History
Columbia College Chicago was founded in 1890 as the Columbia School of Oratory, a name inspired by the upcoming World's Columbian Exposition. By 1922, it was known as the Columbia College of Expression. A renewed, co-educational version emerged in 1936, emphasizing the growing field of radio broadcasting.
From these relatively modest beginnings, the college has grown into the largest arts and media college in the nation. And with 14 buildings and more than 1.3 million square feet of academic, performing, gallery, and office space, Columbia is the largest landowner in Chicago's burgeoning South Loop.
- Name Change & Innovation
- The Move to the South Loop
- Housing for Students & Campus Growth
- The Superdorm
- New Leadership
In 1944 the college's name was changed to Columbia College of Chicago. During the succeeding decade, the institution broadened its educational base to include the rapidly emerging field of television, and other areas of mass communications.
In 1963 Mike Alexandroff became president, intent on fashioning a new approach to liberal arts education that incorporated a progressive social vision with a "hands on, minds on" approach to pedagogy. Committed to educating aspiring artists and communicators who would bring a multiplicity of voices and visions to the creation of American culture, Columbia established an open admissions policy wherein all qualified students were afforded access to higher education and the opportunity to obtain the best in theory and practice by learning from a faculty of working professionals.
In 1964 Columbia moved from its location at 207 South Wabash Avenue to rented office space in a warehouse at 540 North Lake Shore Drive. Over the next five years, enrollment quadrupled to 700 students. Columbia continued to add new academic departments and design new programs to keep up with the educational needs and trends of contemporary America, enlisting some of Chicago's most important and creative professionals as faculty.
Columbia's engagement with the culture of Chicago began to make an impact in the city's neighborhoods. An old midtown hotel was turned into a dance center, a north side loft space into a poetry center. A rented church building became the theater department and the college bought the old Swedish Athletic Club at 3257 North Sheffield Avenue. Columbia's Chicago Free Theater played to audiences of more than 75,000 a year through 1974.
In 1974 Columbia was granted full accreditation as a four-year, undergraduate liberal arts school by the North Central Association of Schools and Colleges and within two years enrollment had passed the 2,000 mark.
The Move to the South Loop
The college's rented facilities were quickly becoming overwhelmed by the mid-1970s, and Columbia bought the 15-story, 175,000 square foot building at 600 South Michigan Avenue for its first permanent home. Over the next three years, $3.5 million was raised for the purchase and for improvements to the structure. Today the building, originally built for the International Harvester Company and renamed the Alexandroff Administrative Center in honor of Mike Alexandroff who died in 2001, houses administrative offices, classroom space, photography labs, television studios, the 180-seat Ferguson Memorial Theater, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography.
The Getz Theater and Building, at 72 East 11th Street, was purchased in 1981 and the college constructed a $1.8 million, two-story addition, including the renovation of 400-seat theater, lobby, dressing rooms, and marquee, made possible by a $750,000 gift from The Oscar and Emma Getz Foundation. Today the 83,000 square foot building - an 1929 Art Deco edifice designed by Holabird and Root that was the first home of the Chicago Women's Club - serves as home to Columbia's theater department, with more than 600 students and more than five major productions each year.
In the midst of the South Loop's construction boom of the 1990s, Columbia College Chicago began a program of acquiring historic buildings in the area and adapting them for educational uses. The program was a response to its rapidly growing enrollment, which reached 6,791 students in 1990 and created an ever-increasing demand for space. That year, the college purchased the 181,000 square foot building at 624 South Michigan, spending $12 million on the acquisition and remodeling. Originally built to house the Chicago Musical College, "624" is now home to a five-story library, classrooms, departmental offices, student and faculty lounges, and the college's bookstore. A sculpture garden was also opened in 1990 on a converted parking lot next to the Getz Theater and Building.
Mike Alexandroff retired in September of 1992, after nearly 30 years as president, and was succeeded by Dr. John B. Duff, former commissioner of the Chicago Public Library and former chancellor of the Massachusetts Board of Regents of Higher Education, who continued Columbia's policy of growth and expansion.
Housing for Students & Campus Growth
In January 1993 Columbia's reputation as the place to go for a world-class education in arts and media was reflected in an enrollment of 7,327 students, many of whom hailed from far-flung locations. It was time to think beyond the confines of "commuter school" and establish student housing. Columbia therefore acquired its first residence hall: the landmark Lakeside Lofts building at 731 South Plymouth Court in the historic Printers Row neighborhood, just a few blocks from the main campus. Designed in 1895 by noted architect Howard Van Doren Shaw, and listed in the National Register of Historic Places, the 158,000 square foot building once housed the Lakeside Press. It was converted to luxury apartments in 1984 and currently houses more than 300 Columbia students. More about residential life...
In April 1994 the Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts was opened in leased space at 218 South Wabash. In addition to offering an MFA degree in interdisciplinary book and paper arts, the center (now housed in the college's Ludington Building) presents exhibitions, programs, and a full range of community classes.
Columbia also established an undergraduate early-childhood teacher-education program in the fall of 1996. The program, which focuses on arts education, was made possible by a gift from noted philanthropists Irving B. and Joan W. Harris.
With thriving departments in theater and music and a film and video department acknowledged as the largest in the world, Columbia acquired another building at 1415 South Wabash in 1996. This 18,500 square-foot facility is currently used for teaching, performance, and production by the college's film and video, theater, and music departments.
In 1997, responding to continued growth in the music department, the school purchased the 28,000 square foot building at 1014 South Michigan. The department took possession of the building in 1998, carrying on the tradition of previous owner, the Sherwood Conservatory of Music.
The Ludington Building at 1104 South Wabash was purchased in March 1999 to accommodate the burgeoning film and video department, to provide more space for the Center for Book and Paper Arts, and to house the Glass Curtain Gallery, the Hermann D. Conaway Center, and the Film Row Cinema Theater. This 182,000 square-foot terra cotta building, which was designed by the William LeBaron Jenney in 1891 to house the American Book Company, is a City of Chicago Landmark and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
As the century waned, Columbia's growth continued unabated. 1999 also saw the purchase of the 33 East Congress Parkway building and a property at the corner of Wabash and 8th Street. The "Congress Building," designed by noted Chicago architect Alfred S. Alschuler, provides 180,000 square feet of space for administrative offices, classrooms, and the college's radio station and audio arts acoustics department - as well as the C-33 gallery, which houses fine arts exhibitions.
The college currently occupies 14 buildings and 2 lots for a total of more than 1.3 million square feet, making Columbia College Chicago the South Loop's largest landowner. A recent Campus Heritage Award from the Getty Foundation has enabled the school's division of Campus Environment to move forward with the rehabilitation and adaptation of the campus's historic buildings, to meet the growing demands of a thriving 21st-century arts, media, and communications college.
The not-for-profit Educational Advancement Fund was established in 2001 through a collaboration of Columbia, DePaul University, and Roosevelt University, and submitted a bid to build University Center at State Street and Harrison Street on a lot owned by the City of Chicago. The proposal was accepted in May of 2002, and EAF acquired the site for $1, breaking ground that spring for the 18-story, $150-million facility that houses 1,680 undergraduate, graduate and professional students from the three schools. Warrick Carter, the presidents of Roosevelt and Depaul Universities, and Mayor Richard M. Daley officially opened the "superdorm" and dedicated the building's garden terrace to the Mayor on August 12, 2004.
The addition of the UCC brought the total of "resident" Columbia students to 1,412 - a remarkable evolution from the institution's "commuter school" roots. One year earlier, only 500 students had lived on campus!
Dr. Warrick L. Carter - an educator, business executive, composer, and performing artist - became Columbia's president in 2000, after the retirement of John Duff. During his tenure at Columbia, Carter, an educational visionary who renewed the college's commitment to access and opportunity in higher education, has overseen the continued expansion of Columbia's presence in the revitalized South Loop, an academic reorganization of the college, the completion of Columbia 2010, the college's five-year strategic plan, and the development and opening of the University Center of Chicago - a historic collaboration between Columbia and DePaul and Roosevelt Universities.
In July 2000, Carter joined new dance department chair Bonnie Brooks for the opening of the new Dance Center in a renovated Art Deco building at 1306 South Michigan. The Dance Center, responding to and stimulating increased growth in the dance department, boasts state-of-the-art performance space and greatly increased studio space.
Academic reorganization and collegial collaboration marked 2001. Previously an aggregate of independent departments and programs reporting to one academic dean, Columbia established a more traditional academic structure with its reorganization under four schools: fine and performing arts, media arts, liberal arts and sciences, and graduate study, each reporting to a dean who in turn reports to the provost/vice president for academic affairs.