Illinois State Society of Washington, DC

Illinois Hall of Fame: Bob Balaban

By Mark Rhoads

Movie actor Bob Balaban comes from a show business family famous in both Chicago and nationally.  Bob was born in Chicago on Aug. 16, 1945.  His father Elmer and four of his six uncles created the Balaban and Katz (B&K) movie theater chain in the 1920s. The chain eventually had about 100 theaters in Chicago and suburbs.  The landmark Chicago Theater at 175 N. State Street was the crown jewel of the B&K chain that was built as the first lavish theater palace designed speficially for movies when it opened on Oct. 26, 1921. The famous Uptown Theatre near Broadway and Lawrence was also a landmark B&K Theater in the Depression era. The Balaban family also created Chicago's first commercial television station, WBKB on Channel 4, (Balaban & Katz Broadcasting) in the 1940s.

Illinois Hall of Fame: Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

By Mark Rhoads

"Less is more."  -- Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe was one of the most influential architects of the Twentieth Century. Mies was born in Germany on March 27, 1886.  His simple designs avoided ornamentation using glass, marble, exposed steel, and stone.  They came to be copied widely as typical of modern design.  As a young man, Mies worked in his father's stone carving shop before moving to Berlin to establish his own office before World War I.  After the Nazi government took power in 1933, Mies had little work to do in a country where everything including architecture was supposed to serve the state.

In 1937 as Germany prepared for war, Mies left his homeland and moved to Chicago to head the architecture school at the Armour Institute of Technology. In 1940, the Armour Institute merged with the Lewis Institute to form what is now called the Illinois Institute of Technology. Over the next decade Mies designed and supervised the construction of about 20 buildings on the IIT campus in the Bronzeville neighborhood on the South Side.

Illinois Hall of Fame: Louis Sullivan

By Mark Rhoads

Louis Sullivan was one of the great Chicago architects of the 19th Century. He is best remembered for his design for the Auditorium Theater at Roosevelt University and for the Carson, Pirie, Scott Store at the corner of State and Madison.

Sullivan was born on Sept. 3, 1856 in Boston and studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He worked with Frank Furness in Philadelphia. Sullivan first came to Chicago in 1873 to work for William LeBaron Jenney, "the father of the skyscraper." Chicago was in the middle of a building boom to rebuild the city after the Great Fire of 1871. He completed his formal studies in one year at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and returned again to Chicago when he was just 19.

Illinois Hall of Fame: Daniel Burnham

By Mark Rhoads

Over a period of 150 years, Chicago has been a world-class leader for outstanding examples of architecutural innovation and urban planning.  The list of famous architects who have lived in Illinois and have done their most significant commissions in the state is a long one that includes William Le Baron Jenney, the father of the skycraper; Louis H. Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, leading lights of The Prairie School; the founder of landscape architecture Frederick Law Olmsted; Frank Lloyd Wright, a prolific designer who left more examples of his work in Illinois than in any other state; and Ludwig Mies Vander Roe, the designer of the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology.

By Mark Rhoads

Over a period of 150 years, Chicago has been a world-class leader for outstanding examples of architecutural innovation and urban planning.  The list of famous architects who have lived in Illinois and have done their most significant commissions in the state is a long one that includes William Le Baron Jenney, the father of the skycraper; Louis H. Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, leading lights of The Prairie School; the founder of landscape architecture Frederick Law Olmsted; Frank Lloyd Wright, a prolific designer who left more examples of his work in Illinois than in any other state; and Ludwig Mies Vander Roe, the designer of the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology.

Illinois Hall of Fame: Frank Lloyd Wright

By Mark Rhoads

Frank Lloyd Wright was one of most innovative and famous architects of the Twentieth Century. He was surely the most prolific architecht of the Prairie School. He is best known for the Guggenheim Museum in New York. But of approximately 362 known commissions that Frank Lloyd Wright completed in his own lifetime, about 99 of them survive in Illinois.

The Illinois works are mostly Prairie homes, organic residences, Usonian homes that foreshadowed suburban ranch houses, and a few public buildings such as the Unitarian Temple in Oak Park. Most were built during a 22-year period that Wright lived and worked in Chicago and Oak Park from 1887 to 1909. The earliest Wright Illinois home was his own, built in Oak Park in 1889. The last was built in Rockford in 1949. Illinois has far more examples of his work than any other state and they account for about 20 percent of all of his work that remains standing today.

The Wright works in Illinois include 27 homes and buildings in Chicago, 20 in Oak Park, 11 in Glencoe, 9 in River Forest, 4 in La Grange, 3 in Highland Park, 3 in Riverside, 2 in Springfield, 2 in Kankakee, 2 in Evanston, 2 in Wilmette, and one each in Hinsdale, Elmhurst, Kenilworth, Dwight, Belvidere, Flossmoor, Geneva, Batavia, Decatur, Aurora, Lake Bluff, Villa Park, Libertyville, and Rockford.

By Mark Rhoads

Frank Lloyd Wright was one of most innovative and famous architects of the Twentieth Century. He was surely the most prolific architecht of the Prairie School. He is best known for the Guggenheim Museum in New York. But of approximately 362 known commissions that Frank Lloyd Wright completed in his own lifetime, about 99 of them survive in Illinois.

The Illinois works are mostly Prairie homes, organic residences, Usonian homes that foreshadowed suburban ranch houses, and a few public buildings such as the Unitarian Temple in Oak Park. Most were built during a 22-year period that Wright lived and worked in Chicago and Oak Park from 1887 to 1909. The earliest Wright Illinois home was his own, built in Oak Park in 1889. The last was built in Rockford in 1949. Illinois has far more examples of his work than any other state and they account for about 20 percent of all of his work that remains standing today.

The Wright works in Illinois include 27 homes and buildings in Chicago, 20 in Oak Park, 11 in Glencoe, 9 in River Forest, 4 in La Grange, 3 in Highland Park, 3 in Riverside, 2 in Springfield, 2 in Kankakee, 2 in Evanston, 2 in Wilmette, and one each in Hinsdale, Elmhurst, Kenilworth, Dwight, Belvidere, Flossmoor, Geneva, Batavia, Decatur, Aurora, Lake Bluff, Villa Park, Libertyville, and Rockford.