Mart bridged the gap between offer and demand that had arisen in an economy increasingly based on mass production. Designed by architects George C. Nimmons (1865–1947), Max Dunning (1873–1945), and Henry Raeder (d. 1943), the American Furniture Mart building reached a height of seventeen stories and was celebrated as the largest building in world at the time its completion. (Consisting of two parts, the east end of the building was constructed in 1924 and the west end in 1926.) Strategically built on a prestigious lakefront lot in downtown Chicago, the American Furniture Mart at 666 Lake Shore Drive offered two million square feet of modern exhibition spaces enclosed in a Gothic-inspired shell. The American Furniture Mart was created exclusively for members of home furnishings businesses and prohibited the public from admission. Its grandiose scale and lavish ornamentation not only expressed the prominence of Chicago in the furniture industry, but also the centrality of Chicago within a national network of design and manufacturing. The sumptuous interiors of the Furniture Club of America attracted leaders in the furniture industry, and its restaurant provided members with a convenient place to hold business meetings. The American Exposition Palace, also located at 666 Lake Shore Drive, hosted fairs and expositions organized for wholesale buyers. Chicago gradually experienced a downturn in its dominance in the furniture industry, in part due to internal competition, such as the completion of the Chicago Merchandise Mart in 1931. …
source: “Am. Furniture Mart Obtains 333 Building: Control Gained by Stock Purchase.” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 23, 1954. “American Furniture Mart Reorganization Approved by Court.” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 19, 1935. “American Furniture Mart—‘World’s Largest Building.’” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 8, 1925. “Attendance Up in Chicago: More Buyers at Furniture Mart Than Year Ago—Buying Brisk Furniture Stores to Expand Buying.” New York Times, July 13, 1949. Chase, Al. “Furniture Mart Will Be World’s Largest Building.” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 3, 1923. Chase, Al. “Furniture Mart Site Is Changed to Shore Drive.” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 15, 1922. “Chicago Housefurnishing Exposition.” Crockery & Glass Journal 100, no. 24 (June 11, 1925): 19. “Chicago’s Furniture Mart, $10,000,000 Building, Bombed.” New York Times, December 9, 1930. Darling, Sharon. Chicago Furniture: Art, Craft & Industry 1833–1983. Chicago and New York: The Chicago Historical Society in association with W.W. Norton & Company, 1984. Diesenhouse, Susan. “New 15-Year Lease Keeps Playboy Based in Chicago.” Chicago Tribune, August 23, 2006. Dombrowski, Louis. “Chicago Industries: Wind City Dynamic Leader in Home Furnishing Field.” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 29, 1961. Douglas, Anne. “Furnishings Mart Yields Many an Interesting Item.” Chicago Tribune, June 24, 1972. Douglas, Anne. “Summer Furniture Plays Bigger Year ‘Round Role.” Chicago Daily Tribune, October 20, 1957. “Exhibitor’s List for Mart Given.” Furniture Manufacturer and Artisan 86, no. 2 (August 1, 1922): 62. “Files Furniture Plan: Chicago Mart Would Reorganize Under Bankruptcy Act.” New York Times, April 3, 1935. Fuller, Ernest. “Famous Chicago Buildings: MART.” Chicago Daily Tribune, February 28, 1959. “Furnishings Sales Set New All-Time Peak.” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 23, 1951. “Furniture Mart to Be Built: Building Project for Chicago Is Assured—Work to Begin June 15 and Building Completed in May 1923.” Furniture Manufacturer and …

Armour & Co.
description: Armour & Co., a meatpacking business, was established as Plankinton, Armour & Co. by John Plankinton (1820–1891) and Philip Danforth Armour (1832–1901) in 1863. Initially based in Milwaukee, the company saw tremendous growth during the American Civil War and went on to open branches in Chicago and Kansas City. Philip Armour relocated to Chicago in 1875 to manage the company’s office there, and Plankinton left the business in 1884. The Armour family assumed full responsibility for the company thereafter, with Jonathan Ogden Armour, Philip’s son, assuming leadership in 1901. Armour & Co. became one of the largest meatpacking businesses in the United States and, along with similar companies founded by George Hammond and Gustavus Swift, helped secure Chicago’s reputation as what poet Carl Sandberg called the “Hog Butcher for the World.” Packinghouses situated on the banks of the Chicago River and major railway expansions such as the development of the Union Stockyards in 1860 allowed for the easy importation of surplus livestock from midwestern farms into Chicago and the subsequent distribution of processed meats to consumers around the country. Twelve million cows and pigs passed through the Union Stockyards in 1890 alone. Historically, the production calendar of the meatpacking industry was dictated by the seasons, with meat processing and transportation occurring primarily in the cold, winter months to avoid spoilage. Technological advances in refrigeration enabled unprecedented year-round operations, and ice-chilled railcars allowed for the shipment of raw, dressed meats over long distances. Armour & Co. gained a competitive edge because it streamlined the meatpacking process, innovating steam hoists used to lift and move cow and pig carcasses and envisioning new purposes for meatpacking byproducts. The company worked with scientists to develop industrial and consumer goods from the non-comestible parts of the animals it processed. Bones and hides were either sold o…
source: Barrett, James R. Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago’s Packinghouse Workers, 1894–1922. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987. Brody, David. The Butcher Workmen: A Study of Unionization. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1964. Halpern, Rick. Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago’s Packinghouses, 1904–54. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997. Hautzinger, Daniel. “When Chicago Was ‘Hog Butcher to the World.’” WTTW, June 21, 2018. https://interactive.wttw.com/playlist/2018/06/21/union-stock-yards. Hughes, Bob. “A Shelter for Artistic Young Ladies Makes Its Debut in 1912.” Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1986. Janega, James. “Meatpacking.” Chicago Tribune, August 8, 2014. https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/blue-sky/chi-meatpacking-top-chicago -innovations-bsi-series-story.html “Mob of 4,000 Men Charges Police: Most Serious Riot of the Packing House Strike Occurs Near West Stockyard Gates.” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 19, 1904. Pacyga, Dominic A. Slaughterhouse: Chicago’s Union Stock Yard and the World It Made. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2018. “Philip D. Armour, Jr., Dead: Younger Son of Chicago’s Millionaire Parker Stricken with Congestion of the Lungs in California.” New York Times, January 28, 1900. Potempa, Philip. “La Lumiere School Includes Armour Meats Connection.” Chicago Tribune, November 10, 2017. “Rejected Armour Meat: So Calvary on the March Had to Do Without It.” New York Times, July 24, 1906. Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture for the Year 1863. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1863. Sandberg, Carl. “Chicago.” Poetry: A Magazine of Verse 3, no. 6 (March 1914): 191. Schulze, Franz. Illinois Institute of Technology: The Campus Guide. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2005. Seigel, Jessica. “Meat-Packing Town’s Heyday Has Come and Gone, but Strong Flavor Remains.” Chicago Tribune, July 27, 1990. Skaggs, Jimmy M. Prime Cut: Livestock Raising and Meatpacking in the Unite…

Armour Institute/Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT)
description: The Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) is Ph.D.-granting private university in Chicago with programs in engineering, architecture, design, science, human sciences, applied technology, business, and law. One of the largest of its kind in the nation, IIT formed in 1940 with the merging of two technical schools: the Armour Institute, established in 1893 on the South Side by meat-packing industrialist Paul Danforth Armour, Sr. (1832–1901), and the Lewis Institute, a high school and junior college founded in 1895 from the estate of Allen Cleveland Lewis (1821–1877). Sharing complementary pedagogies, the consolidated institutes offered a professional education based on science, engineering, management, and the humanities. Other incorporations followed as IIT expanded the scope of its research and educational programs. The Institute of Design joined IIT in 1949 and the Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1969. Historically characterized by its active relationships with industries and businesses in Chicago, IIT is home to research centers such as the Nation Center for Food Safety and Technology and the IIT Research Institute. The IIT Main Campus is renowned worldwide for its modernist architecture. German-born architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886–1969) joined IIT as its first Director of Architecture in 1938 after the closure of the Bauhaus in Weimar by the Nazi regime. During his two-decade tenure at IIT, Mies not only reshaped the curriculum, leading to the reputation of IIT as “the New Bauhaus,” he also orchestrated the master plan of the campus. Envisioned by Mies as an icon of modernity, the IIT Main Campus was entirely reconceived and expanded in the 1940s and 1950s. Laid out following a uniform module determining the size and articulation of each building in relation to one another, the IIT campus was designed to embody rationality, clarity, and economy. Mies’s twenty-two buildings for IIT find their stylistic zenith in the aptly named S.R. Crown Hall (1956) which…
source: 50 Years Bauhaus: Additions on the Occasion of the Exhibition at Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, Illinois, 1969. Stuttgart: Wüttembergischer Kunstverein, 1969. Applebaum, Wilburn. “Illinois Institute of Technology.” In Encyclopedia of Chicago, edited by James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, and Janice L. Reiff, 49. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. “Armour Gives $1,000,000: Mrs. P.D. Armour Joins Her Son in Gift to the Armour Institute.” New York Times, April 11, 1901. “Armour Institute.” Chicago Daily Tribune, May 29, 1909. Armour Institute of Technology Collection, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago. Armour Institute of Technology Grade Books, 1985–1908, Paul V. Galvin Library, University Archives and Special Collections, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Armour Institute of Technology Records, Paul V. Galvin Library, University Archives and Special Collections, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Armour War Training Records, 1896–1931, Paul V. Galvin Library, University Archives and Special Collections, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Beeby, Thomas H. “Toward a Technological Architecture? Case Study of the Illinois Institute of Technology Commons Building.” Perspecta 31 (2000): 10–21. Blaser, Werner. Mies van der Rohe: IIT Campus, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. Basel: Birkhäuser, 2002. Bluestone, Daniel. “Chicago’s Mecca Flat Blues.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 57, no. 4 (1998): 382–403. Channick, Robert. “Oldest Building at IIT Sold, To Be Apartments: Redevelopment Will Have to Clear Historic Hurdles.” Chicago Tribune, February 1, 2017. Domer, Dennis. “Walter Peterhans and Visual Training at Illinois Institute of Technology.” Structurist no. 31–32 (January 1992): 44–51. Eisenman Architects. “Campus Center.” ANY: Architecture New York 24 (January 1999): 38–43. Grubiak, Margaret M. “Educating the Moral Scientist: The Chapels at I.I.T. a…

Art Directors Club of Chicago
description: Perplexingly, apart from a briefarticlethat appeared in the March 1953 issueofPrint magazinesixty-three years ago, littledocumentationexistson the history and activities of the Art DirectorsClub of Chicago(ADCC). The article“European Influences on Chicago Designers,”written by graphic designer and ADCC member George McVicker (1904–1990)for a special Society of Typographical Arts (STA)issue, offersno genealogy of the group. Based on the numbering of the ADCC Annuals, the foundingof the organizationmay be placed at 1932 or 1933, althoughthe “first”annualmay not havecoincided withtheir first year of existence. (For reference, the New York Art DirectorsClubwas founded in 1920.) According to McVicker, inthe fall of 1934, the group sponsoreda course taught by much-admired Viennese designer Joseph Binder, known to ADCC membership through European publications. The well-attendedcourse made an enormous impact on participants, who were unfamiliar with Binder’s approach to stylizing and “abstract symbol” making. However, Binder’s influence was nothingcompared to that of László Moholy-Nagy(1895–1946)—called by McVicker “the real bomb [that] hit town.”1Four years after Binder’s course, Moholy-Nagy was brought to Chicago by the local Association of Art and Industry, which includedthe Container Corporationof America, Montgomery Ward, Marshall Field,and R.R. Donnelley representatives. Moholy-Nagy and his “first lieutenant”Gyorgy Kepes(1906–2001) not only introducednewmethods and design principles butalso acquainted Chicagoans with a vocabulary thatredefined design thinking and designproblems, using phrases such as “articulation of space” and “interpenetration of planes.” McVicker mentions the following namesin his Print article; they arepresumably ADCC members. Their names arepresented here in alphabetical order: Franz Altschuler Frank Barr Bruce Beck Francis Chase Burton Cherry DeKovic-Smith Design Organization Gene Douglas Cliffe D. Eitel Stan Ekman William Fleming Fran and Ros F…
source: McVicker, George. “European Influence on Chicago Designers,”Print:Magazineof the Graphic Arts7,no. 5 (March 1953): 26–33.