George Fred Keck, Architect [1895-1980]
George Fred Keck [†], born in Watertown, Wisconsin in 1895, studied architectural engineering at the University of Wisconsin before graduating from the University of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois, in 1917. After working in the firms of D. H. Burnham & Company and Schmidt, Garden and Martin, he established an architecture firm in Chicago in 1926, and was later joined in practice by his younger brother, William Keck. One of the George Fred Keck's first commissions was for a single-family residence on Thomas Avenue in the Richards Hill neighborhood, which he designed in the Tudor Revival style, rather than the modern style for which he became known. The firm of Keck & Keck later became pioneers in passive solar design, designing a key structure called the "House of Tomorrow" for Chicago's 1933 Century of Progress Exhibition. George Fred Keck was an architecture professor at the New Bauhaus School, now the IIT Institute of Design, eventually serving as the architecture department head. George Fred Keck died in 1980.
† Robert M. Short, Intern Architect and Jennifer L. Lehrke, AIA, Richards Hill Residential Historic District, Jefferson County, Wisconsin, nomination document, 2013, National Park Service, National Register of Historic Places, Washington, D.C.