First Twenty Years of Lewis Institute, 1935

George Noble Carman was the Director of Lewis Institute from 1895 to 1935, when he resigned and was made Director Emeritus.

The Lewis Institute was a technical and professional college that served the greater Chicago area from 1896 to 1940. In 1940 it merged with Armour Institute of Technology to form the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). It was created by the bequest of Chicago businessman Allen Cleveland Lewis (1821-1877), who willed his estate to the creation of a school of higher learning open to all men and women regardless of finances or social standing. The Lewis Institute was subsequently established in 1896 in a building designed by Henry Ives Cobb on the corner of Madison St. and Robey St. (now Damen St.) Lewis Institute’s first president, George Noble Carman (1856-1941) and first dean, Edwin Herbert Lewis (1866-1938), worked together to create an innovative higher education program that blended liberal arts with practical training. In 1940, after a decade of increasing financial and accreditation problems, Lewis Institute merged with the Armour Institute of Technology.