City: Chicago, IL

Category: Education

Telephone: (312) 567-3000

Address: 3300 S. Federal St.

Description: IIT was created in 1940, but the seed that led to its formation was planted much earlier. It started in 1893 with the Armour Institute of Technology, founded by meatpacking mogul Philip Danforth Armour Sr., who was inspired by Chicago minister Frank Wakely Gunsaulus. In what’s now called the “Million Dollar Sermon,” Gunsaulus claimed that, with a million dollars, he could build a school of higher education for students other than simply society’s elite. Armour took the bait, donated the money, and established his technical school, which offered courses in engineering, chemistry, architecture, and library science. A liberal arts, science, and engineering school on Chicago’s west side called Lewis Institute opened a couple of years later, and it was the merging of Lewis and Armour that created IIT. Its numbers are small—only about 7,700 students—but IIT is most definitely a big deal. The architecture program, one of the best in the country, can credit much of its bragging rights to Mies van der Rohe who headed the department beginning in 1938 at Armour and then IIT until 1959. Mies’s own creative mark is all over campus, including the College of Architecture’s main building, S.R. Crown Hall, which received National Historic Landmark status in 2001, a few years before the entire academic campus was added to the National Register of Historic Places for its many architecturally significant structures. Besides architecture, IIT is highly regarded for its engineering, science, humanities, design, and psychology programs, and its Chicago-Kent College of Law and Stuart School of Business. IIT prides itself on being a front-runner in the realm of technology, so much so that it recently launched an initiative to provide every incoming student with the latest Apple iPad.