Cooper Hewitt says...
Norman Bel Geddes was born in Michigan in 1893, and raised in New Philadelphia, Ohio, studied at the Cleveland School of Art in 1911, and then at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1913 he joined the Chicago advertising firm Barnes-Crosby Company. His creative career began in theater design first in Los Angeles in 1916, and later for the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1918. Bel Geddes, who is best known for his commerical and industrial designs, opened his own Industrial Design studio in 1927. Bel Geddes popularized the streamlined aesthetic, applying this sleek, aerodynamic look to a variety of commercial forms from cars, trains, and planes to telephones, radios, and buildings. His clients included Simmons Company, Union Pacific Railroad Co., Shell Oil Company, and Chrysler Corporation. He contributed lighting schemes and pavilions for the 1933-34 Chicago World's Fair and the 1939-40 New York World's Fair. He shared many of his designs and his visionary philosophy for urban planning in the books Horizons (1932), Magic Motorways (1940), and Miracle in the Evening (1960).
