The building that sits solidly at 820 S. Michigan Ave. is not, in a city rich in architectural marvels, the most famous building in Chicago. Its exterior lacks the pizzazz of Marina City or the Wrigley Building, the soaring stature of — using their original names — the Hancock and Sears, or the historical pedigree of the Monadnock Building.
But just below 820 S. Michigan’s glass and travertine facade, tucked vividly into its past, is as fascinating, influential and colorful a tale as any of its downtown neighbors.
“Few buildings tell the story of Chicago’s architecture, design and cultural history quite like (this building),” said Tim Samuelson, the knowledgeable and passionate cultural historian emeritus of the City of Chicago.
He said that because he had recently seen, as you now can, “820 Ebony/Jet: Visions of the Johnson Publishing Company, an American Icon,” a spectacular gathering of essays and photos that do justice to the building as well as to those who built it, designed it and worked in it.
There is a foreword by Deborah Willis and six essays by Aaron Bryant, Cheryl Finley, Carla Williams, Jon Ott, Brenna Wynn Greer and E. James West. There are also some short but snappy employee remembrances. Along with 150-some photos, it does a fine job of reminding us of the importance of John Johnson and the publishing empire he created and the impact he and his ebullient wife Eunice Walker Johnson had on the city.
He was born in 1918 and raised in hardscrabble Arkansas, arriving in Chicago with his family as part of the Great Migration and in time to see the Century of Progress World’s Fair along the lakefront. He excelled at DuSable High School and received a scholarship to the University of Chicago. He legendarily — in 1942, he used his mother’s furniture as collateral for a $500 loan to start in business — would go on to build a publishing empire that would include Negro Digest (1942), Ebony (1945), Jet (1951) and many other magazines.
Johnson Publishing Company was at one time the largest Black-owned business in North America but still, when he wanted to locate his offices from the South Side to Michigan Avenue, he had problems getting loans and dealing with white real estate operators.
But he prevailed, and in doing sop, the Johnson Publishing Company headquarters became the first downtown building owned by a Black-owned company. His architect, John W. Moutoussamy, designed the first (and sadly still the only) downtown office highrise built by a Black architect. At opening ceremonies on Dec. 5, 1971, people got a look at the wild interior designs by Palm Springs-based designers Arthur Elrod and William Raiser. The street was closed to traffic and recent Pulitzer Prize-winner Gwendolyn Brooks read a poem she wrote for the occasion. And 820 hummed with energy and style until it was sold in 2012.
That is but a quick version of Johnson’s biography. A fine further source is “Empire: The House That John H. Johnson Built (The Life & Legacy of Pioneering Publishing Magnate).” In any case, he shines in this new book, as does his wife, who was the founder and director of the Ebony Fashion Fair. Their daughter, Linda Johnson-Rice, remains active on the business and social scenes.
The book’s 150-some photos act almost like fireworks on the pages and most of all them were taken by Barbara Karant, about whom essayist Cheryl Finley, an art historian and author, writes in part, “Karant’s poignant photographic series offers an intimate view inside the heart of one of the twentieth century’s drivers of Black American culture, possibility, and political and economic might.”
“I really feel lucky to have had this opportunity,” Karant says, adding that she had first heard of Johnson while growing up in the South Shore neighborhood.
“Photography is my mother’s fault,” Karant says, smiling. “She insisted I spend the summer before college taking some classes. I took ceramics and photography. Couldn’t throw a pot to save my life but I completely flipped out about the photography class.”
She attended the University of Cincinnati and “had a marvelous few years” at the Rhode Island School of Design before returning to Chicago to earn a master’s degree at the School of the Art Institute, where she was deeply influenced by the late teacher Harold Allen.
He was the first teacher of photography as fine art at the school but never considered his architectural photographs on that level. But it was that work that most influenced Karant, who would fashion a successful career as photographer, teacher and creator of three charming photo books, “Greyhounds,” “Small Dog Big Dog” and “Colleen Moore’s Doll House at the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago.”
“I was aware of the 820 building, always sort of in the back of my mind,” she says. “I have always been interested in preservation, in documenting spaces that may not exist in their current permutation in the future.”
She was working as an adjunct professor at Columbia College when the school purchased 820 in 2010, with the intention of transforming it into a library and student center. She was finally able to take a tour in September 2012.
“I was blown away,” she said. “I had seen photos but had never been inside. And wow. I was kind of speechless. I couldn’t craft a sentence when I got out. And I thought, I have to do a project here because it was just this amazing time capsule, with an interior that needed to be documented for posterity. And so I put together a proposal for doing a project there.”
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And so she was able to spend from 2013 to 2015 shooting inside the empty building, saying, “I used to get locked in, you know, for six to eight hours at a time, just wandering the building.”
“I wasn’t doing this for any commercial reason. I was doing this as an aesthetic meditation, shall we say. I wanted to get in there and shoot for myself. I really had no particular plan at the beginning. I just knew I needed to get in there. And then the more time I spent in the building photographing, the more it became clear how much content there was available to document and how important it was and that, you know, it wasn’t going to remain.”
In 2017, the building was purchased from Columbia by a real estate development firm. “To my horror, it was going to be transitioned into apartments,” says Karant. “Change was imminent, so I consider myself really lucky that it took them a while to figure that out and I got the amazing opportunity to be in that building again to photograph for part of 2017.”
And so, the apartments came, new tenants, new energy, new hopes and dreams. But its past is captured brilliantly in this new book — for keeps.