News and Perspectives
News and Perspectives is the place to learn more about the University Archives and Special Collections' activities, research, and upcoming events.
Photographs from the collections of University Archives and Special Collections have been included in an exhibit at Art x Architecture (AxA), a new student-run gallery in the College of Architecture. The exhibit, bauhaus.photo features 75 photographs from the collection of the Bauhaus-Archiv in Berlin.
The UASC Reading Room will be open for a rare morning on Friday April 5 from 9am-11:45am. We will be closed during our usual open hours 1:00pm-5:00pm for professional development. See you bright and early Friday morning!
University Archives and Special Collections will be closed Wednesday January 30th due to extreme weather. We re-open Thursday January 31st at 1:00 PM.
University Archives and Special Collections is conscious of its responsibility to collect IIT’s history back to its earliest roots, including its relations with its neighborhood. In the fall of 2018, the unit discovered a scrapbook on eBay that had been assembled by an Armour Institute student in around 1910. The posting’s sample photographs demonstrated that the scrapbook not only documented aspects of on-campus student life, but also people and institutions of the surrounding neighborhood. On the strength of that evaluation, UASC and Galvin Library decided to purchase the scrapbook.
Attention Researchers and Fellow History-Lovers:
University Archives and Special Collections has upcoming schedule changes for the festive season and university winter break.
Tuesday December 11 Open 1:00-3:00 Tuesday December 18 Closed
We will be closed during the winter break, December 22, 2018 - January 01, 2019. Regular hours resume Wednesday January 02, 2019 at 1:00 PM.
The Kemper Room in Galvin Library is hosting an exhibit of work by Benjamin de Brie Taylor, artist and educator, through the end of November. Brie Taylor is a former Director of the Institute of Design, and Professor Emeritus. His book, "Design Lessons From Nature" explores the significance of the natural world in an artist's development, and is based on an intro-level art class he taught at the Pratt Institute in 1968.
The University Archives and Special Collections reading room will be closed on Wednesday, July 18 for a staff event. Open hours will resume on Thursday, July 19 at 1:00.
University Archives and Special Collections is proud to announce the launch of a new archival finding aid portal! The new portal, which is located at findingaids.archives.iit.edu, contains finding aids that describe our archival collections. Finding aids should now be easier to find and understand, and users can now print a finding aid or request an in-person consultation of archival materials straight from the record in our database.
Lewis Institute came into existence though the will of a citizen of Chicago, Allen Cleveland Lewis, who left his estate in trust for that purpose. Allen was born in Sterling, Connecticut in 1821 and died in Chicago in 1877. As a young man he resided in Elgin, Illinois, where he was engaged in the drug business. He married and had one son who died at the age of twenty months. His wife did not long survive, and Mr. Lewis moved to Chicago.
The story of the founding of Armour Institute of Technology does not begin with the opening of its doors in September, 1893. It goes back to a mission Sunday school in which Joseph F. Armour, a merchant of considerable means, was interested and to which he contributed liberally for its support. This mission, started in 1874, three years after the Chicago Fire, at Thirty-first and State streets, was called Plymouth Mission because it was an extension of the activities of Plymouth Church, of which Joseph F. Armour was a member.
