{"id":936926,"date":"2026-10-22T13:10:20","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T13:10:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/936926\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T13:10:20","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T13:10:20","slug":"in-the-extraordinary-former-offices-of-ebony-and-jet-a-photographer-captured-what-remained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/936926\/","title":{"rendered":"In the extraordinary former offices of Ebony and Jet, a photographer captured what remained"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Just four years after the Civil Rights era, Chicago welcomed its first downtown high rise designed by a Black architect for a Black-owned company. For four decades, the Johnson Publishing Company occupied an 11-story tower at 820 S. Michigan Avenue that was a monument to Black culture, sending out millions of copies of Ebony and Jet magazines each year. The company\u2019s founder, publisher John H. Johnson, called it \u201cthe miracle on Michigan Avenue\u201d for having been built at all.\n <\/p>\n

\n The media titan elevated the stories, news and beauty of Black life, 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 off its iconic titles to a venture capitalist firm, and major art world institutions and artists acquired its archives, art collection and furnishings in the hopes of preserving its legacy.\n <\/p>\n

\n The physical building, though emptied out, remained. Housed inside the austere modernist facade by architect John Moutoussamy, the interiors \u2014 the work of Palm Springs designers Arthur Elrod and William Raiser \u2014 were never renovated or changed. They had painted the walls in colorful chevrons, peacock feathers, and swirling hues of orange, green and purple, and carpeted the floors with equally exuberant patterns.\n <\/p>\n

\n The office was vacated by 2012, less than a decade after Johnson\u2019s death, and from there the company eventually declared bankruptcy. Inside its former headquarters, which had housed Ebony, Jet and Fashion Fair cosmetics and a cafeteria so popular that stars and public figures often asked for the menu in advance, the guest list quickly dwindled to one: a photographer who, as she put it, became \u201cobsessed\u201d with the empty building and its history and set out to preserve it.\n <\/p>\n

\"Karant<\/p>\n

\"An<\/p>\n

\"Former<\/p>\n

\n Now, Barbara Karant\u2019s collected images are part of a new book on the Johnson Publishing Company\u2019s legacy, called \u201c820 Ebony\/Jet: Visions of the Johnson Publishing Company, an American Icon<\/a>.\u201d Through her photographs, archival images, and guest essays on the building\u2019s history, the book reflects on the company as \u201cthe heart and soul of Black America,\u201d and shows the tangible loss of a cultural powerhouse.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI was completely enamored of the environment and the vitality,\u201d Karant explained. \u201cI really felt, despite the fact that the building was empty, that there was a real residual creativity and energy that remained.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Karant, an architecture and interiors photographer who is based in Chicago, spoke about the project over video along with Joy Bennett, a former senior editor at Ebony. The two experienced the building in entirely different ways. Bennett, the daughter of Ebony executive editor Lerone Bennett Jr. and Jet editor Gloria Bennett, quite literally grew up with the building, first as her parents\u2019 place of work and then as her own from the late \u201990s until 2009. Karant only visited the space after it had been sold to Columbia College Chicago, where she taught as an adjunct professor. She visited it some 40 times beginning in 2013, usually in the spring and fall, because it lacked AC during sweltering summers and was only heated enough to keep the pipes from bursting in the winter, she recalled.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n Since completing her project, the building, whose exteriors were landmarked, has been redeveloped into residential units, with the only hint of its past the remaining rooftop sign. (Ebony and Jet magazines changed hands multiple times and are still published digitally under the ownership of Eden Bridgeman Sklenar, who currently serves as its CEO).\n <\/p>\n

\n When it was built, Bennett said, \u201cIt was a testament to Mr. Johnson\u2019s faith, and hope, and success. It was a vibrant workspace, unbelievable. I can\u2019t even explain how important it was to Black America.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Prior to that, the Johnsons ran their business out of a former funeral home that required a white intermediary to purchase it. When Johnson decided he wanted a new headquarters, he grew frustrated with trying to find investors and funded the project himself.\n <\/p>\n

\"Karant<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n On any given day, Bennett recalled, the staff could encounter Hollywood stars like Jamie Foxx or Elizabeth Taylor, the Reverend Jesse Jackson or the sex therapist Dr. Ruth; her mother would recall stories of Louis Armstrong or Lena Horne walking the same halls. In the book, others share their encounters: Lionel Richie taking the elevator up, or Sidney Poitier signing autographs, or Michael Jackson arriving incognito. After senator Obama became President-elect Obama in 2008, he sat down with Ebony for his first print interview following the historic election.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe Secret Service locked us down. We couldn\u2019t leave the floor,\u201d Bennett recalled. \u201cIt was crazy.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n But before pursuing her journalism career, Bennett gave tours of the building. There was the bustling cafeteria, Fashion Fair\u2019s dressing rooms, the Ebony Test Kitchen, and artworks by Jacob Lawrence and Richard Hunt, not to mention the barbershop, fitness room, and apartment on the executive floor. Upstairs, the bold reds and sharp angles of Johnson\u2019s suite contrasted with the cream and honey softness of his wife Eunice\u2019s office. It was an extension of Johnson himself, and when he died, his casket was laid out in the foyer of the building, Bennett said, with a line down Michigan Avenue to pay respects.\n <\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\n When Bennett cut her teeth at other media companies including Gannett and Crain\u2019s before her homecoming back to the Johnson Publishing Company, she said every other office space she had encountered, by comparison, was \u201cdull and drab.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cYou mean everybody doesn\u2019t have these colorful floors, these textures, the glass and mirrors, and artists and sculptors who do the design?\u201d she remembered thinking.\n <\/p>\n

\n Karant experienced the same wonder of the space, even once it had been hollowed out. When she photographed the 110,000 square feet of space, she was always alone, and no matter how many times she visited, whenever she returned she\u2019d find something new. As she was making the book and spoke to former employees, she was often asked which floor was her favorite.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI guess everybody had different favorite floors,\u201d she said. \u201cBut my favorite floor was always the floor I was working on.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\"Through<\/p>\n

\"In<\/p>\n

\n Though it\u2019s no longer possible to experience the building the way it was, it can be visited in different ways \u2014 through Karant\u2019s book, or the artworks of Lorna Simspson or Theaster Gates, who both turn to the archives of Jet and Ebony in their personal practices. Gates, who now stewards the photographic archives and periodicals of the Johnson Publishing Company, has exhibited it in different forms. Earlier this year, he mounted a permanent public artwork incorporating some of the images of Black life and beauty at the Obama Presidential Center. Through her own project, Karant has joined a group of artists determined to give the Johnson Publishing Company a second life.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cArchitecture, interiors, environments tell stories about the people that were there and the people that may be there in the future,\u201d she said. \u201cAs far as this project, I felt that it just warranted the attention and the care to document it. People need to know about it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Just four years after the Civil Rights era, Chicago welcomed its first downtown high rise designed by a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":936927,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134],"class_list":["post-936926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=936926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/936926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/936927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=936926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=936926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=936926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}