Edgar Miller’s Influences:
Andrew Rebori

Edgar Miller’s early career culminated in his most acclaimed and remarkable project of the Handmade Homes artist colonies, which began in earnest in 1927 at what would become the Carl Street Studios—at the address of 155 West Burton Place today. This endeavor was undertaken in collaboration and partnership with a number of his contemporaries, including Sol Kogen, a fellow student he met at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1917; Jesús Torres, a collaborator and craftsman from Hull-House who he recruited specifically for this new endeavor; and his talented artistic siblings, Frank and Hester Miller, who had come to Chicago by the mid-1920s after their brother Edgar had made a home for himself in the the city. Throughout his twenties, Edgar Miller had become a well-established artist-designer, learning from the many influences, mentors, and collaborators that he had met along the way, like the Iannellis. By this stage, Miller was known widely as a masterful and dependable crafter, with a range of skills and media under his belt. A confluence of events brought him to the attention of another of Chicago’s major talents, the architect Andrew Rebori. Together, Miller and Rebori were destined to become two of the great modern creatives of early twentieth century Chicago, with both of them honing their artistry into the production of some of Chicago’s most astounding built-environments.

Rebori, the Cosmopolitan Man About Town

Born in New York City in 1888, Rebori began his career in architecture at an early age. By the time he was fifteen years old, he was apprenticing as a draftsman and blueprint designer, and he worked for fairly prominent turn-of-the-century architects including Charles Allling Gifford, Herbert Hale, and Henry Hornbostel. Rebori was ready to dedicate himself to the profession and made it a mission to study at the very best institutions of the day. He would attend the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1905 to 1907; then go on to the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris for another two years; a short tenure at the American Academy in Rome; and also receive a bachelor’s degree from the Armour Institute of Technology (now part of the Illinois Institute of Technology), which would later be a center for American modernism under the leadership of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Through his extensive and fairly formal education, Rebori straddled a crucial moment in American architectural history. He was inculcated into design theory at a time when neoclassical aesthetics were in vogue; but also at a moment when the swing of modernist elements were piquing the interest of creative professionals everywhere.

In between his studies, Rebori met his wife Nannie Prendergast, niece of Robert McComick, the publisher of The Chicago Tribune, and the couple eventually settled down in Chicago. Rebori soon became friends with other prominent local talents, such as Louis Sullivan, who in particular was a model of professional ambition for the young architect. Rebori’s earliest architectural projects in Chicago, during his time working for Jarvis Hunt from 1914 through 1920, and later with his own firm Rebori, Wentworth, Dewey and McCormick, were mainly conventional yet beautiful apartment buildings for well-to-do clients. Rebori developed a keen sense for design that emphasized novel material elements and engineering. Architecture was one arena of design and technology that was most changed by the early 20th century modern era. His real talent in those days rested in his overactive imagination and ability to get fellow architects and designers excited about his ideas. Still a metropolis coming into its own after the disaster of the Great Fire of 1871, Chicago was fresh terrain ready to be tilled by ambitious talents; the American City Beautiful movement and Daniel Burnham’s audacious plans for a thoughtfully laid-out cityscape with wide avenues and heavy materials was beginning to take shape. Rebori soon involved himself in several “grand plans” for the expansion of Michigan Avenue as a commercial and cultural district, and the general beautification and commercialization of the Chicago River and Lake Michigan shoreline. None of these grand plans ever became reality within his lifetime, but it spoke to Rebori’s flair for dreaming big, and his ability to network with other scions of Chicago’s business and planning elites to push these grand visions. 

The Avant Garde Modernist Revolution Comes to the Midwest

The innovations we take for granted in the design field today were still being invented and imagined when both Rebori and Miller were being introduced to the engineering aspect of design. Throughout the 1920s, they would have been surrounded by constant discussion of the new forms of architecture and engineering taking place right before everyone’s eyes. American architecture’s fusion of old world designs into a streamlined and geometric architectural language dovetailed well into Miller’s own cultivated design language. His amalgam of handicrafts, graphic motifs, and traditional art dovetailed into early modernism’s interest in drawing from a variety of antecedents. Miller wanted to create architecture, which he saw, as many others did, as a synthesis of all art forms with science and technology. By the early 1920s in Chicago, Miller was already assisting with architectural ornamentation for Barry Byrne through Iannelli Studios, and doing interior rehabs and build-outs for friends’ apartments, restaurants, and bars in Towertown. The two creatives were working on many projects independently that in retrospect highlighted the parallel courses of their early careers. It would not be too long before Rebori and Miller met, having carved out their own paths of avant garde modernism in interwar Chicago.

By the late 1920s, Miller and Rebori had become highly social networkers, hobnobbing at society clubs for creative professionals, one of which is likely where they met and shared ideas about their contemporary projects. It was also likely during one of those meetings that the two discussed working together on a possible project. The first known opportunity for collaboration between them soon came about in 1927 on the Carl Street and Kogen-Miller Studios “Handmade Home” projects, on Chicago’s Near North Side. These novel artist colonies saw Miller, Sol Kogen, and their cohort undertake the task of transforming neighborhood Victorian mansions into European-inspired studio complexes. The mammoth task ostensibly required the supervision and design by a professional architect, which was where Rebori was meant to participate. However, Rebori disavowed any professional imprimatur to the building, claiming later in life that while he agreed to sign the papers as the consulting architect, he was rarely directly consulted. While Edgar Miller’s artist colony projects have a clear patchwork and arts and crafts feel, there are several moments throughout the complexes where Rebori’s influence appears, especially in the curvature of the walls and doorways, block windows, and lofted bi-level studio apartment layouts. Throughout the 1920s, Rebori, like so many other artists, designers, and architects, found himself teaching at SAIC, and it’s very likely that Rebori and Miller could have also first met while they were both teaching at the School. From there, it was a fast friendship where they shared their mutual ideas for grand projects of immense scale and abundant artistic design. It’s no doubt that Rebori was fascinated by the free spirited young Miller and his architectural adventurism on the Handmade Homes, while Miller saw in Rebori a mentor who believed in him and encouraged Miller’s experimentation.

Part of Miller and Rebori’s relationship centers around one Chicago’ great bastions of creativity, The Tavern Club, which the two would frequent and where they would on occasion lead popular salons and art nights for other members. Rebori was one of the founding members of the distinguished society club—established in 1927—that counted Frank Lloyd Wright, Carl Sandburg, William Wrigley, and Mayor Richard J. Daley among its members. Miller’s induction into the Tavern Club may have been one of the most crucial career decisions he made. The venue was a who’s who of Chicago’s elite art, design, architecture, and other creative professionals; and likely where Miller picked up numerous commissions while chatting over an evening cocktail. 

Great Collaborations of Modern Architecture and Design

Rebori and Miller’s first real joint project was during Chicago’s 1933-34 Century of Progress World’s Fair for a concession known as the Streets of Paris. Both Miller and Rebori admired the Parisian bohemian culture—Rebori likely recalling his time in the French capital while studying at the École des Beaux-Arts, and Miller from his time paying a short visit to the city, it is thought, sometime in the 1920s, though records of Miller’s travels to Europe are scarce. The Streets of Paris concession was designed as a re-imagining of the Latin Quarter for an American audience seeking frivolity and excitement in the depths of the Great Depression; and for Rebori and Miller, a chance to scandalize the more conservative social mores of the US at that time. Miller ran several minor concessions within the massive stage set “village,” including a live (nude) drawing class. Ever the gregarious socializer, Rebori also arranged for the talented and emerging celebrity burlesque dancer Sally Rand to perform her famous fan dance every day at the Streets of Paris, which also celebrated nudity. With the end of Prohibition recently passed, the additional boon of being allowed to sell beer made the Streets of Paris one of the most popular and financially successful concessions of the entire World’s Fair.  

Some of Miller and Rebori’s more lasting cooperative endeavors were their work on several homes and apartment buildings together in the Chicagoland area, including their magnum opus, The Frank Fisher Studio Apartments at 1209 North State Parkway in 1936. With several commercial successes under his belt, Rebori was able to push for even more avant garde projects among his clientele. The Fair had brought a great deal of modern French and German architectural design influences for buildings of any imaginable scale, and began to permeate amongst the more adventurous architects of Chicago. Rebori’s work began to adopt an art moderne style that was very likely influenced by the works of German contemporaries such as Otto Bartning and Martin Elsaesser who would also display at the World’s Fair. His designs began to incorporate modern forms, materials, and artistic elements. Miller was instrumental in the artistic design of the facades of the building, though he was rarely given credit for it during his lifetime, which Edgar did not seem to mind. “The design of the modern small apartment house at 1209 North State Street, Chicago, presented us with an unusually interesting opportunity to work toward a conception of how an organic modern architecture can achieve compact, livable, light housekeeping units in minimum workable space, with added factors of comfort and beauty. I think this building was a spree for Andy, a kind of esthetic explosion, he knew so well how to do things. In my way I also had freedom. We respected each other.”

Their final grand project together was the Madonna della Strada chapel at Loyola’s Edgewater, Chicago campus. The church, which still stands overlooking the northside lakeshore, is an example of great early-modernist churches that embraced the progressive design philosophy of the day. Completed in 1939, with its doors facing due east, the chapel’s floor plan and artistic details were set down by Rebori and Miller in rectilinear and sunbeam patterns, repeated in the layout of the low-relief design elements on its facade and in the shapes of its stained glass windows. The chapel’s design elements down to the details in its embedded artwork, which include Miller’s glittering mosaic murals, cast-bronze plaques, and painted stained glass, exemplify a creative dance between the two designers that perfectly fit together form and ornament. The church was an example of the radical departure from the traditionally limestone and concrete Gothic features that architecture of public spaces was beginning to take. The modern design form was in some ways less lofty and more democratic, allowing for visitors and congregants to experience more of the interior built environment of the church. While the artistic depiction of Christian imagery was not always to the taste of the chapel’s directorship, who found some of the modernist elements too alien, Rebori and Miller’s aesthetic are unmistakable and exemplify both high craftsmanship and reverence.

Miller recalled of his association with Rebori over the decades: “My remembrance of Andy Rebori is most precious—his generosity and the clear common sense of his realizations as well as the unusual grasp he had of creative ideas, the vision he had of the sensory impact that form made upon the consciousness that could receive it. Only a few architects are creative artists. Andy, most decidedly, was one… He was aware of the value and presence of proportions in space that also must fulfill a physical purpose… Space to the art of architecture bears the same relation as sound to music. To compose with sound, one has a sense of pitch by which sound is so definitely realized that any particular note can be identified. Space must be as positively identified in all the visual arts.”

Before his death in 1966, Rebori teamed up with Miller once more for a project known as the Octagon Apartments, a planned twenty-story building that would be developed for a parcel of lakeshore real estate that Miller owned at the time. While it surely would have been a magnificent piece, the project never came to fruition, and the world never saw Rebori’s take on mid-century tinged residential building, or Miller’s proposed mosaic that would have decorated the lobby. The two had come a long way from their initial collaboration of the Carl Street Studios and the other renowned projects three decades earlier. Richard Cahan wrote in an article for Chicago Art Deco Society Magazine that, “Prior to [Rebori’s] death he was widely regarded as the dean of Chicago architects. The dean of Chicago art was Edgar Miller.” Their work together spoke to the role the two played on the modernizing Chicago design scene. 

References & Further Reading

Lectures

• For more on Edgar Miller and Andrew Rebori’s time as artistic directors of the 1933 Century of Progress World’s Fair concession, check out the lecture by Lauren Drapala Edgar Miller and The Streets of Paris in our lecture archive.

Books

• For more on Edgar Miller and Andrew Rebori’s work on the Fisher Studio Apartments, check out the article of the building in Art Deco Chicago: Designing Modern America edited by Robert Bruegmann.