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Negro Digest offices, State Street
Ebony magazine, 1992
Ebony magazine, 1992
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A fun find here from the early 1960s. As part of the United States Information Agency's "Personal Report" series, Michael Kubeyinje, a student in Washington, D.C., conducted a report on Johnson Publishing Company. "Personal Report" was inaugurated by the U.S.I.A to familiarize Nigerian audiences with aspects of American culture - one small part of America's Cold War cultural and educational projects on the African continent. Kubeyinje's report offers some rare and valuable footage of the interiors of Johnson Publishing's offices in both Washington, D.C. and its main headquarters in Chicago. We also get to meet some prominent JPC staffers, including Simeon Booker, Era Bell Thompson, Herbert Nipson, and Lerone Bennett Jr. I recently published a short piece for the Washington Post, titled "Preserving Black Press Buildings is Crucial to Urban Communities." As the title suggests, it emphasizes the historic significance of Black press buildings and their role in ongoing debates around race, urban renewal, and neighborhood redevelopment.
Click on the banner below to read more. I'm a little late to the party with this one, but the New York Times magazine ran a major feature earlier this year on "The 25 Most Significant Works of Postwar Architecture," which included the former Johnson Publishing headquarters at 820 South Michigan Avenue. The list was a collab between journalists Michael Snyder and Kurt Soller, architects Toshiko Mori, Annabelle Selldorf and Vincent van Duysen, designers Tom Dixon and Es Devlin, and regular Style contributors Nikil Saval and Tom Delavan. While the list is obviously subjective, its an interesting take on the question of what makes a building "significant." The inclusion of the JPC building was clearly influenced by their efforts to be mindful of the field's historical inequalities and intentional effort to include work by women architects and Black architects. After all, much of what is significant about 820 South Michigan Avenue is less about the building's actual design and more the result of its contextual/cultural significance. Here's what the New York Times had to say about the building: "THE FIRST HIGH-RISE BUILDING IN DOWNTOWN CHICAGO DESIGNED BY A BLACK ARCHITECT, THE JOHNSON PUBLISHING COMPANY BUILDING...HOUSED THE OFFICES FOR EPOCH-MAKING MAGAZINES LIKE JET AND EBONY, WHICH REFLECTED AND SHAPED THE TASTES OF COUNTLESS BLACK AMERICANS... As the piece rightly notes, the significance of the Johnson Publishing building continues to be shaped by just how few high-rises by Black architects have been constructed in the half century since it was unveiled to the public during the early 1970s - a testament to "just how far the profession still has to go." The piece is accompanied by a nice shot of 820 South Michigan Avenue taken from the Hedrich-Blessing collection at Chicago History Museum. There are some great shots of the interior and exterior of the Johnson Publishing building which are available to view through the museum's online catalogue - definitely worth checking out. Exterior view of the Johnson Publishing Company building at 820 South Michigan Ave.
Hedrich-Blessing Collection, Chicago History Museum Here are some interesting images of the former Afro-American publishing plant at 628 N. Eutaw Street in Baltimore. The are part of a larger series of photographs included in the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), currently housed at the Library of Congress.
HABS is a vast archive which documents notable achievements in architecture, engineering and landscape design in the United States, ranging from the 17th through the 20th centuries. Its been going since the early 1930s - part of a set of cooperative agreements between the National Parks Service, the Library of Congress, and the private sector - and to date has produced more than half-a-million drawings, photographs, and written histories. Back to the Afro-American building: there is some conflicting data on exactly when the paper vacated the property, but it seems to have occured somewhere between 1990 and 1993. The date at which these images were taken is also unclear, although I would guess it was pretty soon after the newspaper left. From looking on Google Maps it appears that the main building no longer exists, leaving images such among the last memories of a Black publishing plant that was once once of the largest in the nation. For the uninitiated, the Obsidian Collection is an ongoing digital history project focused on archiving and digitising black press collections. According to Obsidian's website, its primary goal is to "preseve and share images from African American newspapers for future generations." The project has partnered up with Google Arts & Culture to produce a series of online 'Stories' which mine content from black newspapers and black photographers. The most recent Story produced focused on the Chicago Defender's relocation from South Indiana to 2400 South Michigan Avenue on Motor Row in 1960. New lettering for the building, 1960. Chicago Defender Archives There are some great images of the newspaper's relocation available through Google Arts & Culture, including the above shot of workmen attaching the newspaper's signage to the exterior of the building. Earlier pamphlets advertising the Defender's location at 3435 South Indiana made a big deal out of the building's signage, point to it as evidence of the newspaper's cultural and political reach over and beyond the South Side. It appears as if such efforts were maintained at the new location. The photograph below is one of my favourite from the collection, picturing an unnamed woman, apparently an employee at the Defender, posing next to the street sign marking the newspaper's new location at 24th Street and South Michigan. If anyone knows who this lady might be, please get in touch! For more images go to "The Chicago Defender's New Headquarters", hosted on Google Arts & Culture for the Obsidian Collection "Lovely lady at new Chicago Defender Location, 1960." Chicago Defender Archives.
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