Additional Reading

Additional Reading from the Transportation Library

Airline Visual Identity 1945-1975 by Matthias C. Hühne  
For readers interested in exploring this subject in more depth, Hühne’s book is an essential text. It provides a comprehensive look at airlines and design during the period — both in the U.S., as covered in this exhibit, and worldwide.

Airline Identity, Design, and Culture by Keith Lovegrove
Lovegrove’s book provides a wide-ranging picture of airline identity, design, and culture in the mid-century — including uniforms, interior design, and graphic design elements as featured in this exhibit.

Railroad Identity, Design, and Culture by Keith Lovegrove
From the beginnings of railroads in the 19th century through the present day, this book touches on every aspect of railroad design: identity, branding, industrial design, timetables, and uniforms.

Pan Am History, Design and Identity by Matthias C. Hühne
Hühne’s beautifully illustrated and exhaustively researched book provides an in-depth look into the airline that personified the jet age in the popular imagination.

Designing TWA by Kornel Ringli
Although architecture is not a focus of this exhibition, readers may be interested in learning more about Eero Saarinen’s terminal for TWA at JFK International Airport, one of the best examples of midcentury architecture and transportation.
“How to make a map for the Hades of Names: The New York City Subway Map Wars of the 1970s.” In Cultural Histories of Sociabilities, Spaces and Mobilities. 
A cultural history of Vignelli’s redesign of the New York Subway Guide in the 1970s and its reception and rejection by the transit-riding public.

Special Collections in the Transportation Library

The following collections are included in the exhibit:

For a more complete view of the Transportation Library’s special, archival, and digital collections, please explore the collections.

Online Exhibits from the Transportation Library

Three Passengers in a 1915 Model T

Lovers of the Open Road and the Flying Wheel

In the spring of 1915, the party shown here departed Iowa in a Model T for a journey to the Panama Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco. This photo, taken between Woodbine and Logan on the Lincoln Highway, is the second photo in an album of over one hundred photos documenting the trip, which is in our collection and is the subject of the online exhibition Lovers of the Open Road and the Flying Wheel.

Bicycles on Paper

As it is today, the bicycle at the turn of the 20th century was a form of transportation, recreation, amusement, and a creator of community. The online exhibit Bicycles on Paper looks at bicycles in all of these forms through printed matter in the collection of Northwestern University’s Transportation Library.

Hartford Safety
O'Hare Terminal Building Rendering

O'Hare @50

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of O’Hare International Airport in 2013, the Northwestern University Transportation Library, using its collections and staff resources, developed the digital exhibit O’Hare @50, presenting copies of unique airport planning documents, research and archival resources.

More Information

Items in the exhibit are housed at Northwestern University’s Transportation Library. Email transportationlibrary@northwestern.edu with questions, or to schedule an appointment.

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