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Architecture Research

A guide to navigating the Architecture collections at the Chicago History Museum.

Recent Activities

Winter/Spring 2025

  • With funding from the Alphawood Foundation, processing work begins on the later accruals from the Graham, Anderson, Probst and White architectural drawings, with the overall goal to improve the long term preservation of the material and improve discoverability of the collection through job level records of the drawings in ARCHIE. 

2024 and Prior

  • The Chicago History Museum receives 2 rounds of funding through the Lilly Endowment's Religion and Cultural Institutions Initiative, which provides support to CHM’s Chicago Sacred Initiative through programming, education, digital initiatives, and a forthcoming exhibition centered on everyday stories of places of ritual, memory, memorial and belief. A portion of this funding is used to identify collections with religious themes, with a focus on inventorying and enhancing existing metadata for CHM's architectural holdings.
  • Metadata from the paper cataloging sheets is transcribed into an Excel spreadsheet, which is then uploaded into an Airtable base which can be shared with researchers outside of the ARC. 
  • Processing is completed on the later accruals from the Chicago Women in Architecture records. 

Introduction

The Chicago History Museum's Abakanowicz Research Center serves the research holdings of the museum's notable architecture collection. This includes architectural plans like drawings and blueprints, as well as photographs and manuscript material. There are approximately 9,000 job level sets of architectural drawings spanning several hundred distinct architectural collections, usually organized around architectural firm, spanning the 1870s to the present.

Due to changes in the museum's organizational structure, this collection has been managed in distinctly different ways from the other research materials and most material is not currently discoverable in ARCHIE. Additionally, some of the architectural material is stored offsite. Due to these idiosyncrasies, the collection can be difficult to navigate and retrieve. The museum is actively working on making these materials more easily discoverable and accessible.

Please note, advance notice is required for most architectural materials. 2-3 months advance notice is required if material is stored offsite or is unprocessed (to inquire about availability or to make an appointment please email us at research@chicagohistory.org).

History of Architecture at CHM

Before 1997, CHM had four reading rooms: Archives and Manuscripts, Library, Prints and Photographs, and Architecture. Each room had its own analog catalog. After the creation of a single reading room, the Research Center, the research collections needed a single catalog, ARCHIE, which is still in use today. New acquisitions of manuscript collections, published material, and prints and photographs were added, but the architecture collection wasn’t added at the same pace. 

Instead, all materials were listed in publicly accessible alphabetical binders under the name of the architect or architectural firm. The binders are not organized by building name, location, or street address. At that time, the collection could only be accessed through the hard copy catalogues in the Abakanowicz Research Center. These binders are still referenced today, commonly referred to as simply the "grey binders." 

In 2019, a staff member began the process of transcribing the information in the binders into an Excel spreadsheet, noting architect, name of job, job number, number of pieces, folder or roll, type of plans, accession number, etc. In 2024, the the spreadsheet was uploaded into Airtable, allowing reference staff to share a public version of the inventory which, while imperfect, allows for researchers to search and filter at home. CHM staff are continuing to improve access to these collections, with a long term goal of having all architectural materials discoverable in ARCHIE.

This guide provides some more tips on using the Airtable inventory, along with a public link, in the Finding and requesting materials section.