Born in Michigan and raised in Wisconsin, Ferber
moved to Chicago in 1910 to be a journalist at the
Chicago Tribune. She resided in the
Windemere Hotel, formerly at 1642 East 56th Street.

Ferber gained national attention for her series of Emma
McChesneystories, about a traveling petticoat saleswoman. Works like Buttered
Side Down and Fanny Herself depicted strong middle-class women in
Chicago. So Big, a novel about a woman raising a child on a truck farm
outside Chicago, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1924.

By the mid-1920s, Ferber had settled in New York where she became a
successful playwright, collaborating with George S. Kaufman on such
plays as Dinner at Eight (1932). Her most famous work, Showboat
(1926), about a girl’s life on a Mississippi riverboat, was made into a
Broadway musical and three motion pictures.