Charles W. Eliason Jr. House, Chicago, Illinois, Interior Perspective

In contrast to the wood construction that defined his mature career, Paul Schweikher’s unbuilt Eliason House was clad in corrugated sheet metal and terminated in a domed observatory for the client, a hobbyist astronomer. Years before Charles and Ray Eames used industrial steel frames to build their house in the Pacific Palisades, Schweikher defined the interior of the Eliason House with exposed open-truss joists. Strip windows, bent tubular-steel furniture, prefabricated built-in cabinetry, and a modern Danish pendant lamp designed by Poul Henningsen completed this avant-garde design. This unconventional project was one of the few American contributions to the landmark exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1932 that coined the term International Style.