AHEAD OF THE CURVE

For more than four decades Midwest Modernism was synonymous with Chicago architects Keck & Keck. In 1933, brothers George Fred and William designed America’s first glass house for Chicago’s World’s Fair. Named the House of Tomorrow, it was indeed prescient. Steel-framed glass construction derived from local skyscrapers and a focus on solar power predated Philip Johnson’s Glass House and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Farnsworth House.

To celebrate the Kecks and its own 25th anniversary along with the 70-year commemoration of its home in van der Rohe’s McCormick House, Illinois’s Elmhurst Art Museum, 40 minutes west of Chicago, has mounted “Houses of Tomorrow: Solar Homes from Keck to Today.” Running through May 29, the exhibition introduces visitors to the groundbreaking project through Chicago World’s Fair materials, documentary photographs, and blueprints of restoration plans. More of the Kecks’ work is examined through videos, artifacts, and diagrams. All confirm that the House of Tomorrow is very much at home today. —Edie Cohen

From top: Keck & Keck’s 1933 brochure is on display at the Elmhurst Art Museum in Illinois in “Houses of Tomorrow: Solar Homes from Keck to Today,” running through May 29 and part of the museum’s 25th anni versary programming. Builders of the 12-sided steel-framed glass construction included the first GE dish washer and a personal airplane hangar. An original postcard rend ering shows the homes as imagined at their current location in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.