J. Brooks Press Collection

'Lee Miller, a sequence of three nude studies'

Lee Miller exhibition at the Musée d’Art Moderne, Paris. From April 10 to August 2, 2026, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris is featuring the largest retrospective devoted to Lee Miller in France in twenty years.

"Don't Be Cruel/Hound Dog" was released on 13 July 1956.

Otis Blackwell wrote "Don't Be Cruel," but was happy to give co-writing credit to Elvis Presley (and 50% of the royalties) to be recorded by the "hottest new singer around."

"Hound Dog" was written by Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller and had been a hit for Big Mama Thornton in 1953.

Art Deco-inspired poster for the 1939 World's Fair. Artist unknown.

The 77-story Chrysler Building. 405 Lexington Avenue, east block between 42nd to 43rd streets. William Van Allen, 1928-1930.

View looking east of Chrysler Building from Lincoln Building. Circa, 1931.

Photo: Unknown.

Art Deco Britain by Elain Harwood

The book begins with an overview of the international Art Deco style, and how this influenced building design in Britain. The buildings covered include houses and flats; churches and public buildings; offices; shops, showrooms and cafes; hotels and public houses; cinemas, theatres and concert halls; sports buildings; industrial premises and transport buildings.

Chicago World’s Fair: A Century of Progress Official Poster by Weimer Pursell, 1932 Source: Library of Congress / Wikipedia

One of many iconic posters whose images you’ll still find reproduced as prints, on T-shirts, etc. It’s so great! And not inspired out of fantasy, but reality, as you’ll see when the actual pictures start coming up on this blog :)

Intro to the fair from the Chicago Architecture Center:

Rather than turn longingly to the past, the 1933-1934 Century of Progress Exposition looked to the future. It was the second world’s fair hosted by Chicago. The site of the fair was Northerly Island, an artificial stretch of land that is actually a peninsula, not an island.

Despite its name, the fair was less a retelling of Chicago’s first 100 years and more a showcase for modern living, consumerism and entertainment. All of this was driven by the need to stimulate spending during the Great Depression. There were nearly two dozen corporate pavilions at the exposition pushing the latest gizmos and gadgets for home and car—a big increase from the nine corporate pavilions at Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.

The exposition’s architectural team included Daniel Burnham’s sons, Hubert and Daniel Jr., who took the reins of their father’s practice following his death. Unlike the elder Burnham—who 40 years earlier emphasized the Beaux-Arts style in the “White City”—the 1933-1934 fair planners embraced a vibrant modern aesthetic. These styles would later come to be known as Art Deco and Art Moderne. They feature clean lines, synthetic materials and bright splashes of color. Leading the charge among a who’s who of designers assigned to construct areas of the fair were young architects Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings, who would later found Skidmore, Owings and Merrill. They designed exhibitions throughout the grounds, ensuring a consistent aesthetic—one that Frank Lloyd Wright, left out of the planning, derided as a “sham,” but that others saw as progressive.

George Keck’s famed House of Tomorrow also debuted at the exposition. It was later transplanted to the Indiana dunes alongside other futuristic homes. This steel-framed model home deployed a radical use of glass and a curtain wall system. It included not only a garage, but an airplane hangar for the day when we’d all need a space to park our private planes. The interior of the house was more down to earth, with features like dishwashers and air conditioning that would indeed become commonplace household items.

The Century of Progress Exposition had many lasting architectural impacts on Chicago. It introduced millions of people to newly created lakefront land near the Museum Campus and put them in contact with new inventions. It also foretold the rising influence that the automobile would have on city planning. The fair hinted at a future change in city design—particularly how buildings would relate to one another and how houses would address the street.

Century of Progress International Exhibition - Chicago Poster Source: Newberry Library (Chicago)

My love for pre-WWII world’s fair and expo architecture is boundless. I have a particular affinity for the 1939/1949 NY World’s Fair, but Chicago’s in 1933 and the Pan-Pacific Exposition and others were awesome as well. 

For now, I’m going the present the architecture of the Century of Progress, along with some of the history. 

Aerial from Newberry Library, the origin of many of the photos I’ll be sharing.

From a great CoP online reference by Chicaology:

A Century of Progress was organized as an Illinois nonprofit corporation in January 1928 for the purpose of planning and hosting a World’s Fair in Chicago in 1933. City officials designated three and a half miles of newly reclaimed land along the shore of Lake Michigan between 12th and 39th streets on the Near South Side for the fairgrounds. Held on a 427 acres portion of Burnham Park A Century of Progress opened on May 27, 1933. The fair’s opening night began with a nod to the heavens. Lights were automatically activated when the rays of the star Arcturus were detected. The star was chosen as its light had started its journey at about the time of the previous Chicago world’s fair—the World’s Columbian Exposition—in 1893. The rays were focused on photoelectric cells in a series of astronomical observatories and then transformed into electrical energy which was transmitted to Chicago.

By opening day, thirty-two major buildings had been constructed, everything from the “breathing” Travel and Transport Building—with a suspended roof that expanded and contracted as much as six feet as the temperature varied—to the 227-foot tall Great Havoline Thermometer, hailed as a “monument to Chicago’s climate.”

“The morning of the fair,” Martha McGrew, the General Manager’s assistant recalled, “we went up to the roof and looked over at the 12th Street bridge. It looked like the lines were all the way over to the Art Institute. It was the biggest thrill of all. People were coming to the fair! We had been worried about that, but ten thousand people came that first day.” It was a bright spot in a world of gloom.

Originally, the fair was scheduled only to run until November 12, 1933, but it was so successful that it was opened again to run from May 26 to October 31, 1934. The fair was financed through the sale of memberships, which allowed purchases of a certain number of admissions once the park was open. More than $800,000 was raised in this manner as the country came out of the Great Depression. A $10 million bond was issued on October 28, 1929, the day before the stock market crashed. By the time the fair closed in 1933, half of these notes had been retired, with the entire debt paid by the time the fair closed in 1934. For the first time in American history, an international fair had paid for itself. In its two years, it had attracted 48,769,227 visitors. On the last day of the fair, a record 374,127 people attended.

According to James Truslow Adams’s Dictionary of American History, during the 170 days beginning May 27, 1933, there were 22,565,859 paid admissions; during the 163 days beginning May 26, 1934, there were 16,486,377; a total of 39,052,236.

A Century of Progress management, which posted a $1,000,000 bond to insure that Burnham Park would be left in its nearly original condition, hired a Springfield firm to tear down the Century of Progress. The demolition began in February 1935, and ended almost a year later, about half the time it took to build the fair.

Most of the exposition’s artifacts have vanished. Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry received many exhibits, but all have been destroyed or given away because they became technically obsolete, according to the museum’s registrar.

The pumping equipment in the grand fountain—enough to supply the water needs of one million people—was dismantled and sold, along with twelve million feet of lumber, twenty thousand tons of steel, eight million feet of wallboard, fifty miles of pipe, three thousand flood lights, and three thousand doorstops. A Century of Progress General Manager, Lenox R. Lohr bought, among other things, an eighteen-foot fishing boat for $26.

Much more coming…..