A Living Room for Bronzeville
“A Living Room for Bronzeville” is a storytelling initiative comprising a new book, an exhibition, a website, and a short film. Curated by IIT College of Architecture (CoA) professor Michelangelo Sabatino, the initiative draws upon research featured in the new book Building, Breaking, Rebuilding: The IIT Campus and Chicago’s South Side (University of Minnesota Press), co-edited by Sabatino and IIT professor emeritus Kevin Harrington. The book offers a critical assessment of IIT’s role in transforming the historic Bronzeville neighborhood with a modern campus conceived by renowned German émigré architect Mies van der Rohe.

Specially designed vitrines filled with Armour Institute / IIT, Bronzeville, and Chicago memorabilia metaphorically transform IIT’s Mies Society Gallery (in the Michael Galvin Tower) into a “living room,” a place for conversations and discoveries to occur. The memorabilia—ranging from historic postcards to student yearbooks—tell the story of people and places in and around Bronzeville. An exhibition website provides a digital platform that expands access to materials featured in the exhibition and book. The website will also host a film by South Side filmmaker Carlos Javier Ortiz [Brown Planet Productions] and Murmur Ring that examines the layered history of IIT’s campus through contemporary voices.

Support for “A Living Room for Bronzeville” comes from: IIT’s College of Architecture, it’s PhD Program and the John Vinci Distinguished Research Fellowship, the IIT Office of Community Affairs (Alicia Bunton, Assistant Vice President), the Driehaus Foundation, and the Mies van der Rohe Society.

Several organizations collaborated in different capacities: the Art Institute of Chicago, the Bronzeville Historical Society, the Chicago Architectural Preservation Archive, the Chicago History Museum, the IIT University Archives and Special Collections and Paul V. Galvin Library, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Society of Architectural Historians and the South Side Community Art Center.

A collective thank you to all of the Bronzeville community members who made this storytelling initiative possible!
Image: Wallace Kirkland photographer. View of IIT Institute of Gas Technology Building and Mecca Flats (demolished) from the roof of the Arcade Ballroom (demolished). LIFE, 1951.
Six vitrines filled with carefully selected objects—ranging from postcards and records to toy railcars and View-Masters—reveal the history of the Illinois Institute of Technology community from when it first opened its Main Building in 1893 to the present. These vitrines form the core of “A Living Room for Bronzeville,” a multimedia storytelling initiative comprising a new book, an exhibition, a website, and a short film. Curated by IIT College of Architecture (CoA) professor Michelangelo Sabatino, the exhibition is based on the themed chapters of the multi-authored book Building, Breaking, Rebuilding: The IIT Campus and Chicago’s South Side (University of Minnesota Press, 2024), co-edited by Sabatino and IIT professor emeritus Kevin Harrington. 

Eschewing more conventional “documentary” photography in favor of popular objects and publications, these vitrines reveal the deep ties that developed over time between IIT (formerly Armour Institute of Technology) and Chicago neighborhoods Bronzeville and the “Back of the Yards” (site of the former Union Stockyards). 

‍Vitrine 1: Philanthropy and Place offers a glimpse of the IIT founder Philip D. Armour and the role he and his company (Armour & Company) played in shaping the image of 19th-century Chicago. 

‍Vitrine 2: Boulevards to Bronzeville speaks to the challenges associated with the cultural and physical transformation of Bronzeville by the Great Migration.

‍Vitrine 3: Campus and City reveals how the “applied” educational ambitions of IIT required a host of new modern buildings. 

‍Vitrine 4: Classrooms and Curricula points to the difficulties encountered when a vision for a new campus and institution disrupts the lives of neighborhood residents and displaces those who call the Mecca Flats home.

‍Vitrine 5: Urban Renewal and Its Discontents reveals how IIT began to write its own historical narrative.  

‍Vitrine 6: Education and Architecture: “Unveiling the Archaeological Remains of Armour Flats and Armour Mission” (curated by Emma Zagaiski, Ian Cox, Riley Groark, Sofia Vizinho Santana, and Theresa Wilhite, Lake Forest College). This vitrine reveals an additional layer of history of IIT’s campus no longer visible.

An exhibition website provides a digital platform that expands access to materials featured in this exhibition and our forthcoming book. The website also host a short film by South Side filmmaker Carlos Javier Ortiz (Brown Planet Productions) and Murmur Ring that examines the layered history of IIT’s campus through contemporary voices.
Image View of “Armour Institute of Technology, looking across Ogden Field, Armour Mission in center of group of buildings. Ogden Field, representing a gift of $250,000, was presented to Armour Institute by Mr. J. Ogden Armour, in 1894. The environment of Armour Mission was bettered immeasurably by the opening of this beautiful field.” An Illustrated Historical Sketch of Armour Mission (Chicago, 1905), p. 23.