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IIT CAMPUS

Bronzeville

The IIT campus displaced a large swath of the South Side that had been part of bustling Bronzeville, home to African Americans who had come to Chicago from the South during the Great Migration. Photo Credit: Chicago History Museum

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Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s sleek, spare buildings on the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) campus are widely celebrated for their bold, modern aesthetic and their assertion, in steel and glass, that “less is more.”

When the IIT campus was built, Mies broke from traditional collegiate architectureand joined an elite group of Chicago architects, including Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright.

But modern architecture history is not the only American history that was made on this site. Before there was Mies, there was Mecca.

Mecca Flats

Architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s stark, modern buildings for the IIT campus departed radically from traditional collegiate architecture. Photo Credit: Chicago History Museum

Crown Hall, the home of IIT’s School of Architecture, is considered a masterpiece of Modernism and the epitome of Mies’ “less is more” philosophy. Photo Credit: Chicago History Museum

Mecca Flats was an apartment building that once stood at 34th Street and South Dearborn Street. Its design helped create a template for the classic courtyard buildings found all over Chicago.

More than that, the Mecca was a social space: a community. In and around it, African Americans who had come to Chicago during the Great Migration celebrated their own unique American aesthetic, especially in music – jazz and blues performed by some of the era’s greats in such venues as the Plantation Café and the Sunset Café.

Over time, the Mecca Flats apartment community was challenged by the same issues of urban decay that other city neighborhoods struggled with: overcrowding, crime, and poverty. But when IIT wanted to raze the Mecca for its campus, its residents fought for their community – and ultimately lost.

Poet Gwendolyn Brooks’ In the Mecca celebrated the building and its community, but also captured its complexity and tragedy. In the Mecca was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1969.

Crown Hall sits on the site of the Mecca Flats apartment building, whose innovative courtyard design was widely emulated throughout Chicago. Photo Credit: Chicago History Museum

The Mecca Flats community became home to many African Americans, and was a center of Bronzeville life and culture. Photo Credit: Chicago History Museum

The Plantation Café on 35th Street – the center of the Bronzeville “Stroll” – hosted musical performances by jazz and blues greats including King Oliver and Louis Armstrong. Photo Credit: Chicago History Museum

In the early 1920s, Louis Armstrong lived in the neighborhood and played such clubs as the Savoy Ballroom, the Royal Garden, and the Dreamland Café. Photo Credit: Library of Congress

Writer Gwendolyn Brooks wrote In the Mecca, which was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1969. It captured the complexity of life in the Mecca Flats.Photo Credit: Chicago History Museum

Mecca Flats residents fought a long battle against demolition of their building by IIT.Photo Credit: Chicago History Museum

Ultimately, it wasn’t a matter of if, but when. IIT and Mies van der Rohe wrote the next chapter of history atop the wreckage of the Mecca Flats. Photo Credit: Chicago History Museum