After a Black media empire fell, a photographer explored the extraordinary building it left behind

By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN (CNN) Just four years after the Civil Rights era, Chicago welcomed its first downtown high-rise designed by a Black architect for a Black-owned company. For four decades, the Johnson Publishing Company occupied an 11-story tower at 820 S. Michigan Avenue that was a monument to Black culture, sending out millions of copies of Ebony and Jet magazines each year. The company’s founder, publisher John H. Johnson, called it “the miracle on Michigan Avenue” for having been built at all. The media titan elevated the stories, news and beauty of Black life, and attracted unrivaled cover stars including Grace Jones, Prince, Donna Summer, Michael Jordan, Florence Griffith Joyner and President Barack Obama. But as the company struggled in the 2010s, it sold off its iconic titles to a venture capitalist firm, and major art world institutions and artists acquired its archives, art collection and furnishings in the hopes of preserving its legacy. The physical building, though