Many books have been written about the University of Chicago over its 120-year history, but most of them focus on the intellectual environment, favoring its great thinkers and their many breakthroughs. Yet for the students and scholars who live and work here, the physical university—its stately buildings and beautiful grounds—forms an important part of its character. Building Ideas: An Architectural Guide to the University of Chicago explores the environment that has supported more than a century of exceptional thinkers. This photographic guide traces the evolution of campus architecture from the university’s founding in 1890 to its plans for the twenty-first century. When William Rainey Harper, the university’s first president, and the trustees decided to build a set of Gothic quadrangles, they created a visual link to European precursors and made a bold statement about the future of higher education in the United States. Since then the university has regularly commissioned forward-thinking architects to design buildings that expand—or explode—traditional ideals while redefining the contemporary campus. Full of panoramic photographs and exquisite details, Building Ideas features the work of architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Henry Ives Cobb, Holabird &amp; Roche, Eero Saarinen, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Walter Netsch, Ricardo Legorreta, Rafael Viñoly, César Pelli, Helmut Jahn, and Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects. The guide also includes guest commentaries by prominent architects and other notable public figures. It is the perfect collection for Chicago alumni and students, Hyde Park residents and visitors, and anyone inspired by the institutional ideas and aspirations of architecture.

Building Ideas: An Architectural Guide to the University of Chicago

History

Pridmore, Jay

Americas

University of Chicago Press

The first ever color history of the American bicycle industry, from the high-wheelers a century ago to the high-tech lightweight wonders of today, The American Bicycle examines the bicycle's shift from transportation to recreation, its uniquely "American" design, plus collecting and nostalgia. 250 illustrations, 200 in color.

The American Bicycle

Engineering & Transportation

Transportation

Motorbooks Intl

German immigrant Ignaz Schwinn launched the company that bears his name in 1895 and set the bicycling standard in the U.S. for decades. Here the Black Phantom, Varsity, Paramount, and Fastback come alive through lavishly illustrated with original archival material, much of it from Chicago's Bicycle Museum of America. 250 photos, 200 in color.)P

Schwinn Bicycles

Hurd, Jim

Business & Money

Wonderful color photography provides examples from each epoch in the evolution of pedal-powered two-wheelers.

Sports & Outdoors

Individual Sports

The legendary 100-year history of the best-known name in American bicycling. German immigrant Ignaz Schwinn launched the company that bears his name in 1895, setting the bicycling standard in the U.S. for decades to come. This lavishly illustrated volume is overflowing with original archival material, much of it from Chicago's Bicycle Museum of America, and specially commissioned photography. Pridmore and Hurd fully detail Schwinn's technical developments, racing history, and significant models including the Black Phantom, Varsity, Paramount, Fastback, and many others. Contains discussions of Schwinn's foray into motorcycle manufacture. Fabulous!

Automotive

Commissioned by Ferdinand Peck and produced by architects Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler--soon to be leaders of the Chicago School--in 1889, the Auditorium Building was a wondrous complex, housing a hotel, offices, stores, and a theater. Adler's engineering skills overcame the problem of a foundation that had to support an unevenly distributed weight; Sullivan designed the stunning theater, which was spanned by four elliptical arches studded with 3,500 incandescent electric lights and decorated with gold leaf. Adler created a hydraulic stage--with twenty-six lifts--and one of the first air-conditioning systems in a public building. 
Among the many design features in the interior of the Auditorium were murals, onyx, marble, open loggias, stained glass, filigreed vents, wainscoting, and bronze-plated posts. Scholars considered the Auditorium Building the most important single structure in Chicago.

The Auditorium Building: A Building Book from the Chicago Architecture Foundation, No. A687

Chicago Architecture Foundation

Blessing, Hedrich

Pomegranate

A huge complex spanning two city blocks, the Merchandise Mart is the largest wholesale design center in the world. The brainchild of James Simpson of Marshall Field &amp; Company, it was planned to house Field's huge wholesale division and prop up sagging sales. 
Executed by the architectural firm of Graham, Anderson, Probst and White--of Opera House and Field Museum fame--the Mart was the world's most complex mixed-use structure: a warehouse, a department store, and a commercial office tower. All this was presented in a successful blend of elements from the Chicago School, classicism, and Art Deco, built on former Chicago &amp; North Western Railway property and air space over the tracks. Unfortunately, Field's suffered from the Great Depression, and so the Mart stood almost empty during World War II. In 1946 Joseph P. Kennedy purchased the Merchandise Mart for $16 million (it had cost $32 million to build). Under Kennedy's managerial flair; the Mart thrived. Renovations between 1986 and 1991 injected new life into the building and today the Marchandise Mart is an enduring monument to the brash, inventive, and successful Chicago spirit.

The Merchandise Mart (Building Book s.)

Arts & Photography

Architecture

Published in celebration of the university sesquicentennial, this text chronicles Northwestern's history, from the effort to found an institution of the highest order through the rise of the modern university.

Northwestern University: Celebrating 150 Years

Northwestern University Press

Northwestern University: A History is a resplendent guide to the origins and development of this university. Writer and critic Jay Pridmore offers the definitive chronicle of Northwestern’s establishment—from its founders’ struggle to erect a campus in the wilderness on Lake Michigan’s western shore to its contemporary status as “an institution of the highest order” with three thriving campuses, esteemed faculty and students, and a leading endowment. Accompanied by a wealth of color photographs, ephemera, and archival material, Northwestern University: A History brings to the fore the storied traditions and contributions of the administrators, faculty, and alumni who built Northwestern into the world-class institution it is today. Originally penned to commemorate the university’s sesquicentennial, this new edition charts Northwestern’s evolution in the years of Henry Bienen’s presidency (1995–2009) and offers a new foreword by current president Morton O. Schapiro. Northwestern University: A History captures the rich panoply of the institution’s rise to the first ranks of scholastic excellence and will delight students, their families, and alumni alike.

Northwestern University: A History

As a result of the Great Fire of 1871, Chicago became a major creative centre of American architecture. Talented architects flocked to the city in the fire's aftermath, and made use of new technology, such as the fireproof steel frame and the safety elevator to create what is considered to be the world's first skyscraper, and ultimately change the look of 20th-century cities. These innovations - which required the planning of structures from the inside out - can be seen in this book. This volume chronicles the work of architects Louis H. Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, as well as that of H.H. Richardson, John Welborn Root, William LeBaron Jenny and their successors. More than 70 important buildings are pictured - most with one exterior image and several views of the interior - spanning Richardson's 1887 Glessner House through The Rookery, Robie House, the Carson Pirie Scott &amp; Company store, 860-880 North Lake Shore Drive and the current work of Skidmore, Owings &amp; Merrill, Kohn Pedersen Fox and Cesar Pelli, among others. Biographical information about the leading architects is integrated with the architectural discussion.

Chicago Architecture and Design

Larson, George A.

Harry N. Abrams

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pridmore, Jay. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Pridmore, Jay

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Pridmore, Jay. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Building Ideas: An Architectural Guide to the University of Chicago

The American Bicycle

Schwinn Bicycles

The American Bicycle

Schwinn Bicycles

The Auditorium Building: A Building Book from the Chicago Architecture Foundation, No. A687

The Merchandise Mart (Building Book s.)

Northwestern University: Celebrating 150 Years

Northwestern University: A History

Chicago Architecture and Design