High technology in 1900, the water-pumping windmill revolutionized the American landscape. And Chicago was the windmill manufacturing capital of the world! This simple and amazingly efficient technology was so effective it brought about its own rapid demise. Told in the first person of LaVerne and Ida Noyes, owners of the Chicago Aermotor Company, this slide presentation traces the history of windmills in America, and offers a look at one family who made a fortune making and distributing them throughout the world.

Barbara Geiger is currently on faculty at the College of Architecture of the Illinois Institute of Technology. She earned her MA in Landscape Architecture from the University of Wisconsin-Madison where she won an award from the American Society of Landscape Architects for her thesis. Geiger has taught numerous courses at the Chicago Botanic Garden and at the Newberry Library.