Lee Sturges (1865-1954) was a prolific artist and inventor who was born in Chicago and lived in Elmhurst from 1892 until the year before he died in 1954. In his career as a businessman and engineer, he helped found the Illinois Manufacturers Association in 1893. Throughout his life, Sturges was awarded patents for 20 inventions, including a small-scale etching press that led to a revival of the medium. He is best known as an artist, and his work focused on outdoor scenes, both local and international. Sturges’ pieces won several awards, including a Logan Medal from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1923. He had a solo exhibition at the National Museum of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., in 1927 and was published in several art journals. As a citizen of Illinois, he left his mark on both the art and business worlds.

Courtesy of the Elmhurst History Museum