House of Tomorrow, Beverly Shores

A House Built To Explain The Future

Keck designed the House of Tomorrow for the 1933 Century of Progress fair, where millions encountered a domestic vision organized around glass, climate control, labor-saving appliances, open planning, and personal mobility.

Its floor-to-ceiling glass walls preceded the Farnsworth House and Philip Johnson's Glass House. The project belongs to the history of modernism, but also to the history of exhibitions that turned architecture into a public demonstration of desirable technology.

From Chicago To The Dunes

After the fair, the House of Tomorrow and four other exhibit houses traveled by truck and barge across Lake Michigan to Beverly Shores. The houses later became part of Indiana Dunes National Park, placing private domestic experiments inside a protected public landscape.

Indiana Landmarks used a lease and sublease model to save four companion houses. The House of Tomorrow's scale, altered condition, and technical complexity made that approach harder to complete, and the house remained vacant from 1999.

Restoring An Experiment

The National Trust designated the house a National Treasure in 2016. Indiana Landmarks, the National Park Service, bKL Architecture, and Bauer Latoza Studio developed a rehabilitation approach intended to recover the best of Keck's 1933 design while allowing modern systems and future use.

A $4 million Great American Outdoors Act allocation supported the exterior and concrete-slab phase launched in 2024. With the exterior work now visible, the next questions concern interior scope, interpretation, and final use.