Recent Discoveries (2025–2026)
Featured Image – Research at the Chicago History Museum Abakanowicz Research Center, where approximately 2,300 archival images were documented during…
The Louis Grell Digital Archive
Preserving, Documenting, and Advancing the Scholarship of Louis Grell (1887–1960) Welcome to the Louis Grell Digital Archive, an ongoing scholarly…
CAREER OVERVIEW
Louis Grell: An Overview of His Career and Historical Context Grell belonged to a generation of academically trained artists whose…
Purple Cow murals
Albert Pick Hotels Imagineered and hand drawn by Louis Grell, an estimated seventy individual Purple Cow murals were installed inside…
Chicago Theatre
Commissioned 1921 & 1933 (thirty large murals total) The “Wonder Theatre of the World” was owned and operated by Balaban…
Doris Day, the Albert Pick Hotels, and Louis Grell’s Purple Cow
How a 1953 hit recording helped bring nationwide attention to one of America’s most remarkable hotel restaurant art programs During…
Times Square Paramount Theatre
The Paramount Building and Times Square Paramount Theatre was built at a total cost of $18 million ($327m in 2025)…
FERDINAND the BULL
Albert Pick Hotels • Louis Grell • Walt Disney FERDINAND the BULL and the Purple Cow Murals The story of…
Ft. Wayne Paramount Theatre
The Ft. Wayne (IN) Paramount Theatre opened on October 3, 1930 and had two very large Grell murals located in…
Hotel Durant, Flint, MI
Albert Pick Hotels – Pick Durant Purple Cow Construction of the eight story Hotel Durant structure began in 1919 and…
Toledo Paramount Theatre
All ceilings and walls depicted here were designed and hand painted by Grell and his team of assistants. NOW SEEN…
Hotel Raleigh, Waco, TX
-LOBBY MURAL- The Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth cloak scene mural hung high above the Raleigh Hotel registration office…
