Episode Details

On this day in 1917, Florence Knoll was born in Saginaw, Michigan. Her studies in architecture and design at a boarding school in Bloomfield Hills set her on an iconic path. Her modern office designs in the 1950s and 60s were widely adopted, earning her numerous awards, including induction into the Interior Design Hall of Fame in 1985 and the National Medal of Arts in 2002. And in 1820, Governor Lewis Cass and geologist Henry Schoolcraft began the first major US expedition to explore the Upper Peninsula, aiming to encourage settlement in the Michigan territory.