Bob Bourke began working as a designer at Sears and Roebuck in the industrial design department after graduating from the Chicago Institute of Arts in the 1930s. In 1940/1941 he was hired by Studebaker by Virgil Exner sketching and doing clay modeling. He worked for Studebaker under Exner and then as an employee of Raymond Lowey until 1955, and head of Studebaker Design from 1949-1955. In 1955, he and his former colleague, Clare Hodgman, established the industrial design firm Hodgman and Bourke in New York. Bourke’s oral history discusses his career from the 1930s into the late 1950s. He focuses mostly on his time with Studebaker discussing his work under Exner, Air Corps. design work during WWII, several of the vehicles he worked on including the preliminary sketches for the 1947 Studebaker, R Series Trucks, and 1950 model. He discussed in detail the 1953 hardtop design process and its positive reception. He speaks about many of the different designers and personalities he worked with including his work with Dick Calleal and others on what would become the 1949 Ford. He winds up his interview discussing his varied design work under Raymond Lowey and the beginnings of his design firm Hodgman and Bourke.

Collection contains 3 cassettes, 8 compact discs, 3 WAV files, 3 MP3 files, 1 diskette, 3 loose transcripts, 1 bound transcript, 1 Word transcript, and one PDF transcript. Uploaded July 22, 2021 and December 4, 2024.