Illinois Institute of Technology Academic Campus

Illinois Institute of Technology's academic campus occupies about 60 acres in Chicago's Douglas neighborhood, on the South Side. Twenty-six buildings make up the district: three from the Armour Institute of Technology era, fourteen designed by Mies van der Rohe, and nine added afterward. The oldest are the Main Building (1891-93), Machinery Hall (1901) and the Maintenance Garage (1901), all by Patten & Fischer, with the first two in Richardsonian Romanesque style. Mies planned the campus on a twenty-four foot by twelve foot modular grid, and his buildings use black painted steel, glass and buff brick, with the structure left visible. S.R. Crown Hall departs from that pattern with a steel and glass enclosure spanning clear of interior supports. Skidmore, Owings and Merrill and Schmidt, Garden and Erikson later built in a similar manner. The campus is listed for its link to Mies's planning and teaching and for its influence on architecture in the United States and abroad.