In Chicago, everyone looks up to the work of Fazlur Rahman Khan, the structural engineer for the Sears Tower and John Hancock Center. Born on this day in 1929 in Bangladesh, Khan came to the United States to study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he earned two master’s degrees and a PhD. He then joined Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, where his innovative work ushered in a new era of skyscrapers. Next time you’re on Franklin Street adjacent to the Willis Tower, you’ll see that it has the honorary designation of “Fazlur R. Khan Way.” Learn more about Chicago’s architectural history.

With more than 1.5 million images and 4 million feet of moving images, the Chicago History Museum’s Prints and Photographs Collection is the single largest source of pictorial information for the Chicago metropolitan area from the early nineteenth century to the present. The Hedrich-Blessing Collection is one of our most frequently requested materials, as it features architectural and design photography from 1928 to 1980.