The Farnsworth House, designed in 1947 by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, is an icon of the Modern Movement. The Ford House, designed in 1949 by Bruce Goff, is built of coal, glass, cedar, hemp, and pieces of a Quonset hut.

This tour explores the residential work of lesser-known but distinguished architects who designed single-family houses in the Chicagoland suburbs of Schaumburg, Elmhurst, and Riverside.

During Mies van der Rohe's tenure as the chair of IIT, he produced both a master plan for the campus as well as twenty individual buildings. This walking tour will highlight IIT buildings by Mies and other architects, as well as the campus landscape design by Alfred Caldwell.

In the late 1950s, Hyde Park underwent a radical transformation as the University of Chicago reshaped the neighborhood through a massive urban renewal project. At the same time, the university began its own transformation, expanding beyond its Gothic quadrangles and commissioning buildings by significant modernist architects.

The organic reinforced concrete designs of Bertrand Goldberg differ markedly from those of his teacher Mies van der Rohe.  This tour will explore several of Goldberg’s projects, including the iconic Marina City and a visit to the interior of one of its apartments.

The organic reinforced concrete designs of Bertrand Goldberg differ markedly from those of his teacher Mies van der Rohe.  This tour will explore several of Goldberg’s projects, including the iconic Marina City and a visit to the interior of one of its apartments.

This tour explores two revolutionary educational buildings. The landmark Crow Island School (1940) by Perkins, Wheeler and Will and Eero Saarinen is an International Style design worthy of the progressive philosophy of this elementary school. Northwestern University’s main library (1970), was designed by Walter Netsch in his signature Brutalist aesthetic and embodies his “Field Theory” philosophy of rotating geometric shapes.

The University of Illinois at Chicago Circle was created between 1963 and 1968 as an “instant campus” in response to major growth in college enrollment following WWII.  Its Brutalist design by Walter Netsch and SOM became a nationally recognized model, even as it displaced thousands of neighborhood residents and sparked local grassroots protests. 

Chicago’s modernist skyscrapers are known and celebrated throughout the world. But the city’s South Side has a wealth of modernist architecture—homes, banks, institutional buildings and more—that are worthy of notice...and protection.

From owls as ornament to glassy spaceship-adjacent civic buildings, Chicago’s postmodern heritage is a fabulous mix of structures that reject the city’s architectural inheritance to embrace new forms and challenge the established norms of how a building expresses itself and its function.

This tour will explore the apartment towers designed by Mies van der Rohe along Lake Shore Drive, including Promontory Apartments (1949) in Hyde Park and the iconic steel and glass towers at 860 - 880 N. Lake Shore Drive (1948 – 1951).

The phrase “Northshore” evokes affluent neighborhoods filled with stately houses and tree-lined streets…but there’s more to Chicago’s northern lakefront suburbs than center-hall Colonials.  This tour offers a rare opportunity to visit four private homes: the Bruning house (Keck & Keck, 1936); the Ennis house (William Deknatel, 1941); the Drucker house (Harry Weese, 1953); and architect J. Marion Gutnayer’s own “rocket ranch,” designed in 1957 with a knowing wink to Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye.

Our exploration of modern houses continues with houses that three remarkable modern architects designed for themselves: the Haid House (1968) and the Larson House (1978) in Evanston; and the Netsch House (1974) in Lincoln Park. 

The Modern Movement encompasses so much more than strict modernism. And even strict Modernists enjoyed a little gold fringe and crushed velvet on occasion. This tour takes a look at some of the more Mannered examples of Chicago’s hospitality architecture, a couple hiding within the strictest of Modernist buildings. We will begin at Maxim’s, which Bertrand Goldberg created in 1963 as an paean to the famous Maxim's eatery in Paris. Next, the Gaslight Club within C.F. Murphy’s Miesian O’Hare Hilton still parties like it’s 1973 as it evokes the naughty (18)90s with flocked wallpaper and beaded room dividers. On to the atrium of John Portman’s Hyatt Regency O’Hare, which is as breathtaking now as it was when it opened in 1971. Our tour will finish at the Hala Kahiki in River Grove, where tropical drinks have been served amongst grass curtains, moais, and WITCO furnishings since 1964.

This full-day tour includes visits to sites by three of the most significant American landscape architects of the twentieth century.  The tour includes Dan Kiley’s South Garden (1967) and Laurie Olin’s Stanley McCormick Memorial Court (1990), both at the Art Institute of Chicago, and Alfred Caldwell’s roof garden at Lake Point Tower (1968). The highlight of the tour is an exclusive visit to Caldwell’s own farm in Bristol, WI (begun in 1948) which served as laboratory, classroom, and canvas and which is still privately owned.