Donnelley's Calumet Plant: The Largest Printing Building in America
Near Chicago Lake Michigan, Illinois
The massive brick building at Calumet Avenue and Twenty-second Street was once one of the great printing plants of the United States. R. R.
Donnelley and Sons commissioned architect Howard Van Doren Shaw to design it in phases starting in nineteen twelve. Shaw clad the Gothic structure in terracotta shields bearing the marks of history's great printers, treating a factory as if it were a cathedral of craft. When construction finished in nineteen twenty-nine, the plant was a vast complex.
At its peak, Donnelley printed everything from the Sears Roebuck catalog and Time magazine to telephone directories for the entire country. The plant closed in nineteen ninety-three and was converted to a data center and telecommunications hub. It is now a Chicago Landmark, its Gothic facade still standing as a monument to the age when Chicago printed half of America's words.
