#ryerson and burnham archives

In 2016, historian David Garrard Lowe, author of Lost Chicago, donated a collection of approximately 1,100 photographs and ephemeral items, ranging in date from the 1880s to the 1980s, to the Ryerson & Burnham Archives of the Art Institute of Chicago. The collection currently is in the process of being digitized, and a selection of materials is on display through June 15 in an exhibition in the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries’ Franke Reading Room.

The exhibition, “Memoir of a City”: Selections from the David Garrard Lowe Historic Chicago Photograph Collection, follows the table of contents in Lost Chicago, organizing the cases thematically around pre-Fire Chicago; culture and recreation in the city; residential architecture; transportation and infrastructure; government and commercial architecture; the 1893 and 1933 World’s Fairs; and significant Chicago people and events.

Viewers can explore a variety of primary source materials from the collection, including photographs that have not been published previously. Here you see an example of a photograph from the collection that was featured in Lost Chicago, Henry Ives Cobb’s Federal Building: US Post Office, Courthouse, and Customhouse, completed in 1905 and demolished in 1965. Below that is a design for a “Modern Christmas Tree,” a 1930 work by John Wellborn Root, David F. Leavitt, and Richard McPherren Cabeen. The exhibition also features the advertisement for this tree, which some scholars have suggested provided Irving Berlin with the inspiration for the song “White Christmas.” Other materials on display include menus, playing cards, postcards, and souvenir books.

If you’re planning to visit to view the exhibition, please join us for a conversation with David Garrard Lowe, “Lost Chicago"—The Past, Present, and Future of Historic Preservation,in the Morton Auditorium at 6:00 on Thursday, May 24. Lowe will be joined by author and former Art Institute of Chicago curator John Zukowsky; Founding Partner and Design Principal of the architecture, interiors, and urban planning firm UrbanWorks, Patricia Saldaña Natke FAIA; and School of the Art Institute professor and former director of research for the city’s Department of Planning and Development Historic Preservation Division, Terry Tatum, for a lively discussion on the history and future of historic preservation in Chicago’s rich architectural environment. He will also discuss Lost Chicago, and his gift to the Ryerson and Burnham Archives.