Armour Institute of Technology

The Armour Institute (1893-1940) was a Chicago educational institution committed to providing students of all backgrounds with technological preparation for work in industry. Reverend Frank W. Gunsaulus of Plymouth Church on the South Side of Chicago was the inspiration for its founding and its first president. Funding came from meat packer Philip Danforth Armour, also benefactor of the Armour Mission, which taught manual training classes. The Armour Institute offered courses in engineering, architecture, library science, and domestic arts. Rev. Gunsaulus, an impressive orator, invited speakers to the school such as Booker T. Washington, Harvard president Charles Eliot, and U.S. President William Howard Taft. In 1893, the architecture departments of the Armour Institute and the Art Institute of Chicago joined to form the new Chicago School of Architecture of the Armour Institute. A correspondence school began in 1904 and enrolled students from several countries. In 1940, Armour Institute merged with Lewis Institute (1895) to become the Illinois Institute of Technology.