When the World’s Fair closed in 1934, Chicago developer Robert Bartlett used barges and trucks to ship the House of Tomorrow and other Century of Progress structures across Lake Michigan to Beverly Shores, an Indiana resort community he hoped to develop as a vacation destination for Chicagoans. Soon after relocating the buildings, he significantly altered the House of Tomorrow’s appearance by removing the curtain-wall glass and replacing it with wood-framed walls and operable windows to improve circulation. Five Century of Progress houses were sold and remained in private hands until the land became part of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore between 1966 and the early 1970s.

All five were added to the National Register of Historic Places in the 1980s, but by the mid-1990s they had fallen into alarming disrepair. With no public funding available to restore the houses, Indiana Landmarks proposed an unconventional solution: leasing the houses from the National Park Service and subleasing them to individuals who would restore the properties in exchange for long-term residency. The arrangement resulted in the full restoration of four of the fair homes, but the scale, cost, and complexity of rehabilitating the House of Tomorrow made it difficult to find the right person to tackle the project. The house remained vacant for years, shrouded in plywood and weatherproof wrapping to protect its core from the elements.

Finally, the House of Tomorrow received a much-needed lifeline in 2023, when Indiana Dunes National Park received $22 million from the Great American Outdoors Act Legacy Restoration Fund, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior. The park allocated $4 million for exterior restoration of the House of Tomorrow. Work began in 2024, guided by a plan developed and funded by Indiana Landmarks to recapture the home’s 1933 appearance.

The project drew an award-winning team of specialists in restoration and design, including lead project architect Strat-Arch, project architect bKL Architecture, Arda Design for historic preservation expertise, sustainability leaders HJK Associates, WSP for mechanical engineering, and Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates for structural engineering.

Like the other fair exhibit homes, the House of Tomorrow was intended to be a temporary structure, built with experimental building materials that were not designed to last. By the second year of the fair, Keck had already remodeled the house, adding copper cladding after the original “temporary” siding failed. The extensive use of glass also caused a greenhouse effect that the house’s air conditioning couldn’t keep up with. Keck’s observations of the house’s solar heat gains informed his later innovations, including his collaboration with the Libbey-Owens-Ford company on development of Thermopane glass and his design for 300 passive solar houses.

To create his 12-sided glass house, Keck designed a central hub supported by posts and a series of radiating girders to create a spoke-and-wheel structural system. A steel core at the center housed mechanical equipment, while cantilevered girders and slender steel columns supported concrete-slab second and third floors, allowing for open, unobstructed interiors. During the recent rehabilitation, lead contractor G-Force Construction partnered with subcontractor Berglund Construction to reinforce the home’s signature spoke and wheel structure system, repair and replace the severely deteriorated concrete floor, and oversee other repairs.

The design team faced the challenge of capturing the signature elements of Keck’s original vision while incorporating modern technology and materials to meet contemporary living standards. Lower-level exterior wall areas are being finished with smooth black siding, while the second and third floors feature the signature walls of glass. Although Keck had intended to use double-paned glass, cost cuts eliminated the original specification for a second sheet. After thorough analysis of current glass systems, project leaders selected a triple-glazed glass that preserves the building’s transparency while improving energy efficiency.

“It was up to us to transform what was initially a pretty inefficient and fairly uncomfortable building to be in and find out a way to make it comfortable while maintaining all glass living and its connection with nature. We were figuring out how to express a beautiful piece of architecture in its simplest form while also making it comfortable and livable and long-lasting,” says Jon Gately, bKL Architecture design principal.

Hobart-based Trout Glass led installation of the home’s new state-of-the-art glass, a process that required creative troubleshooting to successfully transport 24 massive panels—some measuring 10 feet by 8 feet and weighing nearly 1,000 pounds—to the heavily wooded site where the House of Tomorrow overlooks Lake Michigan. Using a crane with a smart lift manipulator and industrial grade suction cups, crews raised each panel to workers waiting to guide it into aluminum framing.

“Looking out through the new windows, you can feel what Keck had envisioned, with the level of transparency between the interior and exterior and to be able to stand there and see the lake and not feel the harsh winter breeze on you,” says Todd Ravesloot, Indiana Dunes National Park chief of facilities.

Because the house was extensively photographed during its construction, fair exhibition, transportation to Indiana, and throughout the following decades, the restoration team had a wealth of historic photographs to guide their work. The photos served as invaluable references in restoring and recreating exterior features such as original terrace railings and stairs lost over the decades to deterioration. The project also included recreating an operable tilt-up door for the “hangar.”

Significant interior features, including original Carrera glass wall cladding, metal baseboards, and parquet flooring and walls, were carefully salvaged and stored for future interior restoration.

Planning for the home’s next chapter will begin this summer, including the interior work and grounds restoration, with hopes of completing the full project within the next couple of years. We’ll celebrate the finished exterior restoration at Indiana Landmarks’ Rescue Party on April 25 in Indianapolis, where we’ll premiere a short documentary highlighting the save.

“It’s immensely fulfilling to see the restored exterior of the House of Tomorrow finally shedding its plywood and Tyvek cloak and taking its rightful place among the other restored Century of Progress houses,” says Todd Zeiger, director of Indiana Landmarks Northern Regional Office. “I look forward to hoisting a glass on the terrace to toast the results of this nearly 30-year collaboration with the National Park Service and the rest of the extraordinary team.”

This article first appeared in the March/April 2026 issue of Indiana Preservation, Indiana Landmarks’ member magazine.