The Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech or IIT) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Tracing its history to 1890, the present name was adopted upon the merger of the Armour Institute and Lewis Institute in 1940. The university has programs in architecture, business, communications, design, engineering, industrial technology, information technology, law, psychology, and science. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity".
The university's historic roots are in several 19th-century engineering and professional education institutions in the United States. In the mid 20th century, it became closely associated with trends in modernist architecture through the work of its Dean of Architecture Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who designed its campus. The Institute of Design, Chicago-Kent College of Law, and Midwest College of Engineering were also merged into Illinois Tech.
History The Sermon and The Institute In 1890, when advanced education was often reserved for society's elite, Chicago minister Frank Wakely Gunsaulus delivered what came to be known as the "Million Dollar Sermon". From the pulpit of his South Side church, near the site Illinois Institute of Technology now occupies, Gunsaulus said that with a million dollars he could build a school where students could learn to think in practical, not theoretical terms—where they could be taught to "learn by doing".
Inspired by Gunsaulus, Philip Danforth Armour, Sr. gave $1 million to found the Armour Institute—and Armour, his wife, Malvina Belle Ogden Armour, and their son J. Ogden Armour continued to support the university in its early years. Armour said it was his best-paying investment. When Armour Institute opened in 1893, it offered professional courses in engineering, chemistry, architecture and library science.IIT Archives/1998.186/Armour Institute of Technology Records.
Illinois Tech was created in 1940 by the merger of Armour Institute and Lewis Institute. Lewis Institute, on Chicago's west side, was established in 1895 by the estate of hardware merchant and investor Allen Cleveland Lewis, and offered liberal arts, science, and engineering courses for both men and women.IIT Archives/1998.001/Lewis Institute Records. At separate meetings held by their respective boards on October 26, 1939, the trustees of Armour and Lewis voted to merge the two colleges. An April 23, 1940 Cook County circuit court decision solidified the merger.IIT Archives/1998.211/Board of Trustee Records/Meeting Minutes; IIT Archives/1998.212/Board of Trustee Records/Executive Committee Records.
Mergers and changes The Institute of Design (ID), founded in Chicago by László Moholy-Nagy in 1937, merged with Illinois Tech in 1949.See photo of this event in IIT Archives/1998.199.002/Unprocessed Photographs (Box A-2)/Folder: Serge Chermayeff: "Serge Chermayeff, Crombie Taylor, H. T. Heald signing Institute of Design merger agreement".
Chicago-Kent College of Law, founded in 1887, became part of the university in 1969, making Illinois Institute of Technology one of the few technology-based universities with a law school.
Also in 1969, the Stuart School of Management and Finance—now known as the Stuart School of Business—was established thanks to a gift from the estate of Lewis Institute alumnus and Chicago financier Harold Leonard Stuart. The program became the Stuart School of Business in 1999.IIT Archives/1991.006.19/Deceased Donor Files/Stuart (some materials in this collection may be restricted); 1998.033/Biographical Files/Box S/Stuart.
The Midwest College of Engineering,IIT Archives/2003.021/Midwest College of Engineering Records. founded in 1967, joined the university in 1986, giving Illinois Tech a presence in west suburban Wheaton with what is now called the Rice Campus.IIT Archives/RG010.03.06/Daniel F and Ada l. Rice Campus; IIT Archives 1993.002/Rice Campus Collection.
In 2006, the University Technology Park at Illinois Institute of Technology, an incubator and life sciences/tech start-up facility, was started in research buildings on the south end of Mies Campus.IIT Archives/2006.012/University Technology Park at IIT Collection. , University Tech Park at Illinois Institute of Technology is home to many companies.
Illinois Tech is a private, PhD-granting university with programs in engineering, science, human sciences, applied technology, architecture, business, design, and law. It is one of 23 institutions in the Association of Independent Technological Universities (AITU).
Growth and expansion
Illinois Tech continued to expand after the merger. As one of the first American universities to host a Navy V-12 program during World War II the school saw a large increase in students and expanded the Armour campus beyond its original . Two years before the merger, German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe joined the Armour Institute of Technology to head both Armour's and the Art Institute of Chicago's architecture programs. The Art Institute later separated and formed its own program. Mies was tasked with designing a completely new campus, and the result was a spacious, open, campus set in contrast to the busy, crowded urban neighborhood around it. The first Mies-designed buildings were completed in the mid-1940s, and construction on what is considered the "Mies Campus" continued until the early 1970s.
Engineering and research also saw great growth and expansion from the postwar period until the early 1970s. Illinois Tech experienced its greatest period of growth from 1952 to 1973 under President John T. Rettaliata, a fluid dynamicist whose research accomplishments included work on early development of the jet engine and a seat on the National Aeronautics and Space Council. During this period, Illinois Tech was the largest engineering school in the United States. It housed many research organizations, including IIT Research Institute (formerly Armour Research Foundation and birthplace of magnetic recording wire and tape as well as audio and video cassettes), the Institute of Gas Technology, and the American Association of Railroads.
Three colleges merged with Illinois Tech after the 1940 Armour/Lewis merger: Institute of Design in 1949, Chicago-Kent College of Law in 1969, and Midwest College of Engineering in 1986. Illinois Tech's Stuart School of Business was founded by a gift from Lewis Institute alumnus Harold Leonard Stuart in 1969, and joined Chicago-Kent at Illinois Tech's Downtown Campus in 1992; it phased out its undergraduate program (becoming graduate-only) after 1995. (An undergraduate business program focusing on technology and entrepreneurship was launched in 2004 and was for a while administratively separate from the Stuart School. It is now part of the school but remains on Main Campus.) The Institute of Design, once housed on the Mies Campus in S. R. Crown Hall, also phased out its undergraduate programs and moved downtown in the early 1990s.
Although not used in official communication, the nickname "Illinois Tech" has long been a favorite of students, inspiring the name of the student newspaper; (renamed in 1928 from Armour Tech News to TechNews), and the former mascot of the university's collegiate sports teams, the Techawks. During the 1950s and 1960s, the nickname was more prevalent than "IIT." The Chicago Transit Authority's Green Line rapid transit station at 35th and State was named "Tech-35th" but has since been renamed "35th-Bronzeville-IIT." In the 2010s, school administrators began to reintroduce "Illinois Tech", to avoid confusion with the Indian Institutes of Technology, which is also abbreviated "IIT", and with ITT Technical Institute, whose abbreviation is similar.
In 2020, Illinois Tech launched the College of Computing and the revamped Lewis College of Science and Letters. The College of Computing houses the computer science, applied mathematics, and information technology and management departments, as well as the industrial technology and management program. The revamped Lewis College added the biology, chemistry, food science and nutrition, and physics departments to the humanities, psychology, and social science departments. The School of Applied Technology and College of Science were then dissolved.
Today
In 1994 the National Commission on IIT considered leaving Mies Campus and moving to the Chicago suburbs. The Chicago Housing Authority had erected massive public-housing developments in the area starting in 1941, and by 1990 the campus was encircled by high-rise housing projects rife with crime. The closest high-rise, Stateway Gardens, was just south of the Illinois Tech campus boundary, the last building of which was demolished in 2006. But the Dearborn Homes to the immediate north of campus still remain. The 1990s and 2000s saw a redevelopment of Stateway Gardens into a new, mixed-income neighborhood dubbed Park Boulevard; the completion of the new central station of the Chicago Police Department a block east of campus; and major commercial development at Roosevelt Road, just north of campus, and residential development as close as Michigan Avenue on the school's eastern boundary.
Bolstered by a $120 million gift in the mid-1990s from Illinois Tech alumnus Robert Pritzker, former chairman of IIT's board of trustees, and Robert Galvin, former chairman of the board and former Motorola executive, the university has benefited from a revitalization. The first new buildings on Mies Campus since the early 1970s were finished in 2003—Rem Koolhaas's McCormick Tribune Campus Center and Helmut Jahn's State Street Village. S. R. Crown Hall, a National Historic Landmark, was renovated in 2005, and the renovation of Wishnick Hall was completed in 2007. Undergraduate enrollment has breached 3,000. To boost the focus on biotechnology and the melding of business and technology, University Technology Park at Illinois Tech, an expansive research park, has been developed by remodeling former Institute of Gas Technology and research buildings on the south end of Mies Campus.
Campuses
Illinois Institute of Technology has five campuses in the Chicago area. The main campus is at 10 West 35th Street in Chicago's Bronzeville neighborhood and houses all undergraduate programs and many graduate programs. There are also campuses in the Chicago Loop, the Fulton Market in central Chicago, and the suburbs of Bedford Park and Wheaton.
The Main Campus includes many buildings designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the director of the architecture program at Illinois Tech from 1938 to 1958. Part of the 120-acre campus was entered onto the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.IIT Archives/2005.018/National Register of Historic Places–IIT Academic Campus Nomination.
The 10-story Downtown Campus at 565 West Adams Street, designed by Gerald Horn of Holabird & Root and built by Illinois Tech in 1992, was home to Illinois Tech's Chicago-Kent College of Law and Institute of Design (ID), as well as the downtown campus for the Stuart School of Business. The Downtown Campus was renamed the Conviser Law Center in 2020. The Institute of Design has relocated to the Ed Kaplan Family Institute for Innovation and Tech Entrepreneurship on the Mies Campus.
IIT's Fulton Market campus opened in 2023 at 400 North Aberdeen Street. It has a life science lab.
The 19-acre Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Campus in Wheaton, designed by Solomon Cordwell Buenz & Associates, Inc. for Illinois Tech and dedicated in 1990,IIT Archives/1999.017/Office of Public Information-Mary Dawson Papers. offers graduate programs, upper-level undergraduate courses, and continuing professional education.