January
10, 1956 – Plans are announced for a $5,000,000 building program that will give
the Armour Research Foundation at the Illinois Institute of Technology “one of
the most complete industrial research centers in the world,” according to
foundation vice-president Dr. Haldon A. Leedy.
The plans call for three new buildings on the I. I. T. campus with
“extensive additions” made to two other buildings on the south side campus of
the school. The buildings will include a
physics and engineering research building, a chemistry research building, an
administration building at 10 West Thirty-Fifth Street, a mechanical
engineering research building and a metal research building. According to Leedy, “The building plans are
based on the assumption that the foundation will have a research volume of $16,000,000
a year and a staff of 1,600 by 1961. [Chicago Daily Tribune, January 11, 1956] Leedy says that since the foundation was established
in 1936, it has conducted 70 million dollars of research in more than 3,000
projects for industry and the government. The Richard D. Irwin Publishing Company building at 3201 South Michigan Avenue, pictured above, was the original home of the electrical engineering research labs when the Armour Research Foundation opened in 1936.
Also on this date from an earlier blog . . .
January 10, 1951 -- Claiming that he had "important architect-engineer projects involving the national defense" and, with a year still remaining in his tenure as the chairman of Chicago's Plan Commission, Nathaniel A. Owings submits his letter of resignation. The decision came 48 hours before a city council committee was to deliberate over a resolution demanding that the principal in Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill be forced to step down because of contracts the firm had obtained for the design of the 100-acre, 1,870-unit public housing site that came to be known as Lake Meadows, the five high rise residential buildings in the above photo.
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