Founded in 1907, the Cuneo Press was one of Chicago’s largest printing companies, second only to the R.R. Donnelley & Sons. Its founder John F. Cuneo, Sr. was the third generation in his wealthy family to flourish as a Chicago businessman. His grandfather, John B. Cuneo, emigrated from Genoa, Italy in 1847 and prospered as a produce and wholesale grocery merchant. His father, Frank Cuneo, was the president of the produce firm Garibaldi & Cuneo. Frank Cuneo’s investment in real estate was credited with starting the development of the Wilson Avenue business district in 1910. Born in Chicago on December 24, 1884, John F. Cuneo attended the Latin School of Chicago. He enrolled at Yale University but left before completing his degree to start his career as an owner of a book bindery. In 1907, with a loan of $10,000 from his father, Cuneo founded a small book bindery that occupied one floor at Madison and Market Street. Quick to expand into the printing business, he realized that there were no existing firms that offered book publishers the combined services of composition, printing, and binding under one roof. In response, he acquired the Henneberry Company in 1919 and established the Cuneo Press. In 1890, the Henneberry Company building, located at 22nd Street and Clinton Avenue, was the largest printing plant in the Chicago. Cuneo would continue to expand his printing empire through large-scale purchases and the management of printing-press operations across the United States. Popular magazines, such as Boy’s Life, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Harper’s Bazaar, House Beautiful, and Town & Country, were instrumental to the success of the Cuneo Press, contributing to forty-five percent of its overall volume. At the same time, the company produced books, catalogs, and phone directories. In 1925, the Cuneo Press hired renowned bibliographer and typeface designer Douglas C. McMurtrie (1888–1944) as the director of typography. One year later, McMurtrie left the Cuneo Press after accepted an offer for the same title at Ludlow Typograph Company. In 1926, the Cuneo Press opened a world-class fine bindery, the Cuneo Fine Binding Studio, that attracted international master binders, including Leonard Mounteney of the Royal Bookbinder in London. Mounteney, who had previously worked at the R.R. Donnelley Binder, was praised as “an exhibition binder” whose “handcrafted extremely fine, high-end leather bindings” were worthy of museum exhibitions. Books produced by the Cuneo Fine Binding Studio won awards and were exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago and the John Crerar Library. The success of the Cuneo Press interested Henry Ford, who offered to purchase the Cuneo Press in 1927; but, the company declined the proposal in pursuit of expanding and building two more plants of their own. The Cuneo Press was responsible for printing the official guidebook for A Century of Progress International Exhibition, held in Chicago in 1933 and 1934. At the World’s Fair, the Cuneo Press presented an exhibition on the history of printing and engraving processes, complete with actors in period costumes demonstrating how the machines were used. Most famously, the exhibition showcased the original Gutenberg press, the first moveable type press, on loan from the Gutenberg Museum in Mainz, Germany. Replica type cases of Johannes Gutenberg were also displayed. Otto Maurice Forkert, a graduate of the Graphics Art Academy in Zurich and an Instructor of Printing Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, managed the Gutenberg workshop at A Century of Progress in 1933. Additionally, Forkert authored the souvenir booklet From Gutenberg to The Cuneo Press: An Historical Sketch of the Printing Press for the exhibition. The frontispiece of the booklet reproduced a sixteenth-century woodcut, depicting artisans at the printing press, by German printmaker Jost Amman whose woodcuts were featured in illustrations throughout the brochure. An illustration of the Cuneo Press Building in Milwaukee, Wisconsin visually linked the twentieth-century press to a centuries-long lineage of printers and bookmakers. Fairgoers from across the country also went home with twelve-by-seventeen-inch facsimiles of Johann Fust and Peter Schoeffer’s Mainz Psalter (1456)—the second book to be published using Gutenberg’s movable type process. Fair attendees watched the souvenir page being printed at the recreated Gutenberg workshop. To commemorate the closing day and last air mail pick-up from the World’s Fair, the Cuneo Press designed a limited-edition souvenir for stamp collectors: a philatelic cover “hand printed and set in the original Donat type (the first moveable metal type in the world)” and “printed on the Gutenberg press.” The printing of the commemorative cover also paid tribute to the Gutenberg press before its journey back to Mainz. The Cuneo Press participated at the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair in celebration of 500 years of printing. Forkert, who “joined Cuneo Press as director of design and typography” in 1934, directed its History of Printing exhibition. There Cuneo employees made souvenir prints of seventy-six lines from Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography (1791) and Stephen Daye’s “The Oath of a Freeman” (1630s). Daye’s loyalty pledge was considered the earliest known American imprint, making it an apt choice for the printing anniversary. By 1940, Cuneo had established plants not only in Chicago and Milwaukee but also Kokomo, Indiana, Philadelphia, San Francisco, and Weehawken, New Jersey. Members of the local union of the International Brotherhood of Book Binders went on strike at the Cuneo Press plant in Chicago in January 1940. Forming picket lines, 750 members of the newly established union fought for “a closed shop, seniority rights, and pay raises that would average 6 cents an hour or more.” By 1955 the company’s net income was $255,782, a time when Chicago led the world in commercial printing. The eighth largest industry in Chicago, commercial printing drew in one billion dollars annually. That same year, another strike was held at the Kokomo plant, halting operations. The Cuneo Press building in Kokomo, Indiana caught fire on September 25, 1957, causing one million dollars in damage. William Anthony served as the art director of the Cuneo Press in 1968. The son of an Irish bookbinder, Anthony followed the family profession beginning with a seven-year apprenticeship. His continued his education with another seven years of training at the Camberwell College of Arts in London, where he specialized fine binding. His expertise was recognized through his membership of the London Guild of Contemporary Bookbinders. At the Cuneo Press, he designed books and brochures; outside of the company, Anthony taught fine binding classes in the bindery of the John Crerar Library, then part of the Illinois Institute of Technology. In the 1980s, Anthony operated a book bindery studio with apprentices in the Old Colony Building at 407 South Dearborn Street. In 1977, the Cuneo Press shut down in large part due to its high operation costs. That December, Northwestern University Library received a donation consisting of archival materials, binding and printing artifacts, and records from the Cuneo Binding Studio. In addition to photographs, advertisements, and brochures, the Cuneo Studio archival collection includes “hand moulds, wood and iron nipping presses, fine paper and parchment, and a working replica of the Gutenberg printing pressed used by the Cuneo History of Printing exhibit.” By 1995, the abandoned seven-story Cuneo Press building at 2242–2266 South Grove Street in Chicago’s South Side were slated for demolition. The method of its razing made headlines and drew crowds: for the first time in Chicago, explosives were used implode a building. In 1965, John F. Cuneo, Sr.’s net worth, accumulated through real-estate developments and the ownership of the Cuneo Press, Hawthorn Mellody Farms Dairy, and the National Tea Company, amounted to 120 million dollars. He also owned the Milwaukee-Golf Development Company and the Camel View Plaza in Scottsdale, Arizona. Cuneo died in 1977. His wife Julia Shepard Cuneo, son John F. Cuneo, Jr., and daughter Consuela Roti survived him. In his will, Cuneo stipulated that his family’s thirty-two room mansion on Milwaukee Avenue in Vernon Hills be transformed into a museum following the death of his wife. In July 1991, one year after Julia Shepard Cuneo’s death, the Cuneo Mansion opened its doors to the public. The palatial, Italianate-style mansion, built in 1916 for utility magnate Samuel Insull and purchased by Cuneo in 1937, is situated on one hundred acres of gardens and landscaped grounds. John Cuneo, Jr. (1931–2019) gifted the family estate, valued at $50 million, to Loyola University Chicago in 2009. In 2016, the Lake County Forest Preserve purchased the Cuneo Family Farm, owned by Cuneo, Jr. since the early 1960s, for an estimated $10.5 million. His training of circus animals, including “lions, white tigers, elephants, leopards, and bears,” on the property garnered controversy and resulted in legal action by the federal government.
“2 Pilsen Warehouses Fall to Demolition Crew’s Touch.” Chicago Tribune, January 29, 1995. “Airplane View of Cuneo Press Development.” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 27, 1927. Armour, Lawrence A. “The Printed Word: Expanding Markets, Better Equipment Give It New Lustre.” Barron’s National Business and Financial Weekly 40, no. 48 (November 28, 1960): 3. A Century of Progress. Official Guide Book of the World’s Fair of 1934. Chicago: Cuneo Press, 1934. “Air Mail Pick Up to Carry Last Day Souvenir of Fair.” The Berwyn News, October 12, 1934. Baker, Robb. “Gutenberg Heirs Salute Him.” Chicago Tribune, August 25, 1968. Brown, Emily Clark. Book and Job Printing in Chicago: A Study of Organizations of Employers and Their Relations with Labor. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1931. Butcher, Fanny. “Books: Fair Presents Many Thrills to Book Lover: First Editions Are Shown by Publishers.” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 15, 1933. “Christmas Seal Contest: Strive to Meet Deadline.” Chicago Tribune, August 18, 1968. Cuneo Press. Gutenberg’s Calendar of the Turks for the Year Fourteen Hundred Fifty-Five: Printed from the Reconstructed Type of Gutenberg and Rubricated by Hand in the Gutenberg Workshop. Chicago: Cuneo Press, 1933. Cuneo Press. Specimens of Type Faces: Monotype, Linotype, Foundry. Chicago: Cuneo Press, 1939. “Cuneo Press Buys Kokomo, Ind., War Surplus Facilities.” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 3, 1949. “Cuneo Press, Inc.: Outlook Improved This Year, President Says at Meeting.” The New York Times, June 1, 1955. “Cuneo Press’ Kokomo Plant Hit by Fire.” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 26, 1957. “Cuneo Press to Expand.” New York Times, May 7, 1927. Cuneo Studio Materials. Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. “D.C. McMurtrie Dies at 56; Was Type Designer.” New York Herald Tribune, September 30, 1944. Detterer, Ernest Frederick and Douglas C. McMurtrie. Fine Printing at the Cuneo Press. Chicago: Cuneo Press, 1927. Douglas C. McMurtrie Papers, Newberry Library, Chicago. Foerstner, Abigail. “Fine Bindings an Investment in Preserving Tomes of Sentiment.” Chicago Tribune, January 29, 1984. Forkert, Otto Maurice. 500 Years of Printing Arts; an Historical Sketch of the Printing Press. Chicago: Cuneo Press, 1940. Forkert, Otto Maurice. From Gutenberg to the Cuneo Press: An Historical Sketch of the Printing Press. Chicago: The Cuneo Press, 1933.Gorman, John. “Cuneo Mansion Opens to Public: Treasure-laden Home of Printing King Reborn as Museum.” Chicago Tribune, July 9, 1991. “Gutenberg Model at Work: Pages from Bible to Be Printed at World’s Fair Exhibit.” New York Herald Tribune, July 4, 1940. “Gutenberg Press Due Here May 12.” New York Times, May 4, 1933. “He’s Rich Man’s Son, Wild Animals’ Trainer: John Cuneo Jr., Here at Shrine Circus, Makes Paying Business of His Hobby—Has His Own Zoo.” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, July 1, 1960. Heise, Kenan. “Obituaries: Graphic Design Expert Otto Forkert.” Chicago Tribune, May 14, 1991. “John Cuneo, Printing Firm Owner, Dies at 92.” Chicago Tribune, May 1, 1977. “Judge to Give Ruling Today in Cuneo Case.” Chicago Tribune, December 10, 1929. Lohr, Lenox R. Fair Management: A Guide for Future Fairs, the Story of a Century of Progress Exposition. Chicago: Cuneo Press, 1952. McMurtrie, Douglas C. The First Printers of Chicago: With a Bibliography of the Issues of the Chicago Press, 1836-1850. Chicago: Cuneo Press, 1928. McMurtrie, Douglas C. and Ernest Frederick Detterer. Fine Printing at the Cuneo Press. Chicago: Cuneo Press. “Obituaries: John F. Cuneo.” Chicago Tribune, May 2, 1977. Regan Printing House. Story of Chicago in Connection with the Printing Business. Chicago: Reagan Printing House, 1912. Rodkin, Dennis. “Cuneo Family Farm Sold to Lake County Forest Preserves.” Crain’s Chicago Business. March 1, 2016. https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20160301/CRED0701/160229844/cuneo-farm -sold-to-lake-county-forest-preserves. Scully, Margaret. “Training Animals His Hobby, and He Finds Bears Exciting.” Chicago Tribune, March 21, 1950. “Strike Settled, Work Resumed at Cuneo Press.” Chicago Tribune, January 23, 1941. “Strikers Continue to Picket Cuneo Press Despite Order.” The Kokomo Moring Times, April 21, 1967. “U.S. Halts Strike on Draft Printing.” Pittsburgh Sun-Telegraph, October 10, 1940. “Your Home Town Paper Receives Treasured Souvenir.” Shiner Gazette, September 14, 1933.
Douglas Crawford McMurtrie was a nationally renowned typographer, bibliographer, and authority on the history of printing. Over the course of his career, McMurtrie advised on the typographical redesigning of hundreds of newspapers and contributed to over 779 works on the subject of printing. He also helped to form the Continental Type Founders Association and edited the magazine Ars Typographica. While a position at the Cuneo Press brought him to Chicago, he spent nearly two decades as the director of typography at the Ludlow Typograph Company. In addition to his achievements in the field of design, McMurtrie held leadership roles in the rehabilitation movement for disabled children and World War I military veterans. He served as president of the Society for Crippled Children and director of the Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men. An advocate for the reformation of public attitudes toward disabled people and their full inclusion in society and the workplace, McMurtrie applied his printing expertise to the movement. Douglas Crawford McMurtrie was born on July 20, 1888 in Belmar, New Jersey to William McMurtrie (1851–1913) and Helen Douglass. His father was a chemist whose agricultural research propelled the sugar beet industry in the United States. From 1906 to 1910, Douglas C. McMurtrie attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). During his undergraduate studies, he designed his cohort’s yearbook, acted as the managing editor of the student-run newspaper, and worked as a correspondent for three Boston newspapers. McMurtrie graduated from MIT in 1910 and was then hired by the Pittsburgh Typhoid Fever Commission, where he produced much of its printed materials for distribution. His involvement with the Federation of Associations for Cripples began in 1910. From 1912 to 1919, McMurtrie edited the Journal of Care for Cripples and, starting in 1915, served as the president of the organization. His first bibliographic project was a compilation for the Society for Crippled Children entitled Bibliography of the Education and Care of Crippled Children: A Manual and Guide to the Literature Relating to Cripples Together with an Analytical Index. McMurtrie’s contributions to the rehabilitation movement involved national speaking engagements and the publication of printed materials. In his analysis of McMurtrie’s role in the movement, historian Brad Byrom explains, “As a prosperous businessman in the craft of printing, McMurtrie’s wealth and position allowed him to become a filter through which the vast bulk of information concerning the movement passed.” According to Byrom, McMurtrie was among the most influential advocates in the rehabilitation movement and one of many reformers with professions outside of medicine. “To him, the most important aspect of rehabilitation involved changing traditional attitudes toward disabled people. McMurtrie held the nondisabled primarily responsible for the dependency that characterized America’s crippled population.” McMurtrie and likeminded advocates campaigned in opposition to medical rehabilitationists, including doctors, who fallaciously blamed disabled individuals for their moral weaknesses and pathologized dependency. During World War I, McMurtrie was the director of the Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men which offered physical and psychological rehabilitation, vocational job training, and job placement. The founding of the Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men by the Red Cross in 1917 predates the establishment of the United States Veteran Bureau by four years. While the Institute was formed to help disabled civilians, its initiatives soon focused on the rehabilitation of injured soldiers. By the end of the war, 224,000 soldiers had suffered injuries and approximately 4,400 returned from the war with fully or partially amputated limbs. An estimated forty thousand soldiers were discharged after sustaining psychological trauma, then called “shell shock” (today categorized as post-traumatic stress disorder). According to one 1918 newspaper article, McMurtrie was “considered the American pioneer in the field of re-education for soldiers incapacited as a result of their service, and probably the foremost authority in this country on the subject.” His essay “The High Road to Self-Support” was published by the Surgeon General. The Red Cross Institute published McMurtrie’s compilation A Bibliography of the War Cripple in 1918. According to American studies scholar John M. Kinder, “Under the direction of Douglas McMurtrie, it produced over fifty different pamphlets, broadsheets, and monographs on rehabilitation work within the first year of the Armistice. In 1918, the institute distributed six million copies of McMurtrie’s flyer Your Duty to the War Cripple in New York customers’ utility bills.” McMurtrie then worked as a freelance designer and printing broker in New York. His work attracted the attention of Ingalls Kimball, the co-designer of the Cheltenham typeface, who hired him as a general manager of the Cheltenham Press. However, McMurtrie became dissatisfied with the lack of opportunity to create and publish his own designs. In 1917, McMurtrie was hired to be the director of the Columbia University Printing Office but left the position in 1919 when the university sold all of their printing equipment due to insufficient funding and production. Afterwards, McMurtrie became the president of the Arbor Press for two years. McMurtrie was concerned that popular typographies were beginning to look similar and the variations were becoming smaller. In response to this problem, McMurtrie established a modern printing plant in the countryside of Greenwich, Connecticut in 1921 with the goal of producing high-quality prints without the distractions of the urban environment. Unfortunately, the plant could not produce enough capital to support its productions. He sold it to Condé Nast Publications but remained its manager. During this time, he designed and published his own typefaces, such as the McMurtrie Title and Vanity Fair Capitals, and was a major contributor to the format of the New Yorker magazine. In 1923, McMurtrie left Condé Nast Publications to freelance in New York again. From 1925 to 1926, he was the editor of Ars Typographica, a periodical that featured prints of many types. McMurtrie was also crucial in the forming of the Continental Typefounders Association in 1925, an organization that encouraged typography exchanges between European nations and the United States. McMurtrie was responsible for the importation of Cochin and Didot. In 1927, he left his position with the periodical and moved to Chicago to become the typographic editor of the Cuneo Press. One of the most notable books he published in 1927 is The Golden Book which compiles the history of printing and was revised in 1938 and renamed The Book. His time at the Cuneo Press was brief. In 1928, he joined the advertising and public relations departments of the Ludlow Typograph Company. McMurtrie moved to the company because they supported and funded his research and writing endeavors in bibliography. During his tenure at Ludlow Typograph Company, he established himself as a leading historian of typography and published more than five hundred bibliography books, among them the Chicago-themed The First Printers of Chicago: With a Bibliography of the Issues of the Chicago Press, 1836–1850 (1927) and A Bibliography of Chicago Imprints, 1835–1850 (1944). Although he is the only named author of these books, McMurtrie employed several researchers and writers and distributed the workload among them. In 1936, he had planned to write and publish a four-volume history of printing in the United States, but only two books covering the Middle and Southern Atlantic states would be finished. In 1936, McMurtrie was invited to direct a Federal Works Progress Administration project that aimed to organize and create archival systems and spaces. Called the American Imprints Inventory, the ambitious federal work relief project endeavored to compile “a comprehensive listing of all early American imprints extant in American libraries, archives, and historical institutions.” As director, McMurtrie encountered an array of difficulties that led to his involuntary resignation in 1941. Afterwards, the Newberry Library in Chicago carried on the project and eventually deposited over fifteen million unpublished cards at the Library of Congress. His second involvement with another WPA initiative led to thousands periodical indexes but went unpublished and was later transferred to Michigan State University. McMurtrie used his personal imprint Eyncourt Press to publish a few pieces of erotica and The Stone Wall: An Autobiography (1930), written by Ruth White Fuller (1864–1935) under the pen name Mary Casal. Considered one of the earliest books in American literature to tell the life story of a lesbian, The Stone Wall is likely the namesake of the Greenwich Village tearoom founded that same year by Vincent Bonavia. The reference to the book title may have signaled that lesbians were welcome there. Later known as the Stonewall Inn, the gay bar and tavern became the pivotal site of the 1969 riots that sparked the LGBTQ liberation movement. McMurtrie’s publication of erotica and The Stone Wall via Eyncourt Press may seem uncharacteristic of his overall design and research practice. However, his series of articles on prostitution and sexuality, with titles such as “Attraction Between Inverts of the Opposite Sex” and “Lesbian Assemblies,” from the 1910s provide some precedent for these interests. In 1944, Douglas C. McMurtrie died of heart disease at the age of fifty-six. At the time of his death, he was living at 950 Michigan Avenue in Evanston and working on a book about the European underground press. He was buried in Graceland Cemetery. McMurtrie and his wife Adele Kohler, who were married in 1915, had three children: Havelock Hayden, Helen Josephine Hodgson, and Thomas Baskerville.
Bruntjen, Scott, and Melissa L. Scott. Douglas C. McMurtrie, Bibliographer and Historian of Printing. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1979. Byrom, Brad. “A Pupil and a Patient: Hospital-Schools in Progressive America.” In The New Disability History: American Perspectives, edited Paul K. Longmore and Lauri Umansky, 133–157. New York: New York University Press, 2001. “Conference to Consider Needs of Disabled Men.” Chattanooga Daily Times, February 16, 1919. “D.C. McMurtrie Dies at 56; Was Type Designer.” New York Herald Tribune, September 30, 1944. “D.C. McMurtrie, Noted Designer of Type, Is Dead.” Chicago Tribune, September 30, 1944. Detterer, Ernest Frederick and Douglas C. McMurtrie. Fine Printing at the Cuneo Press. Chicago: Cuneo Press, 1927. Douglas C. McMurtrie Collection, Special Collections at the University of Arizona Libraries, Tucson. Douglas C. McMurtrie Imprints, Special Collections and Archives, Pickler Memorial Library, Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri. Douglas C. McMurtrie Papers, Newberry Library, Chicago. Heller, Steven. Texts on Type: Critical Writings on Typography. New York: Allworth Press, 2006. Kinder, John M. Paying with Their Bodies: American War and the Problem of the Disabled Veteran. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. Kraig, Beth. “Douglas McMurtrie and the American Imprints Inventory, 1937–1942.” The Library Quarterly 56, no. 1 (January 1986): 17–31. McCaffrey, Frank. An Informal Biography of Douglas C. McMurtrie. San Francisco: Privately printed, 1939. McMurtrie, Douglas C. A Bibliography of Chicago Imprints, 1835–1850. Chicago: W. Howes, 1944. McMurtrie, Douglas C. “A Bibliography of Peoria Imprints, 1835–1860.” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 27, no. 2 (1934): 202–27. McMurtrie, Douglas C. A Bibliography of the War Cripple. Compiled by Douglas C. McMurtrie. Publications of the Red Cross Institute for Crippled and Disabled Men, Series 1, Number 1. New York: Red Cross Institute, 1918. McMurtrie, Douglas C. Appropriate Typographical Style in Public Health Printing. Greenwich, Connecticut: Condé Nast Press, 1924. McMurtrie, Douglas C. Bibliography of the Education and Care of Crippled Children: A Manual and Guide to the Literature Relating to Cripples Together with an Analytical Index. New York: Douglas C. McMurtrie, 1913. McMurtrie, Douglas C. “Intelligent Book Collecting Requires Specialization.” The Paterson Morning Call, March 7, 1940. McMurtrie, Douglas C. “Locating the Printed Source Materials for United States History.” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 31, no. 3 (1944): 369–406. McMurtrie, Douglas C. “Papermaking: The History and Technique of an Ancient Craft.” The American Historical Review 49, no. 1 (1943): 82–83. McMurtrie, Douglas C. “Rebuilding of Crippled Host After the War.” The Charlotte News, May 5, 1918. McMurtrie, Douglas C. “Reducing the Cost of Disability in the Hardware Trade.” American Artisan and Hardware Record 77, no 11 (1919): 26. McMurtrie, Douglas C. The Duty of the Medical Profession in the Reconstruction of the War Cripple. New York: American Red Cross, 1918. McMurtrie, Douglas C. The First Printers of Chicago: With a Bibliography of the Issues of the Chicago Press, 1836–1850. Chicago: Cuneo Press, 1927. McMurtrie, Douglas C. “The First Printers of Illinois.” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 26, no. 3 (1933): 202–221. McMurtrie, Douglas C. “The Medical Professional After the War.” American Medical Association Journal 71 (November 16, 2018): 1663–64. McMurtrie, Douglas C. The Typography of a Small Newspaper: An Address at the Meeting of the Illinois Press Association. Chicago: Ludlow Typograph Company, 1928. McMurtrie, Douglas C. Typography of Magazines and House Organs. Chicago: Privately printed, 1935. McMurtrie, Douglas C. Typography Which Delivers the Sales Message: Proofs of Alternative Settings of the Same Copy to Illustrate a Talk by Douglas C. McMurtrie. Chicago: Ludlow Typograph Company, 1938. “McMurtrie, Expert on Printing, Dies.” Windsor Star, September 30, 1944. “Newspaper Composing Room Executives Hear Widely-Known Typography Expert: Douglas C. McMurtrie of Chicago Addresses 52 Members of Association at Semi-Annual Banquet, on Effective Advertising Displays.” Burlington Free Press, May 20, 1940. “The Future Welfare of Our Men Crippled in the Service.” Morning Chronicle, May 13, 1918. “To Tell How to Aid War-Made Cripples: Douglas C. McMurtrie Will Make Three Addresses.” Democrat and Chronicle, August 27, 1918
A 1937 newspaper series called “Women at Work” narrates the story of how Helen Hughes Dulany started her design career: during the Great Depression, Dulany was compelled to economize and reluctantly dismissed her butler. Regretting her decision, she asked her domestic employee to stay and determined that she needed to hire—not fire—workers. Her enterprise began when the dishes she designed for herself caught the eye of a friend who then purchased a set from Dulany for fifty dollars. Within weeks, exclusive shops in New York were carrying Dulany’s dishes. Encouraged by the retailers’ interest in her designs, she founded Helen Hughes Dulany Studio above her Lake Shore Drive apartment and opened a factory that produced her household goods. During her career, she designed “vases, kitchen stoves, lamps, vacuum cleaners, stream-lined train interiors—and the appointments of her own home.” General Electric, Republic Steel, Buffalo Potteries, and the Burlington railroad retained her as a designer. While her socioeconomic status was advantageous to her career, she faced serious health challenges before her ascension in the field of design at the age of forty-five. Afflicted with an undisclosed health condition, Dulany underwent sixteen operations in the United States and abroad. She was bedridden for almost eighteen years and considered an “invalid” in early twentieth-century terminology. In 1931, doctors informed her she was near death. While hospitalized at St. Luke’s Hospital in Chicago, she experimented with clay and crayons as a diversion and discovered her aptitude for design. She had no professional training as an artist or designer. Helen Hughes was born in Bismarck, North Dakota in 1885. Her father, General Alexander Hughes (1846–1907), served as territorial attorney general from 1883–84 and made a fortune from electric utilities. Her mother Mary Elizabeth Hughes (1848–1935) was the daughter of Samuel Higginbotham (1826–1863), a physician in South Bend, Indiana. Helen Hughes was one of six children, among them, George A. Hughes, president of the Edison General Electric Appliance Company. On May 10, 1913, Helen Hughes married George W. Dulany, Jr., a wealthy lumber merchant whose father and grandfather had made their money in the same industry in the Mississippi Valley. Dulany, Jr. is also known for starting the so-called “joke” Society for the Prevention of Calling Sleeping Car Porters “George” in 1914. In a retelling of its origin story, Dulany grew tired of hearing customers of Pullman cars shout his first name when they called for a porter. Pullman porters were predominately Black, and the practice of calling them “George,” no matter their actual name, was a Jim Crow-era practice that alluded to the renaming of enslaved people with the names of slaveholders. As journalist Larry Tye explains, “Being called ‘George’ was no laughing matter for George Mortimer Pullman, whose first name had been borrowed, in the manner of the plantation, as a moniker for his Negro porters.” The society was open to white men named George, and at one time it boasted 31,000 members. Helen Hughes Dulany and George W. Dulany, Jr. moved to Chicago in 1920. Dulany’s designs were exhibited at A Century of Progress Exposition, held in Chicago in 1933–1934. Sponsored by the lumber industries of the United States (an industry she knew well as the wife of a lumber executive), the House of Lumber promoted the infinite uses for wood in a dry-built home. Entering the redwood doors of the House of Lumber, fair goers walked through an entrance hall paneled with Louisiana cypress, followed by a living room with walls clad in Appalachian white oak. The dining room was fitted with panels and flooring made from Tennessee walnut. For her contribution, Dulany designed wooden dishes, including a berry bowl, salad bowl, and place plates constructed from dull-finished bird’s eye maple and steins of walnut and maple. In keeping with the theme of the house, grapes and pears sculpted from walnut served as the table centerpiece. As one journalist observed, attendees of various backgrounds were charmed by the centerpiece: “Helen Hughes Dulany, an artist of note, is responsible for this unique idea of table decoration, and from the comments I heard from the men and women of all classes strolling through the house, her clever creations seem to strike the fancy of everyone who enters the place.” The plate, manufactured by Dulany’s studio, is in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art. When the Edison General Electric Appliance Company discussed hiring Dulany in the 1930s, the choice surprised the company president, her brother George A. Hughes. Hughes did not expect them to offer a contract to a woman, much less his sister. Advertisements for the Hotpoint Electric Range by General Electric (1936) credit Dulany by name in the copy, promoting her a tastemaker: “Styled by Helen Hughes Dulany, foremost woman industrial stylist, it typifies the thinking of modern women in kitchen appliances.” General Electric opted not only to hire a woman designer, but also to use her status as a woman to establish her authority as a designer who knew what the modern housemaker desired. Dulany’s housewares, designed with entertaining and hosting in mind, appeared in multiple issues of Art and Decoration in 1934. The materials, price point, and New York City stockists indicate for whom Helen Hughes Dulany Studios designed: A walnut and birch board for serving cheese sold for nine dollars at Arden Studios at 460 Park Avenue. A dozen after-dinner coffee cups made in clear and frosted glass could be purchased for twenty-five dollars at Alice Marks at 19 East 52nd Street. A glass, oven-to-table serving dish with four compartments, also at Alice Marks, retailed at thirty-five dollars. One dozen frosted glass service plates with a lustre centre sold for sixty-five dollars. Frosted and clear glass stemware for water, champagne, and sherry ranged from twenty-two to twenty-four dollars per dozen. However, not all magazines or shops properly credited her as the creator of her design objects, according to Dulany. To prevent appropriation, Dulany decided to only show her designs in Chicago, where “the field [was] less crowded” and she could stand out as an individual. While Dulany’s tableware for the House of Lumber and chic hostesses demonstrated her talents in more traditional materials, she also implemented more novel materials such as stainless steel, silver-plate, and rhodium. Their properties of reflectiveness, strength, and sleekness were well suited to the modern aesthetic she first sought for her own home. After she moved into her Lake Shore Drive apartment, “none of the family heirlooms would fit gracefully,” so she endeavored to design “furnishing that wouldn’t quarrel with their background.” Dulany could envision an object, but its production required the knowledge and expertise of craftspeople, such as Charles Cadman, to manufacture it. She designed stainless steel dishes and table utensils for the Burlington Zephyr train, a spherical, chromed metal caviar server now in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum (ca. 1930), and a silver-plated, two-tiered candelabra (1935) owned by the Dallas Museum of Art. In 1935, Dulany designed a rhodium belt buckle that functioned as a case for cigarettes and matches. A large photograph accompanying the announcement of the new design shows a woman modeling the smoking accessory. Attached to her belt, the buckle is opened horizontally. Nestled inside the case, an orderly row of cigarettes reflects in the mirror-like finish of the interior. Dulany’s belt buckle captured the attention of Italian fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli, who was designing a dress to be worn with the buckle. At the peak of her design career, Dulany “earned $100,000 fashioning art objects.” Seventy-nine years after the “Women in Work” newspaper series by the AP Features Service highlighted Dulany, the online design magazine Core77 wrote a profile on Dulany for its “Designing Women” series. Her career had a meteoric rise, but her active years as a designer were relatively brief: “After 1937 Dulany all but disappeared from design, apparently as an unfortunate consequence of her divorce one year earlier. In the decades since, her designs have become difficult to find outside of a handful of pieces in a few American museums.” Delany filed for divorce in December 1936 and testified that her husband George W. Dulany, Jr. had deserted her on November 8, 1935. Their divorce was widely publicized in national newspapers that frequently noted her profession as an eminent designer. After the divorce, Dulany went on a South American cruise and vacationed in England, Scandinavia and Honolulu. One year later, Dulany moved from Chicago to California. In January 1938, Helen Hughes Delany wed Atherton Richards in small ceremony in Pasadena. Their wedding ceremony was held in a bungalow at the Hotel Huntington, where Dulany had been living since December 1937. Richards was president of the Hawaiian Pineapple company—the same company that had commissioned designs from Dulany in 1935. The couple planned to live in Honolulu. In November 1942, Helen Hughes Richards was an active member of the Women’s Committee for the Community War Fund, living part-time in Washington, D.C. with her husband. She was also busy furnishing their luxurious Shoreham Hotel apartment with other people’s designs and visiting with her friend from San Francisco, the celebrated textile designer and weaver Dorothy Liebes. While her career in design may have ended in the late 1930s, Helen Hughes Richards found another profession as an editor-at-large for the popular magazine Reader’s Digest. She filed for divorce from Atherton Richards on June 30, 1955. Despite the grim prognosis given to her by doctors in her forties, she lived to be eight-four. Helen Hughes Richards died on November 18, 1968 in New York City.
“A Special Invitation to All Ventura County Women…” Morning Free Press, November 22, 1936. All Arts. “Industrial Designer Helen Hughes Dulany.” Arts & Design in Chicago, Season 1, Episode 3. Video, 2:03. Aired October 26, 2018. https://allarts.org/programs/art-design-in -chicago/industrial-designer-helen-hughes-delaney-9cmufb/. “After Dinner Interlude.” Arts and Decoration 40, no. 3 (January 1934): 60–61. “Art Designer Beats Death to Win Fame: Helen Hughes Dulany Earns Fortune After 18 Years as Invalid.” Great Falls Tribune, April 7, 1936. “Asks Divorce: Mrs. Helen Hughes Dulany.” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 6, 1936. “Atherton Richardses in City.” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 28, 1938. Billheimer, Ruth. “Coast Visitors Go to Wedding of Chicagoan.” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 23, 1938. Billheimer, Ruth. “Pasadena in Holiday Garb Attends Races.” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 26, 1937. Brooklyn Museum. “Caviar Server.” https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/objects/1692. Cass, Judith. “Helen Hughes Dulany to Wed in California.” Chicago Daily Tribune, January 18, 1938. “Cookery Show Is Presented: Advantages of Electricity Demonstrated During Program.” The Ogden Standard-Examiner, February 1, 1935. “Decorating: With Love from…” Vogue 83, no. 8 (April 15, 1934): 78, 79, 105. “Dine and Stay.” Arts and Decoration 41, no. 1 (May 1934): 44. “Divorces G.W. Dulany Jr.: Wife, an Industrial Designer, in Chicago Action Charges Desertion.” New York Times, December 13, 1936. “Fight to Break Mary E. Hughes’ $1,000,000 Will.” Chicago Tribune, January 15, 1937. Filler, Martin. “On the Twentieth Century.” House Beautiful 142, no. 5 (May 2000): 70–74.Fried, Alexander. “News of Music and Art World.” The San Francisco Examiner, March 26, 1936. “Having to Fire Butler Put Artist in Business.” Deadwood Pioneer-Times, February 2, 1937. “Helen Dulany Visiting Here.” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, September 23, 1937. “Helen Hughes Dulany, 84, Industrial Designer, Dies.” New York Times, November 20, 1968. “Helen Hughes Dulany Seeks Divorce.” New York Times, December 7, 1936. “In a Jungle That Overlooks Lake Michigan.” The Spur 51, no. 6 (June 1, 1933): 41. “Married in St. Louis.” The Bismarck Tribune, June 8, 1913. McLaughlin, Kathleen. “A Woman’s Rise to Fame as Designer: Story of Mrs. Helen Hughes Dulany.” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 16, 1934. Moffett, India. “Washington: The Crossroads of the World.” Chicago Tribune, November 8, 1942. “Mrs. Brewster Gives Lecture in Honolulu.” Chicago Tribune, February 13, 1939. “Mrs. Helen Dulany Gets Uncontested Divorce in Chicago.” Iowa City Press-Citizen, December 14, 1936. “Mrs. Helen Richards Dies; Noted Designer.” The Indianapolis Star, November 19, 1968. “Mrs. Richards Dies; Daughter of Pioneer.” The Bismarck Tribune, November 30, 1968. “New Electric Range Wins Wide Acclaim.” Wilmington Daily Press Journal, November 20, 1935. “Noted Designer Granted Divorce.” San Francisco Examiner, December 13, 1936. Provines, June. “Front Views and Profiles.” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 3, 1936. Provines, June. “Front Views and Profiles.” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 2, 1937. “Resolutions Death of Gen. Alex. Hughes.” The Bismarck Tribune, January 23, 1908. “Rhodium Belt Buckle Solves Smokers’ Problem.” The Dayton Herald, November 9, 1935. “Special Offer: Free Range Wiring.” The Honolulu Advertiser, May 10, 1936. “Started Factory Because She Didn’t Want to Fire Butler.” Fort Worth Star-Telegram, February 5, 1937. Stern, Jewel. Modernism in American Silver: 20th-Century Design. Edited by Kevin W. Tucker and Charles Venable. Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 2005. “Table Talk.” Arts and Decoration 40, no. 4 (February 1934): 60–61. “Table Talk.” Arts and Decoration 40, no. 6 (April 1934): 57–59. Veit, Rebecca. “Helen Hughes Dulany, 1930s Socialite Turned ‘Over-Worked Genius’ of Industrial Design.” Core77, February 10, 2016. http://www.core77.com/posts/46465/Helen-Hughes Dulany-1930s-Socialite-Turned-“Over-Worked-Genius”-of-Industrial-Design. “Woman Designer Sues for Divorce: Desertion Charged by Helen Hughes Dulany—Settlement Arranged.” The Indianapolis Star, December 7, 1936. “World’s Fair Vignettes: The House of Lumber.” St. Louis Globe-Democrat, July 30, 1933.
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.
Keck & Keck George Fred Keck (1895–1980) and William Keck (1908–1995)
The architectural firm of Keck & Keck, established by brothers George Fred and William, was one of the most innovative architectural firms in Chicago best known for buildings such as the House of Tomorrow for the Century of Progress Exposition of 1933 and modernist residential designs. George Fred Keck, spent one year at the University of Wisconsin studying civil engineering before he moved to Illinois to study architectural engineering at the University of Illinois. Keck began his career teaching at his alma mater and working for various Chicago architecture firms including William Pruyn, where he participated in residential work; D.H. Burnham, where he worked as a draftsman; and John Eberson, where he worked on the Avalon Theater. At Schmidt, Garden and Martin, George Fred Keck met R. Vale Faro (1902–1988), an avid promoter of modernist design. According to William Keck, his brother’s collaboration with Faro shaped George Fred’s turn toward more radically modernist designs in the late 1920s. Opened in 1929, George Fred Keck designed the Miralago Ballroom and Shops in Wilmette, Illinois. The Miralago Ballroom was known as one of the first modernist retail structures in the Chicago area. After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1931, George Fred Keck’s younger brother William joined him as an architect, draftsman, and businessman of the company. The Kecks designed the glass and steel House of Tomorrow for the Century of Progress Exhibition (1933–1934) and the Crystal House the following year. Both of these structures gained the Keck brothers nationwide attention as frontrunners in modernist American design. Beyond such popular architectural constructions, the office of Keck & Keck predominately designed innovative residences in Hyde Park, Chicago-area suburbs, and the greater Midwest. The Keck brothers worked with many Chicago-based designers and architects, including interior designer Marianne Willisch and architects Leland Atwood and Paul Schweikher. The office of Keck & Keck pioneered passive solar house techniques. Their collaborative studies of the seasonal sunlight patterns with scientists at the Adler Planetarium was fundamental to their development of solar houses. During the interwar period, Keck & Keck designed several solar houses in the Midwest, such as the Sloan House and the Kellett House (both in 1939). In 1951, they applied their solar housing research to the Chicago Housing Authority Project Number Nine, also called the Prairie Avenue Courts, with the purpose of designing a building that received an ideal amount of daylight without casting too many shadows on the rooms. Merging architectural design with new technological materials and methods, Keck & Keck offered solar design strategies for improving the living conditions of their clients.
“Architect Specializes in Design of Homes.” Chicago Tribune, April 7, 1968. Barber, Daniel A. A House in the Sun: Modern Architecture and Solar Energy in the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. Bargelt, Louise. “Concrete Home in Dunes Built on Three Levels: Living Room Extends Through Story and a Half.” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 1, 1940. Bargelt, Louise. “Duneland House Built for Use in All Seasons: Concrete Is Given Novel Treatment for Walls.” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 2, 1939. Bargelt, Louise. “Home in the Modern Style Is Now Possible at Minimum Cost Home: Start Off with One Floor, Build Another Later; Chicago Architect Creates Good Looking, Simple Dwelling for $4,300.” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 17, 1932. Bargelt, Louise. “Glass and Steel House of Future Erected at Fair: Home Expertly Designed by Two Architects Can Be Built in Three Weeks.” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 8, 1934. Bernick, Christine. “Preservation of Keck & Keck’s Passive-Solar Subdivisions of the 1940s and 1950s.” MS thesis, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2010. Blum, Betty J. Oral History of Robert Paul Schweikher. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 2000. Blum, Betty J. Oral History of William Keck. Chicago: The Art Institute of Chicago, 1991. “Book Tells Story of Fair Home Exhibit.” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 26, 1934. Boyce, Robert. Keck and Keck. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, Inc., 1993. “Building Speed to Be Feature of Glass House: To Be Erected at Fair in 2 Weeks’ Time.” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 8, 1934. Chase, Al. “Show Postwar Home Building Possibilities: Glenview Has Preview of New Heating Methods.” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 22, 1942. Chase, Al. “Sun Supplies Heat for New Type North Shore Suburb Home: ‘Solar House’ on Glenview Rd. Has Glass Side.” Chicago Daily Tribune, September 22, 1940. Chase, Al. “Residence Fuel Bill Is Cut $60 by Sun’s Rays: Old Sol May Be Factor in Post-War Era.” Chicago Daily Tribune, August 15, 1943. Christopher, James. Keck and Keck: A Bibliography. Monticello, Illinois: Vance Bibliographies, 1984. “Crystal House.” In A Century of Progress: Homes and Furnishings, edited by Dorothy Raley, 34–43. Chicago, Illinois: M.A. Ring Company, 1934. Cohen, Stuart and Susan Benjamin. Houses of the Lakefront Suburbs, 1890–1940. New York: Acanthus Press, 2004. Collins, Catherine. “In the ’30s, Keck Brothers Saw the Light, and Solar Came to Chicago.” Chicago Tribune, October 30, 1983. Denzer, Anthony. The Solar House: Pioneering Sustainable Design. New York: Rizzoli, 2013. Douglas, Anne. “The Home of the Week: Builder Gets Fine House and an Inspiration Open Floor Plan Used for Greater Space.” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 26, 1953. Flavin, Genevieve. “Houses of New Design Beckon All Outdoors: Architects Create to Fit Each Buyer.” Chicago Daily Tribune, March 19, 1950. “George F. Keck to Be Speaker at Sketch Club.” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 27, 1932. Goldberger, Paul. “Design Notebook: All World’s Fair Houses Were but Fantasies of Everyday Life.” The New York Times, June 10, 1982. Goldberger, Paul. “World’s Fair Houses: A Long Tradition of Idealized Living.” Chicago Tribune, July 3, 1982. Heise, Kenan. “William Keck; Created First Solar Home.” Chicago Tribune, May 27, 1995. Henn, Stuart W. “Radical Decorative: George Fred Keck’s House of Tomorrow and a New Vision of Modern American Living at the 1933 Century of Progress International Exposition.” MA thesis, Northern Illinois University, 2014. Hinds, Michael dCourcy. “America’s First Solar Home Still Thrifty 40 Years Later.” The New York Times, May 8, 1980. “Homes of Future? Mobiles, by Default.” Newsday, January 15, 1977. Jackson, Neil. The Modern Steel House. London: E & FN Spon, 1996. Jewett, Eleanor. “Skill Displayed in Paintings by Two Architects.” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 10, 1945. Kamin, Blair. “Group Eyes Future for ’30s-era House of Tomorrow: Preservationists Step Up Restoration of Chicago Landmark in Indiana.” Chicago Tribune, October 19, 2016. Keck + Keck Architects. Written and directed by Edward S. Hall in cooperation with the Chicago Athenaeum, Museum of Architecture & Design, 1993. VHS. Keck, George Fred and Leland Atwood. “Crystal House.” Architectural Forum 61, no. 1 (July 1934): 24. LaMorte, Chris. “Century of Progress Homes Tour at Indiana Dunes Takes Visitors Back to the Future.” Chicago Tribune, October 2, 2017. “Modern Homes on North Shore Have Novelties: Metal and Glass Used on Extensive Scale.” Chicago Daily Tribune, November 8, 1936. Provines, June. “Front Views and Profiles.” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 11, 1934. Ross, Eleanor. “Can’t Throw Stones Here.” Lancaster Eagle-Gazette, August 14, 1934. Sharoff, Robert. “A Possible Future for Aging Houses of Tomorrow.” The New York Times, December 31, 2000. “‘Solar House’ Owner Starts Homes Project: Has 20 Acre Development in Glenview.” Chicago Daily Tribune, July 20, 1941. “Start Work on Glass ‘House of Tomorrow’: Twelve Sided Unit at Fair to Be Fireproof.” Chicago Daily Tribune, April 9, 1933. Storch, Charles. “2 Brothers Here Designing Solar Buildings 40 Years.” Chicago Tribune, November 4, 1979. The Real Estate Editor. “‘Crystal House’ Draws Interest: Novel Residence at Chicago Attracts Attention of Akron Visitors.” The Akron Beacon Journal, July 14, 1934. Bracken, Lawson E. The Story of Prefabricated Houses: Highlights of Half a Century–Materials, Methods, Experiments. Columbus, Indiana: Central States Research, 1946. “William Keck.” Chicago Tribune, June 3, 1995. “World’s Fair Visitors Curious About: Architect Keck’s ‘House of Tomorrow’ and Architect Fisher’s ‘General Houses.’” American Builder and Building Age 55, no. 3 (July 1, 1933): 37. Zonkel, Philip. “Cold and Dreary Chicago Was an Early Sun City.” Chicago Tribune, December 5, 1998.