George Frederick Keck (1895-1980) was an American

modernist Modernism is both a philosophy, philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western world, Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new fo ...

architect based in

Chicago, Illinois (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

. He was later assisted in his practice by his brother William Keck to form the firm of Keck & Keck.

Biography

Keck was born in

Watertown, Wisconsin Watertown is a city in Dodge and Jefferson counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Most of the city's population is in Jefferson County. Division Street, several blocks north of downtown, marks the county line. The population of Watertown was 2 ...

, the eldest of five boys. He studied engineering for a year at the

University of Wisconsin A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, ...

and then studied architecture engineering at the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

. Starting in the 1920s, he worked as a draftsman for several Chicago firms, including D. H. Burnham & Company and

Schmidt, Garden and Martin Richard Ernest Schmidt (14.11.1865–17.10.1958) was an American architect, a member of the so-called first Chicago School and a near-contemporary of Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan. Life Schmidt was born in Ebern, Bavaria and brought ...

. He started his own practice in 1926, and was joined by his younger brother William five years later. George took an interest in the

Deutscher Werkbund The Deutscher Werkbund (English: "German Association of Craftsmen"; ) is a German association of artists, architects, designers and industrialists established in 1907. The Werkbund became an important element in the development of modern arch ...

and the emerging International Style.

Career

Keck designed two key model structures for the

Century of Progress A Century of Progress International Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, was a world's fair held in the city of Chicago, Illinois, United States, from 1933 to 1934. The fair, registered under the Bureau International des Expositi ...

exhibition in Chicago in 1933; dubbed the " House of Tomorrow".Roth, Leland M. ''American Architecture: A History'',
Google Books
,

Westview Press Taylor & Francis Group is an international company originating in England that publishes books and academic journals. Its parts include Taylor & Francis, Routledge, F1000 Research or Dovepress. It is a division of Informa plc, a United Ki ...

, 2003, p. 361, (). These two structures played in key role in the development of Keck's form of modernism. In 1934 he designed another model house, " Crystal House", which was directly reminiscent of the work of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and

Marcel Breuer Marcel Lajos Breuer ( ; 21 May 1902 – 1 July 1981), was a Hungarian-born modernist architect and furniture designer. At the Bauhaus he designed the Wassily Chair and the Cesca Chair, which ''The New York Times'' have called some of the most i ...

.Prince, Sue Ann. ''The Old Guard and the Avant Garde: Modernism in Chicago 1910-1940'',
Google Books
,

University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the largest and one of the oldest university presses in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including ''The Chicago Manual of Style'', ...

, 1990 p. 132, (). Keck became a pioneering designer of passive solar houses in the 1930s and 40s after realizing that the all-glass " House of Tomorrow" was warm inside on sunny winter days prior to the installation of the furnace. Following this he gradually started incorporating more south-facing windows into his designs for other clients, and in 1940 designed a passive solar home for real estate developer Howard Sloan in Glenview, Illinois. The Sloan House was called a "solar house" by the

Chicago Tribune The ''Chicago Tribune'' is a daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, United States, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" (a slogan for which WGN radio and television a ...

, the first modern use of that term. Sloan then built a number of passive solar houses, and his publicity efforts contributed to a significant "solar house" movement in the 1940s. Keck taught architecture at the New Bauhaus School (now

IIT Institute of Design Institute of Design (ID) at the Illinois Institute of Technology (Illinois Tech), founded as the New Bauhaus, is a graduate school teaching systemic, human-centered design. History The Institute of Design at Illinois Tech is a school of design ...

). He was the head of architecture there until 1942 and appointed

Ralph Rapson Ralph Rapson (September 13, 1914 – March 29, 2008) was Head of the School of Architecture at the University of Minnesota for 30 years. He was one of the world's oldest practicing architects at his death at age 93, and also one of the most ...

as his successor. Rapson also worked in Keck's office during this period, as did fellow New Bauhaus School professor Robert Bruce Tague.

References

Additional Sources

William Keck at Chicago Architects Oral History Project

George Fred and William Keck papers at Wisconsin Historical Society Archives
* * * * * *Fred Keck video interview long segments, from 1970s by Joshua Kind, on Qualia etc. page, http://locdocco.blogspot.com/ * The Wisconsin State Historical Society adding the Keck visual archive with photos. See their Visual Materials Collection, type Keck into search box next to Go button. http://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Content.aspx?dsNav=N:1135 {{DEFAULTSORT:Keck, George Fred 20th-century American architects Modernist architects Artists from Chicago People from Watertown, Wisconsin 1895 births 1980 deaths University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign alumni