Originally called the Frances Harrington Institution of Interior Decoration, Harrington College was founded by Frances Harrington, a New York interior designer, in 1931. She had previously given lectures in design for Chicago professionals before expanding her lecture series into a school.

At about the same time that Harrington was founded, industrial manufacturers had begun to differentiate the appearance of their products to boost sales during the Great Depression, which led to a rise in demand for designers. Many designers were drawn to Chicago for the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition, and schools such as the New Bauhaus (later the Institute of Design and currently a part of the Illinois Institute of Technology), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and the University of Illinois at Chicago opened industrial and product design programs over the following decades.

In 1959, the college was renamed Harrington Institute of Interior Design under the leadership of former student Robert Marks, who expanded the school’s interior design library to better student research. The college was renamed again in 1999, this time to Harrington College of Design, after being purchased by Career Education, a for-profit education company. The name was changed to reflect the fact that the school now offered a wider variety of programs like commercial photography and communication design.

Due to increased regulatory constraints on for-profit colleges and decreased enrollment, Career Education and Harrington College announced in 2015 that the school would begin the process of closing, which will end in August of 2018. Columbia College Chicago welcomed nearly 145 undergraduate students for the Fall 2015 semester, who would receive their degrees from Columbia. For master’s and associate degree students, Columbia hosted Harrington faculty and students in a “teach out,” during which students will complete their Harrington degrees using Columbia’s facilities.