Baker Apartment

Champaign, Illinois

The Baker Apartment is an architectural landmark, located just steps from downtown Champaign. As featured in the book Space, Movement, and Light, and designed by renowned architect and University of Illinois professor Jack S. Baker, the space is recognized as a trailblazing early example of adaptive reuse loft living. Designed in 1963, the “Apartment”, as it was originally known, is preserved as a midcentury modern time capsule, complete with period furnishings and accessories.

The interior of the Apartment was fashioned out of the rear storage space of a late 19th Century commercial building. The two-story spaces exists as a 25 foot cube, with a portion of the second floor removed to connect the living spaces on the main level with the sleeping and office space above. Light spills through the immense sliding doors and through the second-floor skylight. The Apartment was originally designed for a prominent professor of architecture at the University and later was used to host many architects and artists.