History by Design: Streamlining in Skokie

No one thinks of the North Shore suburbs as industrial yet one of the great streamlined Art Moderne buildings in the Chicago area is an office/industrial structure located in Skokie.

In 1941, G.D. Searle and Company, founded in 1888, built its company headquarters on a 5-acre site, tripling the size of its pharmaceutical operation. It had formerly been located on Ravenswood Avenue in Chicago. 

The building is extraordinary. It reflects the romance that America had with streamlining — a concept associated with cars, trains, airplanes and ocean liners — vehicles of transportation. These have in common smooth surfaces, rounded corners and horizontal banding. These features symbolize motion; yet, the same characteristics were incorporated into inanimate objects from radios and toasters to entire buildings.

Streamlining grew out of the Art Deco movement, which took hold in the 1920s, became popular into the 1930s and was characterized by geometric patterns and stylized forms. Art Deco (as it became known after a 1966 exhibition of that name) morphed into Art Moderne in the mid 1930s. The simplicity of Art Moderne reflects the austerity of the Great Depression. 

The Searle Headquarters — built of white-glazed brick with Indiana limestone trim and horizontal bands of windows that flank a cylindrical tower marking the company’s entrance — is pure geometry. With an address of 4901 Searle Parkway, this large building is hidden away in a small industrial park that is today part of the Illinois Science and Technology Park.

The Searle headquarters building was designed by Herbert G. Banse, who was born in 1898 in Milwaukee. He attended Cornell University and moved to Chicago. Although he designed subsequent industrial buildings after Searle, he appears to not have gained recognition for other commissions.

Between 1936 and 1938, he partnered with Edwin Hill Clark, who designed many important Chicago and North Shore buildings including Brookfield Zoo, Winnetka Village Hall and Spanish Court (now Plaza del Lago). Banse was a resident of Wilmette, where he designed his own home, a Cape Cod. 

The Searle Headquarters building gained recognition almost immediately after it was completed. An extensive article titled “Laboratory for Modern Medicine” was published in the June 1943 issue of Architectural Record. Illustrations accompanying it were provided by Hedrich-Blessing, the Chicago photographic studio that has been called the “Messengers of Modernism.”

G. D. Searle & Company was founded by druggist Gideon D. Searle in Omaha, Nebraska. The company moved to Chicago in 1890. It specialized in pharmaceuticals, agriculture and animal health. Among the products it developed were Enovid, the first commercial oral contraceptive; Aspartame, known as NutraSweet; Metamucil, a fiber supplement; and Dramamine and Lomotil for motion sickness.

In 1977, Donald Rumsfeld, who served two terms as secretary of defense (1975-77, 2001-2006), took over the company — the first chief executive outside the Searle family. Rumsfeld was instrumental in selling the company to Monsanto in 1985 for $2.7 billion.

Searle is now a trademarked subsidiary of Pfizer.

History By Design is The Record’s monthly column focusing on the North Shore’s special and influential architectural history. Local historians and authors Susan S. Benjamin and Robert A. Sideman write and research the column.