Inside Ebony and Jet’s extraordinary former offices, a photographer captured what remained

Just four years after the civil rights era, Chicago welcomed its first downtown skyscraper designed by a black architect for a black-owned firm. For four decades, the Johnson Publishing Company occupied an 11-story tower at 820 S. Michigan Avenue that was a monument to black culture, mailing millions of copies of Ebony and Jet magazines each year. The company’s founder, publisher John H. Johnson, called it “a miracle on Michigan Avenue” for having been built.

The media titan highlighted the stories, news and beauty of Black lives and attracted unrivaled cover stars, including Grace Jones, Prince, Donna Summer, Michael Jordan, Florence Griffith Joyner and President Barack Obama. But as the company struggled in the 2010s, it sold its iconic titles to a venture capital firm, and major art world institutions and artists acquired its archives, art collection and furnishings in hopes of preserving its legacy.

The physical building, although emptied, remained. Housed inside architect John Moutoussamy’s austere modernist façade, the interiors – the work of Palm Springs designers Arthur Elrod and William Raiser – have never been renovated or altered. They had painted the walls with colorful chevrons, peacock feathers, and swirling hues of orange, green, and purple, and carpeted the floors with equally exuberant patterns.

The office was vacated in 2012, less than a decade after Johnson’s death, and from there the company eventually declared bankruptcy. At its former headquarters, which housed Ebony, Jet and Fashion Fair cosmetics and a cafeteria so popular that stars and public figures often requested the menu in advance, the guest list quickly dwindled to one: a photographer who, as she puts it, became “obsessed” with the empty building and its history and set out to preserve it.

Now, the images collected by Barbara Karant are part of a new book about the legacy of Johnson Publishing Company, titled “820 Ebony/Jet: Visions of the Johnson Publishing Company, an American Icon.” Through its photographs, archival footage, and essays on the building’s history, the book reflects on the company as “the heart and soul of black America” ​​and shows the tangible loss of a cultural powerhouse.

“I was completely in love with the environment and the vitality,” Karant explained. “I really felt like, even though the building was empty, there was some real creativity and residual energy left. »

Karant, a Chicago-based architectural and interiors photographer, spoke about the project via video with Joy Bennett, former editor-in-chief at Ebony. The two men experienced the building in completely different ways. Bennett, the daughter of Ebony editor-in-chief Bennett Jr. and Jet editor-in-chief Gloria Bennett, literally grew up with the building, first as her parents’ workplace and then as her own from the late ’90s until 2009. Karant only visited the space after it was sold to Columbia College Chicago, where she taught as an assistant professor. She visited it about 40 times starting in 2013, usually in the spring and fall, because it lacked air conditioning during the sweltering summers and was only heated enough to keep the pipes from bursting in the winter, she recalled.

Since the completion of its project, the building, whose exteriors have been marked with a monument, has been redeveloped into residential units, the only clue to its past being the remaining sign on the roof. (Ebony and Jet magazines have changed hands several times and are still published digitally under the ownership of Eden Bridgeman Sklenar, who currently serves as CEO).

When it was built, Bennett said, “It was a testament to Mr. Johnson’s faith and hope and success. It was a dynamic, incredible workspace. I can’t even explain how important it was to black America.”

Before that, the Johnsons ran their business out of a former funeral home that required a white middleman to purchase it. When Johnson decided he wanted a new headquarters, he became frustrated trying to find investors and financed the project himself.

Every day, Bennett recalls, the staff could meet Hollywood stars like Jamie Foxx or Elizabeth Taylor, the Reverend Jesse Jackson or the sexologist Dr. Ruth; her mother remembered stories of Louis Armstrong or Lena Horne walking the same halls. In the book, others recount their encounters: Lionel Richie taking the elevator, or Sidney Poitier signing autographs, or even Michael Jackson arriving incognito. After Senator Obama became president-elect in 2008, he sat down with Ebony for his first print interview following the historic election.

“The Secret Service locked us up. We couldn’t leave the room,” Bennett recalls. “It was crazy.”

But before continuing his career as a journalist, Bennett gave a tour of the building. There was the bustling cafeteria, the Fashion Fair dressing rooms, the Ebony Test Kitchen and artwork by Jacob Lawrence and Richard Hunt, not to mention the hair salon, fitness room and executive floor apartment. Upstairs, the bold reds and sharp angles of Johnson’s suite contrasted with the soft cream and honey of his wife Eunice’s office. It was an extension of Johnson himself, and when he died, his casket was laid out in the lobby of the building, Bennett said, with a line down Michigan Avenue to pay their respects.

When Bennett cut her teeth at other media companies, including Gannett and Crain’s, before her return to the Johnson Publishing Company, she said every other office space she encountered, in comparison, was “drab and drab.”

“You mean not everyone has these colorful floors, these textures, these glass and mirrors, nor the artists and sculptors who do the design?” she remembered thinking.

Karant experienced the same wonder of space, even when excavated. When she photographed the 110,000 square feet of space, she was always alone, and no matter how many times she visited, every time she returned, she found something new. As she wrote her book and spoke with former employees, she was often asked which floor was her favorite.

“I guess everyone had different favorite soils,” she said. “But my favorite floor has always been the floor I worked on.”

Although it is no longer possible to experience the building as it was, it can be visited in different ways: through Karant’s book, or the works of Lorna Simspson or Theaster Gates, both of whom look to Jet and Ebony’s archives in their personal practices. Gates, who now manages the photographic archives and periodicals of the Johnson Publishing Company, has exhibited it in various forms. Earlier this year, he mounted a permanent public art piece incorporating some of the images of black life and beauty at the Obama Presidential Center. Through his own project, Karant joined a group of artists determined to breathe new life into the Johnson Publishing Company.

“The architecture, interiors and environments tell stories about the people who were there and those who might be there in the future,” she said. “As for this project, I felt it just deserved the attention and care to document it. People need to know about it.”