The Chicago Architectural Sketch Club was formed in the spring of 1881 by James H. Carpenter in association with eighteen other draftsman colleagues. The organization was later renamed The Chicago Architectural Club and through it the ideas of the Chicago School of Architecture were disseminated throughout the midwest and well beyond. The original Chicago Architectural Club lasted for over fifty years and, within that time period, had more than 1600 members, including many of the early twentieth-century architectural elite. In addition to activities such as regular meetings, lectures, sketch evenings and competitions, the Club published an annual exhibition catalog which contained a list of members and juried entries as well as illustrations of those designs. The club's first illustrated catalog was for its fifth exhibition in 1892. The Chicago Architectural Club sponsored the exhibitions and published the catalogs through 1920. Finally, a consortium of organizations including the Chicago Architecture Club, the Illinois Society of Architects and the Chicago Chapter of the AIA sponsored the exhibitions through 1928 under the name Chicago Architectural Exhibition League. In addition to Chicago-area architects the exhibitions often included related craftsmen and architecture clubs in other cities.
This collection of digital records is an index of all entries to the annual exhibition competition and all illustrations published in the catalogs for the years 1892, and 1894-1928. The illustrations are more thoroughly indexed and may include architect name, project name, location, year and page number. Competition entries that were never illustrated in the printed catalogs but are indexed in our database are designated as "text only" records. In these cases, only the architect and exhibition year and page number are included in the record. Additional data, such as project name, is available for these records from the printed volumes, but not online. Graphical advertisements, many of which include photos and renderings of buildings, have also been scanned and indexed similarly; text-only advertisements were not. Please also note the following:
- Some of the earlier catalogs were scanned and converted directly to PDFs. These images are of a lower quality than those scanned from later catalogs.
- Many of the original entires in the printed volumes are misspelled or otherwise incorrect. We have done our best to correct the data when possible. In most cases, the original incorrect data is also included in either the "Notes" field or as an "Alternate Title."
- Advertisements are usually titled by product name, with the company being listed as the "Architect/Creator" (Example 1) When there is no specific product being advertised, the title is simply listed as "Advertisement" (Example 2). When a building is featured in an advertisement, the building name is listed in the "title" field, the architect of the building in the "creator" field, and the company advertising in the "project personnel" field. In most cases, it is a contractor or supplier, and is listed as such in the record (Example 3).
- Annual member rosters of the organization are NOT indexed in this database.
For additional information on the history of the Club, see Wilbert R. Hasbrouck's "The Chicago Architectural Club, Prelude to the Modern," Monacelli Press, 2005.