After the Arts and Crafts movement coalesced in Britain at the end of the nineteenth century, it quickly made its way to the United States. Architects and artisans embraced its values, advocating for handicraft in building design while promoting a respect for nature, simplicity, native materials, and regional culture. This program, based on the newly published book by Maureen Meister of the same name, presents buildings that reflect Arts and Crafts ideals in distinctive ways and connects them to the movement’s major themes.

Meister’s presentation will explore buildings from Boston to San Diego, highlighting iconic examples by Ralph Adams Cram, Irving J. Gill, Greene and Greene, and Frank Lloyd Wright. The program also brings to the fore many lesser-known figures, including women architects such as Marion Mahony and Cora Cadwallader Tuttle and Black architects such as William A. Hazel and Paul R. Williams.

When Chicago burned down in 1871, it was rebuilt as a city of brick, mostly using bricks made from the clay right underneath the young city's feet. But as much as we may think of a brick as a simple rectangle that holds our buildings up, it is actually so much more--it is an object of design, each brick a brushstroke in the canvas of a building. Journey across Chicago and architecture history and learn how fashion in brick changes just as much as fashion in clothing, from monolithic temples covered in solid red bricks to English cottages bedecked with bark-textured multicolored bricks, to sleek towers clad in rich, iron-flecked bricks and more. Illustrated by more than 100 gorgeous photographs, this history will leave you looking at the humble brick with wonder.