ABSTRACT
The end of the war would coincide with a time of great change for the Institute of Design. The building at 247 East Ontario Street that the school had been leasing—in a space one floor down from the noisy rehearsal hall of the Chez Paree dance club—was sold, and the Institute was forced to find new premises in the summer of 1945. Although Walter Paepcke had just learned that the building of the Chicago Historical Society had become available, the Institute had to quickly vacate the Ontario Street location and temporarily move to a new building at 1009 North State Street. Complicating matters further, a large new wave of ex-servicemen students would begin to arrive at the Institute, supported in their studies through the terms of the G.I. Bill, which would include free tuition, fees, materials, and even a subsistence allowance provided by the government. Along with industry-sponsored students, this influx of subsidized veteran students, many of whom were keenly interested in photography, would be a great boon to the Institute, and Moholy was sure to promote the Institute’s great legacy of instruction in photography. However, the great tide of new students would strain the school’s physical capacity to the extent that it would apply for a government grant to upgrade its facilities. Indeed, by the spring of 1945, the Board was already discussing the possibility of merging the Institute with a larger institution, possibly the University of Chicago or Northwestern University. By the fall, Paepcke had begun active discussions with Henry Heald, president of the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), which was planning to establish a design department, about a merger with his institution. Increasingly, design problems required advanced facilities, such as a chemistry laboratory to experiment with new plastics, and the limited resources of the Institute threatened its future as a viable design school. 1
