From monumental structures and inventive ornamentation to children’s toys, this selection of objects from our architecture and design collection gives you a glimpse into the collective genius of Chicago’s creative spirit.
Arts and crafts for all souls
All Souls Unitarian Church was among the few projects attributed solely to Prairie School architect Marion Mahony Griffin, one of the first licensed women architects in the United States. A native Chicagoan, she attended MIT and then worked in Frank Lloyd Wright’s Oak Park studio, where she helped to define Wright’s iconic Prairie School design style.
In 1903, Griffin designed this work as part of an intimate and atmospheric design for Church of All Souls in Evanston, Illinois, which featured an abundance of stained glass. Griffin placed this arched window over the church’s main entrance to greet congregants with the dramatic image of a sun rising over an abstracted landscape composed of brown, green, and red glass. Griffin went on to found a successful practice with her husband Walter Burley Griffin, which included the master plan for Canberra, the new capital city of Australia.
On view in Gallery 200
A BRONZEVILLE MECCA
Designed by Willoughby J. Edbrooke and Franklin Pierce Burnham—no relation to Daniel Burnham—Mecca Flats was built as a hotel intended to serve some of the projected millions of visitors to the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. Located in a neighborhood of Chicago that came to be known as Bronzeville, this U-shaped building was converted into apartments after the fair and gradually gained a reputation for its support of Black creatives. It was immortalized in popular jazz songs and in Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks’s long-form poem, In the Mecca. In the early 1950s, the building’s tenants fought a long and ultimately unsuccessful battle to save the building from demolition as part of the Illinois Institute of Technology campus expansion. A maintenance crew uncovered these tiles in 2018.
On view in Gallery 200
Egyptian Style for a Black fraternal order
The first Black architect licensed in Illinois, Walter T. Bailey studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and spent his early career as a professor at Tuskegee University—a historically Black university in Alabama. In 1922 he was commissioned by the Knights of Pythias, a Black fraternal order, to design their national headquarters in Chicago’s thriving Bronzeville neighborhood. When it was completed in 1928, the building was the largest and most significant in the country to be designed, built, and financed by African Americans. This terracotta fragment from the building is adorned with the bust of a Pharaoh, part of the building’s Egyptian Revival facade. This style likely held great significance for the Black Knights of Pythias at a moment when many African American intellectuals looked to the history of Egypt as a source of cultural pride. Although the structure was demolished in 1980, the Pythian Temple remains an important part of the rich history of Bronzeville and Chicago’s South Side.
On view in Gallery 200
botanically inspired and inspiring
Known for his groundbreaking skyscrapers and theories of architectural ornament, Louis Sullivan was part of a wave of architects who flocked to Chicago following the Great Fire of 1871. Working with architect Dankmar Adler, Sullivan rose to prominence with large commercial projects—such as the Auditorium Theater and Carson Pirie Scott building—that married bold volumes in stone and terracotta with his original, botanically inspired ornament. At a time when many architects practiced in neoclassical styles inherited from Europe, Sullivan advocated for uniquely American forms of architecture, making him a hero to the next generation of progressive architects in Chicago, including Frank Lloyd Wright and other designers associated with the Prairie School. The Gage Building’s gracefully ornamented façade, designed by Sullivan, was one of the architect’s last major commissions in Chicago.
On view in Gallery 200
an art deco goddess of trade
Ceres, the ancient Roman goddess of agriculture, is depicted here holding a sheaf of wheat in one hand and a bag of grain in the other. Created by American modernist sculptor John Storrs, this figure is a small version of the monumental three-story sculpture on top of the Chicago Board of Trade Building, an appropriate subject to crown the commodities exchange. Storrs, who grew up in Chicago and studied at the School of the Art Institute, created the sculpture without a face, believing that it would be so high up that no one would be able to see its features (the Board of Trade was the tallest building in Chicago until 1965). Storrs drew inspiration from Art Deco to create a streamlined form using the modern material of aluminum. Ceres garnered a great deal of praise; a review stated that “this work has been described by some of the nation’s leading architects as one of the finest pieces of architectural sculpture to be found in America.”
On view in Gallery 271
SWINGING IN STEP WITH CHILDREN
Designer Henry Glass was known for his innovative furniture designs, from groundbreaking hairpin legs to inflatable chairs. Austrian-born and trained, Glass began his career in the United States working with New York designers Russel Wright and Gilbert Rohde before moving to Chicago in 1942. This child’s wardrobe is part of his award-winning Swingline furniture group— encompassing beds, bookshelves, cabinets, desks, and other pieces—which capitalized on the consumer culture of the 1950s as one of the first commercial lines created explicitly for children. Composed of brightly-colored Masonite boxes that open and close on simple rod hinges, these furniture pieces could be manipulated like toys, echoing the pioneering work of Bauhaus designers in the 1920s. Glass initiated the first industrial design program at the School of the Art Institute, where he served as a professor for over two decades.
On view in Gallery 285
user experience at play in play
One of the 20th-century’s most prominent African American designers, Charles Harrison transformed postwar living in the US with his designs for durable and affordable household products. After studying industrial design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with professor Henry P. Glass and serving in the army, Harrison worked for 32 years at the Chicago-based retailer Sears, Roebuck, and Co. The first Black designer hired by the company, Harrison designed over 750 objects, including hair dryers, appliances, sewing machines, and lawn mowers. In 1959, he redesigned the popular toy known as the View-Master, a stereoscope device introduced at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. Harrison’s now-iconic model replaced the brown, blocky unit with lightweight, brightly colored, injection-molded plastic, making the device less costly and easier to use, especially for children—epitomizing Harrison’s keen attention to the experience of the user rather than predetermined aesthetic goals.
On view in Gallery 285
THE MANY COLORS OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY
Architect turned artist Amanda Williams was raised on Chicago’s South Side. Her work blends her deep interest in urbanism with traditional artistic techniques to confront issues of race, value, and politics. Her most well-known project, Color(ed) Theory, debuted at the Chicago Architecture Biennial in 2015. With the help of family, friends, and other members of the community, Williams painted eight soon-to-be-demolished houses in Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood using a palette of colors found in products and services marketed primarily toward Black people, such as Harold’s Chicken Shack, Newport 100s, Crown Royal Bag, Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, Ultrasheen, Pink Oil Moisturizer, Currency Exchange, and Safe Passage. The bright colors transformed buildings into sculptural objects, drawing attention to the underinvestment in African American communities around the city. The series asks: What color is poverty? What color is gentrification?
On view in Gallery 285
TO REFLECT AND RELAX
The Sinmi, a stool by Chicago-based designer Norman Teague, takes its title from the word “relax” in the African language of Yoruba. Inspired by the American rocking chair, this sleek seating in plywood and rubber provides a momentary place to perch, inviting interrogations of conventional ways of using and interacting with furniture in space. Created as a playful design experiment, the piece was inspired by the relaxed positions— straddling, sitting, or perching—assumed when hanging out in the urban environment. Although he acknowledges that this ambiguity of position and object type can cause apprehension (users often ask “Am I doing this right?”) Teague has found that people quickly gain an intuitive level of comfort with the piece that he likens to the exploratory process of starting a new relationship.
On view in Gallery 285
A RECONSTRUCTED GEM OF COMMERCE
The Trading Room was the centerpiece of the 13-story metal-frame Chicago Stock Exchange building, one of Dankmar Adler and Louis H. Sullivan’s most distinctive commercial structures. Designed for the daily operations of the Stock Exchange and filled with Sullivan’s lush organic ornament and stenciled patterns, it served its original function for just 14 years. During the course of its demolition in the late 1960s, photographer and activist Richard Nickel was tragically killed when the building collapsed as he was working to salvage ornamentation. As a tribute to Nickel and Sullivan, sections of the Trading Room stencils, molded pilaster capitals, and art glass were preserved, and in 1977 the Art Institute created a complete reconstruction of this significant room in a new wing of the museum. After your visit, stop by the corner of Monroe Street and Columbus Drive to see the Stock Exchange’s monumental entry arch in a small garden on museum grounds.
The recreation of the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room can be found just a half-floor down from where the Chagall Windows are located, accessible via stairs or elevator.
