Karl Peter Koch (1900–1955)

Karl Peter Koch was a commercial artist who specialized in package design. Koch was born on December 25, 1900 in St. Marys, Ohio. His father Charles William Koch (1873–1939) was the son of John Mathias Koch, from Germany, and Mary Miller, from Bavaria. His mother Susan Sabina Kinstle (1873–1947), the daughter of a farmer, was born and raised in Auglaize, Ohio. Charles William Koch worked as a saloon keeper in 1910 and a butcher in 1920. By 1930, he has established his own business, Koch’s Cafeteria and Hotel in Dayton, Ohio. The Koch family became well known restauranteurs, and Susan Koch acted as president of Koch’s, Inc. Karl Peter Koch was the eldest of six children. At age twelve, Karl Peter Koch was working at the American Chain Company for ten cents per hour. By 1930, Koch had moved to Chicago. 

Koch lived at 156 West Burton Place in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood. Known as Carl Street Studios until 1936, West Burton Place was comprised of nineteenth-century houses and apartment buildings that were remodeled into artists’ studios by artist and entrepreneur Sol Kogen and designer Edgar Miller during the late 1920s and 1930s. Repurposing salvaged materials and fixtures from demolished buildings, such as old copper bathtubs, fireplace tiles, and marble, Kogen, Miller, and a team of craftspeople transformed the dilapidated Victorian-era buildings into multi-level studio spaces replete with handcrafted architectural features and ornamentation. Artisan Jesus Torres, whose multimedia talents including metalwork, ceramics, woodcarvings, and murals, was a major contributor. 

In 1937, “a group of commercial artists led by Karl Peter Koch and Clive Rickabaugh purchased the two rooming houses and three coach houses at 152, 154, and 156 W. Burton Place.” The 154–156 section of West Burton Place functioned as a residential cooperative, bringing together a three-story building with a set of two-story coach houses. Rickabaugh, Koch’s real estate partner, was an artist, designer, and playwright who moved to Chicago in 1929. After studying at the Art Institute of Chicago, Rickabaugh created backdrops for the Century of Progress Exposition in 1933–34. He was then employed as the art director of the Works Progress Administration Theater and later worked as a scenic artist for the Lyric Opera. In the 1950s, he was the art director of ABC-TV Chicago. Rickabaugh founded the West Burton Place Art Fair in 1963. He was a resident of West Burton Place until his death in 1973.

During Koch’s thirty-year career in Chicago, he had a studio located at 300 North Ada Street and later at Hotel Sherman, where he worked on industrial, package, and advertising designs. From 1936 to 1940, Koch was a member of the 27 Chicago Designers. Koch designed the cover for the Art Directors Club of Chicago’s Exhibition Advertising Art, held in Blackstone Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago in May 1945. In the “Direct Mail & Catalogs” section of the exhibition publication, he is credited as the artist and art director for the Chicago-based trade typesetting company J.M. Bundscho, Inc. 

Koch illustrated A Folio of Cultural, Scientific, Commercial & Industrial Symbols: Including the World’s Leading Alphabets, published in 1949. This book contains a variety of alphabet samples and symbols that span human history, with pages illustrating the “First Egyptian Consonantal Alphabet” and “Georgian Nuskhuri.”  He was also a well-known map artist and created several renderings of North Russia in a modernist style for the endsheets of Dan Steele’s Snow Trenches. 

Koch died on June 6, 1955 at age fifty-four. Koch was survived by his wife Martha A. Beneke (1909–1988), whom he wed in 1944. At the time of his death, he was working for Bielefeld Studios, a commercial art studio founded by Herbert Bielefeld in the 1920s and located at 35 East Wacker Drive. In 1959, Kling Studios, Inc. and Bielefeld Studios, Inc. merged into Kling-Bielefeld Studios, Inc. with headquarters at 601 North Fairbanks Court.

A Century of Progress Records, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.

“Charles Koch Dies Suddenly: Heart Attack Is Fatal for Native of Bettsville Tuesday.” The Fremont News-Messenger, March 2, 1939.

“Chicago Artist Dies in Studio.” Chicago Tribune, December 28, 1973.

Granacki, Victoria and Tim Freye. “West Burton Place Historic District, Chicago, Cook County, IL.” United States Department of the Interior National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places Registration Form. October 17, 2007.

“Karl Peter Koch.” The Journal Herald, June 9, 1955.

Koch, Karl Peter. A Folio of Cultural, Scientific, Commercial & Industrial Symbols: Including the World’s Leading Alphabets. Chicago: J.M. Bundscho, 1949.

“Obituaries: Karl Peter Koch.” Chicago Daily Tribune, June 7, 1955.

“Richard J. Bielefeld, 69.” Chicago Tribune, December 5, 2003.

Steele, Dan. Snow Trenches. Cartography by Karl Peter Koch. Chicago: A.C. McClurg & Co., 1931.

Stolte, Keith M. Chicago Artist Colonies. Foreword by Amy E. Keller and Zac Bleicher. Charleston, North Carolina: The History Press, 2019.

Sutnar, Ladislav. Package Design: The Force of Visual Selling. New York: Arts, Inc.: 1953.

The Art Directors Club of Chicago. 1945 Modern Art in Advertising: Exhibition Advertising Art, May 1 to May 30, Blackstone Hall, The Art Institute of Chicago. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1945.

The Chicago Design Archive. “Karl Peter Koch.” 

https://chicagodesignarchive.org/firm/karl-peter-koch.