Michael Reese Hospital, Chicago, Illinois, Detail and Elevation

Richard E. Schmidt was chief designer of Schmidt, Garden & Martin, a firm that was associated with the Prairie School and specialized in large commercial buildings, park structures, and hospitals. The largest of the latter group was Michael Reese Hospital, which eventually became part of a large campus of modernist works by Loebl, Schlossman, and Bennett and Walter Gropius. Bridging the modernism of the 19th- and 20th-century Chicago Schools, Schmidt, Garden & Martin’s designs feature strong massing and a visible simplification of ornament. The principal façade of Michael Reese Hospital was dominated by simple vertical brick piers instead of more traditional columns, to draw the eye from the central entrance to a decorative frieze at the cornice line. Since the demolition of this building in 2010, these drawings have taken on new documentary importance as one of the last records of an important historical structure.