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LOUIS S 




I'ROPIlI'/r OF MODERN A RCIl ITKCTU RE 



BY HUGH MORRISON 



ASMS T A !S T l K < > K K S S ( > It , J) F, P A R T M K N '!' < > !' A H T A N i> A U t*. H A (: (') L C V , 

UAKTMOtrTH CO 1, 1,K<; K 



Til K M I SKI M OF MO I) KU N A |{ T 

\ * n 

\\-\\- NOKTO.N & COM I' A N V , INC. 

I' I H I. F M It K U S N K \\ V H K 



' : Copyright, 1935, by 

;NORTON & COMPANY, INC. 

70 Fifth Avenue, New York 
First Edition 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
/If?* * THE PUBLISHERS SY THE VAIL-BALLOTI PRESS 
(N\ / y^ rf^ ' DESIGNED Bt JlOBERT JOSEPHY 

DE 6 "i56 



To George Grant Elmslie 



CONTENTS 



FOREWORD xv 

I. YOUTH AND TRAINING 23 

PARENTAGE - INFANCY IN BOSTON - SUMMERS ON A FARM - 
GRAMMAR SCHOOL - EARLY INTEREST IN ARCHITECTURE - 
ENGLISH HIGH SCHOOL AND MOSES WOOLSON INTEREST 
IN MUSIC -ENTERS M.I.T. SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE AT 
SIXTEEN - DISLIKES ACADEMIC ARCHITECTURAL TRAINING - 
LEAVES FOR PHILADELPHIA TO ENTER OFFICE OF FURNESS & 
HEWITT - GOES TO CHICAGO LATE IN 1873 - WORK IN OFFICE 
OF JENNEY - GOES TO PARIS IN 1874 - ENTRANCE EXAMINA- 
TIONS TO THE ECOLE - BEAUX ARTS TRAINING A DISAPPOINT- 
MENT - RETURNS TO CHICAGO 1876 - WORK IN VARIOUS 
OFFICES - INTEREST IN ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE - ENTERS 

ADLER'S OFFICE - PARTNERSHIP WITH ADLER 1881. 

II. EARLY WORKS 52 

ARCHITECTURAL FASHIONS CURRENT IN 1880 - PROGRESS IN 
ENGINEERING IN CHICAGO - CONVENTIONAL OFFICE-BUILDING 
DESIGN - EARLY OFFICE BUILDINGS OF ADLER & SULLIVAN 

- BORDEN BLOCK - ROTHSCHILD STORE - SULLIVAN'S EARLY 
STYLE OF ORNAMENT - INFLUENCE OF EDELMANN - OFFICE 
BUILDINGS FOR MARTIN RYERSON - TROESCHER BUILDING - 
DEXTER BUILDING THE CULMINATION OF HIS EARLY WORK - 
FACTORIES AND WAREHOUSES - THEATRES - RESIDENCES AND 
OTHER STRUCTURES - SUMMARY OF SULLIVAN'S EARLY WORK. 

III. THE AUDITORIUM 80 

THE TWO PARTNERS AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP - DESCRIP- 
TIONS BY FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND GEORGE ELMSLIE - THE 
OFFICE FORCE - HISTORY OF THE AUDITORIUM PROJECT - 
EARLY DESIGNS - RICHARDSON'S INFLUENCE - CONSTRUCTION 
OF THE BUILDING - EXTERIOR DESIGN - THE AUDITORIUM 
HOTEL -THE GREAT THEATRE ITS SIZE - ITS ACOUSTIC DE- 
SIGN - THE "GOLDEN ARCHES" - DEVICES FOR REDUCING SEAT- 
ING CAPACITY - THE STAGE AND ITS MECHANICAL EQUIPMENT 

- DEDICATION OF THE BUILDING AND ITS SUBSEQUENT 
HISTORY. 



viii CONTENTS 

IV. YEARS OF EXPANSION 111 

FROM THE AUDITORIUM TO THE WORLD'S FAIR - SULLIVAN 

GOES TO OCEAN SPRINGS - THE COTTAGES THERE - RETURN TO 
CHICAGO ~ RICHARDSON'S INFLUENCE IN THREE BUILDINGS: 
THE STANDARD CLUB, HEATH RESIDENCE AND WALKER WARE- 
HOUSE-BUILDINGS IN THE WEST: DOOLY BLOCK, SALT LAKE 
CITY; PUEBLO OPERA HOUSE; SEATTLE OPERA HOUSE - 
REMODELLING OF MC VICKER's THEATRE - ST. NICHOLAS 
HOTEL - VICTORIA HOTEL - ANSHE MA'ARIV SYNAGOGUE - 
FACTORIES AND WAREHOUSES - RAILROAD STATION AT NEW 
ORLEANS - THREE TOMBS - RESIDENCES - THE TRANSPORTA- 
TION BUILDING AT THE WORLD'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION. 

V. GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 140 

EARLY TALL BUILDINGS IN AMERICA - THE DEVELOPMENT OF 
SKYSCRAPER CONSTRUCTION CHARACTERISTIC SKYSCRAPER 
STYLE IN 1890 -THE WAINWRIGHT BUILDING ~ SULHVAN\S 
APPROACH TO THE PROBLEM OF DESIGN - THE NATURK OF 
HIS ARCHITECTURAL THEORY - CONTRADICTIONS TO THKOHY 

OF MECHANICAL FUNCTIONALISM IN THE WAINWRIGHT DE- 
SIGN - THE FIRST SUCCESSFUL SOLUTION OF THK SKYSCRAPER 
PROBLEM -ITS INFLUENCE - THE SCHILLER BUILDING - THK 
"FRATERNITY TEMPLE" PROJECT - UNION TRUST BUILDING- 
MEYER BUILDING, A "HORIZONTAL" DESIGN - THE CHICAGO 
STOCK EXCHANGE -THE GUARANTY BUILDING IN BUFFALO- 
DISSOLUTION OF THE PARTNERSHIP OF ADLER & SULLIVAN IN 
1895 - ADLER'S LAST YEARS. 

VI. SULLIVAN ALONE 178 

SULLIVAN'S WORK FROM 1895 TO 1924 -PAUCITY OF COM- 
MISSIONS AFTER THE DISSOLUTION OF THE PARTNERSHIP - 

SULLIVAN'S BUSINESS METHODS -HIS CONCEPTION OF ARCHI- 
TECTURE OPPOSED TO THE PREDOMINANT ONE - D, H. BURN- 
HAM AS A SYMBOL OF THE NEW AGE - SULLIVAN'S INTERPRE- 
TATION OF THE WORLD'S FAIR AND ITS EFFECTS - EUROPEAN 

APPRECIATION OF SULLIVAN - THE BAYARD BUILDING, NEW 
YORK - GAGE BUILDING, CHICAGO - CARSON PIRIE SCOTT 
STORE, CHICAGO THE BABSON AND BRADLEY RESIDENCES - 
THE BANK AT OWATONNA - BUILDINGS AT CEDAR RAPIDS - 
VAN ALLEN STORE - BANKS AT GRINNELL, NEWARK, SIDNEY, 
AND COLUMBUS - SULLIVAN'S LAST WORK - ACTIVITY IN WRIT- 
ING DURING THE EARLY 19QO's - WRITING OF THE AVTH* 
BIOGRAPHY - DEATH APRIL 14, 1924. 

VII. SULLIVAN'S ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 229 

IMPORTANCE OF HIS WRITINGS - DESCRIPTION OF HIS MORE 
IMPORTANT ARTICLES AND BOOKS - SUMMARY OF SULLIVAN'S 
THEORY OF ART -THE INFINITE AND NATURE AS SOURCE OF 
ARTISTIC INSPIRATION - MAN'S PHYSICAL AND MENTAL PGW 



CONTENTS ix 

ERS AND THE ASSIMILATION OF THIS INSPIRATION - THE 
NATURE OF CREATIVE ACTIVITY - ITS DEPENDENCE ON ORIGI- 
NAL EXPERIENCE - ARCHITECTURE AS ORGANIC - DEFECTS OF 
ARCHITECTURAL EDUCATION - A RULE FOR DESIGN: FORM FOL- 
LOWS FUNCTION - PRIMARY MEANING OF FUNCTIONALISM - 
ESSENTIAL OVERTONES -^ORJJAMENT IN ARCHITECTURE - THE 

SOCIAL ORDER: SULLIVAN'S DEMoc^ffFTSEAT-- ARCHITEC- 
TURE AS A SOCIAL MANIFESTATION -'STYLES' AND 'STYLE* - 
IMITATION OF PAST STYLES - SOCIAL FUNCTION OF THE 
ARCHITECT. 

VIII. A CRITICAL ESTIMATE 262 

CRITICAL OPINION OF SULLIVAN DURING THE LAST GEN- 
ERATION - SULLIVAN AS A NINETEENTH-CENTURY FIGURE - 
NINETEENTH-CENTURY SCIENCE AND ROMANTICISM - REALIS- 
TIC AND ROMANTIC ARCHITECTURAL CRITICISM - TWENTIETH- 
CENTURY ABSTRACTIONISM - STUOjaKAl^SJfflFLlJfENCE, ON.ARGHI- 
XE^XIJEAL,*RACTICE - THE CHICAGO SCHOOL - HIS INFLUENCE 
ON ARCHITECTURAL THEORY - VALIDITY OF HIS ATTACK ON 
ECLECTICISM - ARCHITECTURE AS A CREATIVE NOT AN IMITA- 
TIVE ART - FUNCTIONALISM A SYSTEM OF THINKING NOT A 
RULE OF DESIGN - SULLIVAN AS A GREAT TRADITIONALIST. 

APPENDIX: DANKMAR ABLER -A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 283 
CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF BUILDINGS 294 

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE WRITINGS OF LOUIS SULLIVAN 306 
GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 310 

PLATES 321 

INDEX 387 



ILLUSTRATIONS 



Louis Sullivan. Frontispiece 

Figure I Sullivan at sixteen, while at M. I. T. facing p. 32 

Figure 2 Dankmar Adler in 1880 facing p. 33 

Figure 3 Chicago Opera Festival Auditorium in the Interstate Ex- 
position Building, Grant Park. 1885, 69 

Figure 4 Residences of Dila Kohn, Dankmar Adler, and Eli B. 

Felsenthal, Chicago. 1885-86. 75 

Figure 5 Auditorium Building, Chicago. Longitudinal section 91 

Figure 6 Design for Seattle Opera House. 1890 119 

Figure 7 Design for a hotel, Chicago. 1891 123 

Figure 8 Illinois Central Railroad Station, New Orleans. 1892 127 

Figure 9 Three residences built for Victor Falkenau, Chicago. 

1890 131 

Figure 10 Wainwright Building, St. Louis. Plans of the first and 

sixth floors 149 

Figure 11 Schiller Building, Chicago. Plans of the first and ninth 

floors 161 

Figure 12 Union Trust Building, St. Louis. 1892-93 167 

Figure 13 Dankmar Adler in 1898 facing p. 176 

Figure 14 Louis Sullivan in 1904. facing p. 177 

Figure 15 Plan of National Farmers" Bank, Owatonna, Minn. 211 

Figure 16 Plan of St. Paul's Church, Cedar Rapids, Iowa 215 



x ii ILLUSTRATIONS 

Plate 1 Rothschild Store, Chicago. 1880-81. 321 

Plate 2 Revell Building, Chicago. 1881-83. 322 

Plate 3 Ryerson Building, Chicago. 1884. 323 

Plate 4 Troescher Building, Chicago. 1884. 324 

Plate 5 Dexter Building, Chicago. 1887. 324 

Plate 6 Knisely Building, Chicago. 1884. 325 

Plate 7 Selz Schwab Company Factory, Chicago. 1880-87. 325 

Plate 8 Borden Residence, Chicago. 1880. 326 

Plate 9 Bloomenfeld Residence, Chicago. 1883. 326 

Plate 10 Three residences, Chicago. 1883. 327 

Plate 11 West Chicago Club, Chicago. 1886. 327 

Plate 12 Auditorium, Chicago. Preliminary design, 1836. 328 

Plate 13 Auditorium, Chicago. Preliminary design, 1886. 328 

Plate 14 Auditorium, Chicago. Exterior from East. 320 

Plate 15 Auditorium, Chicago. Exterior from Southwest. 329 

Plate 16 Auditorium Hotel, Chicago. Lobby. 330 

Plate 17 Auditorium Hotel, Chicago. Restaurant and bar. 330 

Plate 18 Auditorium Hotel, Chicago. Main dining-room. 3H1 

Plate 19 Auditorium Hotel, Chicago. Main dining-room, detail. 331 

Plate 20 Auditorium Theatre, Chicago. View toward stage. 332 

Plate 21 Auditorium Theatre, Chicago. Orchestra and balcony, 333 

Plate 22 Cottage, Ocean Springs, Mississippi. 1890. 331 

Plate 23 Stables, Ocean Springs, Mississippi. 1890. 334 

Plate 24 Standard Club, Chicago. 1887-B9. 333 

Plate 25 Heath Residence, Chicago. 1889. 335 

Plate 26 Standard Club, Chicago. Addition, 1893. 336 

Plate 27 Walker Warehouse, Chicago. 1888-89. 3,1? 

Plate 28 Marshall Field Wholesale Building, Chicago, by H. H, 

Richardson. 1885-87. 338 

Plate 29 Dooly Block, Salt Lake City. 1890-91. 338 

Plate 30 Opera House Block, Pueblo, Colorado. 1890 330 

Plate 31 Victoria Hotel, Chicago Heights, Illinois. 1 892-03. 33*) 

Plate 32 McVicker's Theatre, Chicago. Proscenium wing and hoxe*. 

1890-91. 340 



ILLUSTRATIONS . xiii 

Plate 33 St. Nicholas Hotel, St. Louis. 1892-93. 341 

Plate 34 Anshe Ma'ariv Synagogue, Chicago. Preliminary design. 342 

Plate 35 Anshe Ma'ariv Synagogue, Chicago. Exterior. 1890-91. 342 

Plate 36 Anshe Ma'ariv Synagogue, Chicago. Interior. 343 

Plate 37 Chicago Cold Storage Exchange Warehouse. 1891. 344 

Plate 38 Ryerson Tomb, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago. 1889 345 

Plate 39 Getty Tomb, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago. 1890. 345 

Plate 40 Getty Tomb, Chicago. Door. 346 

Plate 41 Wainwright Tomb, Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis. 

1892. 347 

Plate 42 Charnley Residence, Chicago. 1892. 348 

Plate 43 Albert Sullivan Residence, Chicago. 1892. 349 

Plate 44 Transportation Building, World's Columbian Exposition, 

Chicago. 1893. 350 

Plate 45 The "Golden Door" of the Transportation Building. 351 

Plate 46 New York World Building, New York, by George B. Post. 

1890 352 

47 New York Life Insurance Building, Kansas City, by 

McKim, Mead & White. 1890. 352 

48 Woman's Temple, Chicago, by Burnham & Root. 1891 353 

49 Wainwright Building, St. Louis. 1890-91. 354 

-Plate 50 Schiller Building, Chicago. 1891-92. Borden Block 

' (1879-80) in foreground. 355 

^Plate 51 Design for Fraternity Temple, Chicago. 1891 356 

Plate 52 Design for Trust & Savings Bank Building, St. Louis. 

1893. 357 



53 Meyer Building, Chicago. 1893. 358 

54 Stock Exchange Building, Chicago. 1893-94. 359 

55 Guaranty Building, Buffalo. 1894r-95. 360 

56 Guaranty Building, Buffalo. Lower stories and corner. 361 
C^ Plate 57 Guaranty Building, Buffalo. Elevator lobby. 362 

58 Bayard Building, New York. 1897-98. 363 

59 Gage Building, Chicago (at right). 1898-99. 364 
OPlate 60 Carson Pirie Scott Store, Chicago. 1899-1904. 365 

Plate 61 Carson Pirie Scott Store, Chicago. Detail of facade 366 



xiv ILLUSTRATIONS 

Plate 62 Carson Pirie Scott Store, Chicago. Entrance on Madison 

Street 367 

Plate 63 Crane Company Building, Chicago. 1903-04 368 

Plate 64 Felsenthal Store, Chicago. 1905. 368 

Plate 65 Babson Residence, Riverside, 111. 1907. 369 

Plate 66 Babson Residence, Riverside, 111. Garden facade. 369 

Plate 67 Bradley Residence, Madison, Wisconsin. 1909 370 

Plate 68 Bradley Residence, Madison, Wisconsin. Balcony. 370 

Plate 69 Bradley Residence, Madison, Wisconsin. Entrance hall 371 

Plate 70 National Farmers' Bank, Owatonna, Minn. 1907-08 372 

Plate 71 National Farmers' Bank, Owatonna, Minn. Detail of 

cornice. 373 

Plate 72 National Farmers' Bank, Owatonna, Minn. Interior 374 

Plate 73 National Farmers' Bank, Owatonna, Minn. Detail of 

arches. 375 

Plate 74 National Farmers' Bank, Owatonna, Minn. Teller's 

wicket. 375 

Plate 75 People's Savings Bank, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 1911. 376 

Plate 16 St. Paul's Church, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 1913-14. 376 

Plate 77 Van Allen Store, Clinton, Iowa. 1913-15. 377 

Plate 78 Adams Building, Algona, Iowa. 1913. 377 

Plate 79 Merchants' National Bank, Grinnell, Iowa. 1914. 378 

Plate 80 Merchants' National Bank, Grinnell, Iowa. Interior 379 

Plate 81 Home Building Association Bank, Newark, Ohio. 1914 380 

Plate 82 Home Building Association Bank, Newark, Ohio. Interior 380 

Plate 83 People's Savings & Loan Association Bank, Sidney, Ohio. 

1917-18. 381 

Plate 84 People's Savings & Loan Association Bank, Sidney, Ohio. 

Interior. 382 

Plate 85 People's Savings & Loan Association Bank, Sidney, Ohio. 

Lounge. 383 

Plate 86 Farmers' & Merchants' Union Bank, Columbus, Wisconsin. 

1919. 384 

Plate 87 Farmers' & Merchants' Union Bank, Columbus, Wisconsin. 

Interior. 384 



FOREWORD 



AT an architects' dinner in the early 1890's, an acute critic re- 
marked: "American architecture is the art of covering one thing 
with another thing to imitate a third thing, which, if genuine, 
would not be desirable." He might have gone much further; 
he was talking about contemporary architecture, but he might 
have included most of the architecture of the nineteenth century ; 
he confined his indictment to America when he might as justly have 
included Europe; and if he had been a prophet, he could have 
applied it to the greater part of the architecture of the first genera- 
tion of the twentieth century. 

The besetting architectural sin of the nineteenth century was 
the imitation of historic styles. Today we are again beginning to 
regard style as something always changing and always modern. 
When Louis IX instructed his architect to design the Sainte Chapelle 
he doubtless said nothing about the "Gothic" style since the term 
had not been invented nor indeed about any "style." He probably 
said: "Build me a good modern chapel." All architecture during 
Greek an$ medieval times was modern architecture. Certainly it 
did not imitate the Egyptian style, and least of all did it build one 
building in Egyptian, one in Assyrian, one in Minoan, and one in 
Neolithic, as we do today. Eclecticism is a distinctly modern phe- 
nomenon, and when viewed in the whole panorama of the history of 
architecture it appears but a momentary aberration, caused, most 
probably, by the failure to realize sound values based on a discern- 



xvi FOREWORD 

ing study of the experience of the past. The trouble, paradoxically, 

was not too much history, hut not enough. 

This confusion of values began more than a century ago. It 
may be placed at about the time when the last great architectural 
style died its destined death, and when at almost the same moment 
the dominant forces of democracy and industrialism, as signalized 
in the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution, began to 
control the character of modern life. At that time we might have 
expected the birth of a modern architecture. And indeed, tech- 
nically, the nativity occurred. An iron frame for the support of 
seven floors in a cotton factory in Manchester, England, was built 
in 1801. And before many years factories and warehouses and 
lofts began to assume an appearance which has hardly changed 
until today. 

But the impact of the new forces was too sudden to be absorbed, 
and nineteenth-century culture entered into a strange dualism. 
Science and technique controlled the intellectual and material 
phases of life; romanticism and religion controlled the imaginative 
and spiritual phases; and the gulf between the two ever widened. 
Architecture was split into two uncongenial halves, utility and 
beauty, and we have the strange combination of a railroad station 
decorated by Gothic pinnacles, or an iron shop-front adorned by 
Greek columns. 

Architects concerned themselves more and more only with 
beauty, and since there was no genuine new beauty, this could 
only resolve itself into an imitation of past standards of beauty. 
Thus eclecticism. Meanwhile, there were those who advocated a 
frankly utilitarian and mechanistic architecture, such as Viollet- 
le-Duc. But no union could be effected. The two attitudes were 
diametrically opposed. How combine the sense of practical truth 
of science with the sense of emotional truth of romanticism? How 



FOREWORD xvii 

reintegrate engineering and architecture? The conflict had con- 
founded the century; it had made impossible any genuine cultural 
expression of modern life as a whole. 

In the field of architecture, I believe, it remained for Louis Sul- 
livan to integrate romanticism and realism, to achieve a synthesis 
both in theory and in practice completely expressive of modern 
life, and to make possible the renewal of architecture as a creative 
art based on those fundamentals that have always existed in the 
great architecture of the past. In this sense he was the first modern 
architect. Lewis Mumford has said of him: "Sullivan's was per- 
haps the first mind in American architecture that had come to know 
itself with any fullness in relation to its soil, its period, its civiliza- 
tion, and had been able to absorb fully all the many lessons of the 
century." l Sullivan was in actual practice a very great architect, 
but his greatest achievement was in his emancipation of architec- 
tural thinking from the dead forms of the past and his demonstra- 
tion of the possibility of the development of new forms directly out 
of the nature of the problems at hand. 

Sullivan died in 1924. During his own lifetime his importance 
was never widely recognized. To be sure, some of his work was 
enthusiastically hailed during the nineties many articles praised 
his buildings and his thinking as heralding a new movement in 
architecture but it would be too much to expect that any complete 
estimate of his achievement could be made at such an early date. 
The opinions were, for the most part, expressions of hope for the 
future. Two decades later the tone of criticism had changed. Archi- 
tecture had in the meantime made immense strides or so it was 
believed in a direction quite different from that pointed out by 
Sullivan: the Woolworth Building had raised its terra cotta pinna- 
cles and gargoyles to the sky for many years; a revived medieval- 

1 Lewis Mumford: The Brown Decades, p. 143. 



xviii FOREWORD 

ism far more accurate than the quaint misunderstandings of nine- 
teenth-century Gothic had been crowned in such masterpieces as 
the Harkness Quadrangles at Yale and St. Thomas' Church on 
Fifth Avenue; the glory that was Greece had achieved its final aura 
of perfection in 'the most beautiful classic building of modern 
times,' the Lincoln Memorial; and architecture in all its branches 
had shown such immense progress that architects, critics, and pub- 
lic celebrated it in mutual felicitations. 

It was easily seen now that Sullivan had been a failure a very 
interesting failure, to be sure; undoubtedly an eccentric and a 
genius, a kind of romantic Don Quixote who had tilted against the 
windmills of imaginary evils in a most admirable way; but after 
all, a man who had little or no sense of practical realities. He was 
viewed with charity, in the patronizing and complacent way with 
which mediocrity regards genius which has been proven to be 
wrong. Other views were more magnanimous: Sullivan was all 
right in his day and his way indeed, perhaps a great architect 
but that day was past; we had progressed to a new and better archi- 
tecture, and instead of being the forerunner of a new century, Sulli- 
van was the last great leader of the old ; within his lifetime he was 
shelved as an Old Master. 

As late as 1927 a popular history of American architecture ap- 
peared with a chapter entitled "Louis Sullivan and the Lost Cause." 
The author, Mr. Thomas Tallmadge, has lived to say that if he 
were writing the book today, the chapter would be called "Louis 
Sullivan and the Cause Triumphant." Within the last five years 
critical opinion of Sullivan has changed amazingly. The develop- 
ment of the modern style of architecture has been so striking that 
we may fairly say that the general public has become aware of it 
as an accomplished fact. Book after book has appeared on the 
"new architecture," and "functionalism" has become a by-word in 



FOREWORD xix 

architectural parlance. Beginning with Lewis Mumford, and con- 
tinuing in the writings of Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Sheldon Che- 
ney, Bruno Taut and others, Sullivan has been viewed more and 
more as the great forerunner of modern architecture. But although 
recognized as a unique personal force, and often as the prophet of 
the modern style, no single book on him was written. Such maga- 
zine articles as were published often suffered from errors in fact 
about his buildings or incomplete interpretation of his thinking, 
and there were large lacunae on certain phases of his work because 
of lack of information. 

I became interested in Sullivan five years ago while teaching at 
the University of Chicago. In attempting to discover more about 
him I found that most of the office records had been destroyed by 
fire many years ago; there were very few available photographs; 
there was no list of buildings which he had designed; and he had 
left no family to preserve personal effects which might have aided 
in piecing out the story. For these reasons the task of reconstructing 
the story of his life and work was difficult, and the account is not 
yet complete. 

Sullivan's youth and training is, fortunately, well known through 
his Autobiography of an Idea. This account of his life, however, 
says very little about his buildings done in partnership with Adler, 
and virtually nothing of his work after 1893. My chief source of 
information on this and other phases of Sullivan's life has been 
Mr. George Grant Elmslie, who worked with Sullivan for the 
twenty years between 1889 and 1909, and who has carefully pre- 
served not only all available records but an invaluable store of 
memories. It is not too much to say that without Mr. Elmslie's rev- 
erent preservation of material records and his sympathetic under- 
standing and admiration no adequate account of Louis Sullivan 
could have been written. 



xx FOREWORD 

My debt to published articles is sufficiently indicated in the foot- 
notes and bibliography. A great part of my information, however, 
came from letters and personal interviews ; these were so numerous 
that it would be impossible to recognize all my obligations here. I 
wish to express my appreciation, however, for the uniform courtesy 
with which my requests for information, both verbal and written, 
were met. In the early stages of the investigation I had much valued 
assistance from preliminary studies on Sullivan by Miss Lucile 
Smith and by H. Stewart Leonard. Their scholarly work afforded a 
nucleus of material which has proven of immense aid, and Mr. Leon- 
ard was kind enough to read several chapters of the manuscript. 
Mrs. Julius Weil, daughter of Dankmar Adler, was most helpful in 
the rediscovery of many of the early buildings of Adler & Sullivan 
about which few or no records existed, and particularly in contribut- 
ing information on the life of her father. Adler's great importance 
in the work of the firm has never been adequately recognized, and 
although I have attempted to suggest this in the text, I deeply regret 
that exigencies of publication preclude a more complete account of 
his life and personality. 

As to photographs, the largest extant collection of negatives of 
Sullivan's buildings is in the possession of Henry Fuermann & 
Sons, Chicago. Mr. Fuermann was a personal friend of Sullivan 
and I am obligated to him for the work which he did and his per- 
sonal interest in aiding the project. There remained, however, some 
seventy or eighty buildings of which no photographs existed. Get- 
ting a record of these, incidentally, involved several thousand miles 
of travel throughout Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Indiana, 
and Ohio, not to mention innumerable expeditions in and about 
Chicago. I was fortunate in having as companion on these architec- 
tural pilgrimages Mr. Joseph Barron, whose excellent photography, 
no less than his knowledge of the history of American architecture, 



FOREWORD xxi 

was invaluable. The Barren collection of negatives includes several 
score on Sullivan's buildings. 

Sullivan manuscripts in the Burnham Library of the Art Insti- 
tute of Chicago were placed at my disposal by Miss Etheldred Ab- 
bot, whose interest and help were unfailing. For personal inter- 
views I am most indebted to the late Paul Mueller, engineer in the 
office of Adler & Sullivan for many years, Mr. Arthur Woltersdorf, 
Mr. Richard E. Schmidt, and Mr. Irving K. Pond. Professor Henry- 
Russell Hitchcock was kind enough to go over the entire manuscript 
with me and I owe many helpful suggestions to him. 

Finally I should like to express my very warm gratitude to the 
Museum of Modern Art, which through financial aid made the large 
number of illustrations possible, and to Mr. W. W. Norton, whose 
sympathetic cooperation in the preparation of the book has been 
most sincerely appreciated. 

HUGH MORRISON 
Dartmouth College, August, 1935 



I. YOUTH AND TRAINING 



PATRICK SULLIVAN, need it be said, was Irish. Born on Christmas 
Day of the year 1818, he made his own way in life from the age 
of twelve. His mother had died when he was an infant; his father, 
a landscape painter of mediocre achievements, disappeared com- 
pletely from his life when the two lost each other in the hurly-burly 
of a county fair. At first an itinerant fiddler, Patrick later became 
interested in dancing, found his way to Loiidon where he took les- 
sons, and eventually established a dancing academy of his own. 
On July 22, 1847, he took steerage passage on the ship Unicorn 
from London to Boston. At the age of thirty he set up a dancing 
academy in Boston. His son Louis describes him quite candidly: 
"His medium size, his too-sloping shoulders, his excessive Irish 
face, his small repulsive eyes the eyes of a pig of nondescript 
color and no flash, sunk into his head under rough brows, all seemed 
unpromising enough in themselves until it is remembered that be- 
hind that same mask resided the grim will, the instinctive ambi- 
tion that had brought him, alone and unaided, out of a childhood 
of poverty ... he was of highly virile and sensitive powers, he 
wrote and spoke English in a polite way, and had acquired an 
excruciating French. . . . He was moderate of habit; drank a 
little wine, smoked an occasional cigar, and was an enthusiast 
regarding hygiene." l Three years after his arrival he met in Boston 
the girl whom he was to marry. 

Andrienne Frangoise List was born in Geneva in 1835. Her 



23 



24 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

father, Henri List, was German; her mother, Anna Mattheus List, 
was Swiss-French. The Lists were well-to-do, but they lost money 
in speculation, and came to America in 1850 in search of better 
fortune. Andrienne was a skilled piano player "her sense of 
rhythm, of sweep, of accent, of the dance-cadence with its reinforce- 
ments and languishments, the tempo rubato was genius itself." 
Patrick Sullivan met Andrienne List in Boston, was attracted by 
her grace of manner and her musical sense, they became engaged, 
and were married on August 14, 1852. 

The Sullivans lived at first at 22 South Bennett Street, Boston. 
The older son, Albert Walter Sullivan, was born September 17, 
1854; the younger son, Louis Henry Sullivan, was born Septem- 
ber 3, 1856. There were no other children. Louis was never formally 
christened, and although he later called himself "Louis Henry," 
his mother and his grandmother preferred to call him "Louis 
Henri," out of respect to his grandfather, and he himself always 
gallicized the "Louis" in pronunciation. 

When Louis was four years old he was sent to the district 
grammar school. Of this he had only dreary recollections. He 
learned his letters, he followed the routine, but the school seemed 
to dull his faculties, slacken his eagerness, and completely ignore 
his lively imagination and his abundant sympathies. In the early 
summer of 1862, when he was five, he went to visit his grand- 
parents at a twenty-four-acre farm about a mile from the village 
of South Reading. From then until he was fourteen he spent all his 
summers on the farm, an experience which aided greatly in de- 
veloping his independence and self-reliance, and doubtless bred into 
him during the formative years of his youth the almost ecstatic 
love of nature and the strong individualism which characterized 
his later years. 

The Civil War did not affect him greatly, but he was sufficiently 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 25 

interested in it to make a "Monitor" out of a piece of lath and 
the bung of a flour-barrel, and to set it against a "Merrimac" in 
a wash-tub of water. At this time he was "abundantly freckled, 
and in a measure toothless; hatless, barefooted, and unkempt 
with activity, he was a stout, stocky, miniature ruffian, let loose 
upon a helpless world." But he had many moments of poignant 
delight in the beauties of nature, moments which left him in a 
quiet, self-contained mood, little able to share his experiences 
with the older people about him. His grandfather was disturbed 
by these dreamy interludes, fearing an undue precocity, but was 
reassured by the fact that the boy, between spells, was "ridiculously 
practical." Much of his time he spent alone in his "domain," a 
marshy tract surrounded by rolling meadows and clumps of trees, 
where he built dams in the brook, waded, and otherwise amused 
himself. Sometimes he sought out other boys to play with; more 
often he went on long trips of exploration by himself. Or he would 
visit the stove-foundry man, in town, or the cobbler, who would 
delight him by "extinguishing the life of a fly on the opposite wall 
with an unerring squirt of tobacco juice." Evenings, he would 
get Julia, the robust hired girl, to tell him Irish fairy tales, which 
he found enchanting and entirely credible. 

In the summer of 1863 Patrick Sullivan took Louis away from 
his grandparents for a time to Newburyport, where he had estab- 
lished a summer school of dancing. He set about to counteract the 
tendency of Louis' fond grandparents to spoil him by endeavoring 
to instill a stronger sense of obedience, discipline and respect. 
Being an enthusiast regarding health, he put Louis through a 
regular course of physical training rise at five, a cold wash at 
the town pump opposite the hotel, a run "to establish circulation," 
swimming, vaulting, throwing stones, through the day. Under this 
regime he built up a strong and supple physique, which in later 



26 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

years always stood him in good stead. Shortly after returning to 
Boston that September the family went to Halifax for six months, 
where Patrick opened a dancing academy. Louis recalled little 
but the severe cold of the Nova Scotia" winter. In the spring his 
mother had an attack of diphtheria which compelled the family 
to return to Boston. Louis, to his great joy, was sent out to South 
Reading to live with his grandparents until the ensuing fall. 

By this time he was becoming quite a youth, proud, ambitious, 
and with a growing sense of power. His grandfather did not worry 
greatly about his education, realizing that Louis was acquiring his 
own kind of education very rapidly. His grandmother, thinking 
that he needed more polish, started to teach him French, but Louis, 
as always, rebelled at formal education. "He became oppressed 
by the inanities of the grammar-book, and the imbecilities of a 
sort of first reader in which a wax-work father takes his wax chil- 
dren on daily promenades, explaining to them as they go, in terms 
of unctuous morality, the works of the Creator, and drawing there- 
from, as from a spool, an endless thread of pious banalities." So 
the study was discontinued. Although his grandmother loved him, 
she could little realize that he was a vigorous young animal with 
thoughts and an impetuous will of his own. 

In September, 1864, he had to go back to his parents in Boston, 
and was sent to school. The effect of the big city on him was, to 
say the least, shatteringly discouraging. Acutely sensitive to his 
surroundings, the crooked streets, the crowded houses, the throngs 
of wagons and people hurrying here and there with apparent aim- 
lessness, confused and overwhelmed him. He was bewildered and 
grieved, and withdrew into himself. He was sent to the Brimmer 
School, on Common Street, and found it a gloomy prison. His 
father took up his rigorous training of cold baths, outdoor exercise 
long walks to Roxbury, to Dorchester, even to Brookline but 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 27 

it was a long, discouraging winter. The spring in the city had 
nothing of the joy which he had experienced on the farm. When 
the vacation came he again went eagerly to his grandparents at 
South Reading, and regained his former joy in life during the 
summer. 

But again in September he had to go back to Boston. This time 
he was now nine years old he entered the Rice School, on 
Washington Street, where he was to spend the next three years of 
his primary education. His lessons seemed to him as dull and 
mechanical as ever, but he was much excited about Beadle's Dime 
Novels, which he obtained at a nearby bookstore. In school he 
picked up, "in addition to a bit of Geography and Arithmetic, every 
form of profanity, every bit of slang, and every particle of verbal 
garbage that he could assimilate." In 1868 the Rice School ac- 
quired a new building, on made land in the Back Bay district. 
When Louis was transferred there, in September, the lightness 
and brightness and cleanliness put him suddenly into a better 
humor for his lessons. For the first time he became interested in 
books he discovered books; he became an earnest student, al- 
most a recluse. He was fascinated by grammar, "took it at one 
dose." Once an idea had broken upon him, he foresaw consequences 
with extreme rapidity, and his imagination far outsped any possi- 
bility of reasonable accomplishment. 

During the latter years of his primary education, his activities 
spread over an ever-widening field. Always inquisitive and curious, 
he investigated every street, alley, and wharf from end to end 
of Boston. Wandering about by himself, he became interested in 
looking at buildings he especially admired the Masonic Temple 
at the corner of Tremont and Boylston Streets. One day when he 
was about twelve he was wandering along Commonwealth Avenue, 
and, according to his own account, "saw a large man of dignified 



28 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

bearing, with beard, top hat, and frock coat, come out of a nearby 
building, enter his carriage and signal the coachman to drive on. 
The dignity was unmistakable, all men of station in Boston were 
dignified; sometimes insistently so, but Louis wished to know 
who and what was behind the dignity." So he asked one of the 
workmen, who explained that the dignified man was an architect, 
a man who designed buildings. Having always taken buildings 
for granted, Louis was much impressed by the revelation that a 
man could make up a building out of his head. Then and there he 
made up his mind to become an architect. He confided his new 
desire to his father, who was greatly pleased that his son's ambi- 
tion was centering on something definite. He suggested as a counter- 
proposal that Louis should study at an agricultural college and 
become a scientific farmer. Louis, although greatly tempted by 
his love of the outdoors, reflected at length and then said, "No, 
I have made up my mind." So it was agreed that he should become 
an architect, and that after he had finished his general education 
he should go to a technical school, and after that, perhaps, abroad. 

That winter Louis' mother suffered another attack of diphtheria, 
and barely survived it. Since the Boston climate seemed so bad 
for her Patrick Sullivan decided to move inland, and in the sum- 
mer of 1869 moved to Chicago, leaving Louis behind to live with 
his grandparents and to continue his education. During the ensuing 
year, his last in the grammar school, he lived at South Reading, 
coming into Boston daily for school. In June, 1870, he graduated 
with honors, and "there he received in pride, as a scholar, his first 
and last diploma" an interesting fact for a man who went on to 
study in high school, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 
and finally the Ecole des Beaux Arts. 

In September, 1870, at fourteen years of age, Louis passed the 
entrance examinations and was admitted to the English High 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 29 

School. The English and the Latin High were then housed in a 
single building, rather old and dingy, merely a partition wall 
separating them. Louis chanced to be one of forty-odd pupils 
assigned to a room presided over by one Moses Woolson. It was 
thus in his first year in high school that he came under the influence 
of a personality which was to serve as an inspiration for the rest 
of his life. Moses Woolson was a schoolmaster. He greeted his 
new pupils with remarks in substance as follows: "You are here 
as wards in my charge; I accept that charge as sacred; I accept 
the responsibility involved as a high exacting duty I owe to myself 
and equally to you. I will give to you all that I have, you shall 
give to me all that you have." He insisted throughout his training 
on silence, strict attention, alertness, accurate listening, observa- 
tion, reflection, discrimination. Louis rose to the challenge. Under 
Woolson's influence he became interested in things intellectual 
for their own sake. He disciplined himself as he had never done 
before. He rapidly acquired a good grounding and an interest 
in Algebra, Geometry, Botany, Mineralogy, English Literature, 
and French. Geometry particularly delighted him because of its 
nicety and exactitude. Sullivan's tribute to Woolson is worth quot- 
ing from the Autobiography: 

"Impartial in judgment, fertile in illustration and expedient, 
clear in statement, he opened to view a new world. ... By the 
end of the school year he had brought order out of disorder, defini- 
tion out of what was vague, superb alertness out of mere boyish 
ardor; had nurtured and concentrated all that was best in the 
boy; had made him consciously courageous and independent; 
had focussed his powers of thought, feeling and action; had con- 
firmed Louis' love of the great out of doors, as a source of inspira- 
tion; and had climaxed all by parting a great veil which opened 
to the view of this same boy the wonderland of Poetry. . . . There 



30 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

may have been teachers and teachers, but for Louis Sullivan there 
was and could be only one. And now, in all too feeble utterance 
he pleads this token, remembrance, to the memory of one long 
since passed on." 

Toward the end of his first year in high school, Louis was left 
alone at South Reading. In April, 1871, his grandmother died 
and his grandfather and his uncle Jules broke up their home on 
the farm and went to live in Philadelphia. For the next two years 
Louis made his home with a next-door-neighbor at South Reading, 
John A. Thompson. He continued to go into Boston daily for his 
classes under Moses Woolson, and, during his second year, under 
a schoolmaster named Hale, whom he describes as "a scholar and 
a gentleman, a shining light of conscientious, conventional, virtu- 
ous routine." He seems to have acquired rather more in the way 
of education in his adopted home. John A. Thompson was a culti- 
vated gentleman, whose dinner-table conversations were a liberal 
education in themselves. Louis felt that he had now definitely 
entered the cultural world. In particular, it was during this time 
that his taste for music developed and became a source of enjoy- 
ment for all his later years. "Thus he learned concerning chords, 
that the one in particular that had overwhelmed him with a sort 
of gorgeous sorrow was called the dominant seventh, and another 
that seemed eerie and that gave him a peculiar nervous thrill and 
chill was named the augmented fifth." He became exceedingly 
curious about modulations, modes, diatonic and chromatic scales, 
and other technicalities and names. He heard symphony concerts, 
soloists, and light concert music of all kinds in Boston. Especially 
he learned much about oratorios. He became a skilled pianist.! 
Many years later, a catalogue of his library listed fourteen vol- 
umes of oratorios, as well as several books on musical analysis,, 
harmony, etc. 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 31 

George Thompson, the son, was slightly older than Louis, and 
was studying railroad engineering at the Massachusetts Institute/ 
of Technology. Through him Louis became interested in going to 
"Tech" for his architectural education. At George Thompson's 
instance he essayed the entrance examinations at the end of his 
second year in the English High School, passed them with ease, 
and accordingly entered M.I.T. in September, 1872, at the age of ; 
sixteen, to take the course in architecture. 

The school was in Rogers Hall, near the corner of Boylston 
and Berkeley Streets, with pleasant study-rooms, a long drafting- 
room, library, and lecture-room. It was the first architectural school 
to be established in this country, and was comparatively new at 
the time, having been opened in 1865. It was directed by Professor 
William Ware, of the firm of Ware & Van Brunt. Professor Ware, 
in Louis' description, was "a gentleman of the old school; a 
bachelor, of good height, slender, bearded in the English fashion, 
and turning gray. He had his small affectations, harmless enough. 
His voice was somewhat husky, his polite bearing impeccable and 
kind. He had a precious sense of quiet humor, and common sense 
seemed to have a strong hold on him. Withal he was worthy of 
personal respect and affection. His attainments were moderate in 
scope and soundly cultural as of the day ; his judgments were clear 
and just. The words amiability and quiet common sense sum up his 
personality; he was not imaginative enough to be ardent. . . . 
The misfortune was that in his lectures on the history of architec- 
ture he never looked his pupils in the eye, but by preference 
addressed an audience in his beard, in a low and confidential tone, 
ignoring a game of spitball under way. Yet a word or a phrase 
reached the open now and then concerning styles, construction, 
and so forth, and at times he went to the blackboard and drew this 
and that very neatly." 



32 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

His assistant was Eugene Letang, a recent graduate of the atelier 
Vaudremer of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and winner of 
the Grand Prix de Rome. He was about thirty, sallow and earnest, 
with a long and lean face and no professional air, but patient, and 
a student among the students. Of the latter, there were about thirty, 
all told some already university graduates, almost all older and 
more worldly wise than Louis. He found among them agreeable 
companions, however, and thoroughly enjoyed the space and the 
freedom of the drafting-room intercourse. Under their influence he 
"began to put on a bit of swagger, to wear smart clothes, to shave 
away the down and to agitate a propaganda for inch-long side 
whiskers. A photograph of that date (Fig. 1) shows him as a clean- 
cut young man, with a rather intelligent expression, a heavy mop 
of black hair neatly parted for the occasion, a pearl stud set in 
immaculate white, and a suit up to the minute in material and 
cut." 

Early in his career at "Tech" Louis saw from its very begin- 
nings the famous Boston fire of November, 1872. His description 
of it bears repetition. It began with a small flame "curling from 
the wooden cornice of a building on the north side of Summer 
Street. There were perhaps a half a dozen persons present at the 
time. The street was night-still. It was early. No fire engine 
came. . . . All was quiet as the small flame grew into a whorl 
and sparks shot upward from a glow behind ; the windows became 
lighted from within. A few more people gathered, but no engine 
came. Then began a gentle purring roar. The few became a crowd, 
but no engine came. Glass crackled and crashed, flames burst forth 
madly from all windows, and the lambent dark flames behind them 
soared high, casting multitudes of sparks and embers abroad, as 
they cracked and wheezed. The roof fell, the floors collapsed. A 
hand-drawn engine came, but too late. The front wall tottered, 




Figure 1. Sullivan at sixteen, while 
at M.I.T. 




Figure 2. Dankmar Adler in 1880. 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 33 

swayed and crumbled to the pavement, exposing to view a roaring 
furnace. It was too late. The city seemed doomed. Louis followed 
its ravages all night long. It was a magnificent but terrible pageant 
of wrathful fire before whose onslaught row after row of regi- 
mented buildings melted away. . . ." For two nights after the 
fire Louis served as a guard in the M.I.T. volunteer battalion. He 
was thus not unacquainted with the disorder and desolation caused 
by a great conflagration when he went to Chicago the next year. 

The architectural training given at "Tech" was quite according 
to rule. Louis learned how to draw expertly for him, we can 
imagine, an easy task. He learned the classic orders as the funda- 
mentals of architectural design. He learned the historic styles. 
Architecture, he could see, was neatly pigeonholed in the files of 
the past. The classic style was something that had columns and 
pediments; the Gothic style had pinnacles and crockets; all of the 
styles were considered as vocabularies of detail rather than as/ 
modes of building. All of the styles, too, he found, were sacrosanct; 
it was only through them that architectural beauty could be 
achieved in the present. "Louis learned about diameters, modules, 
minutes, entablatures, columns, pediments, and so forth and so 
forth, with the associated minute measurements and copious vo- 
cabulary, all of which items he supposed at the time were intended 
to be received in unquestioning faith, as eternal verities. . . . 
Thus passed the days, the weeks, the months, in a sort of misch- 
masch of architectural theology, and Louis came to see that it was 
not upon the spirit but upon the word that stress was laid. . . . 
But the sanctity of the orders Louis considered quaint; the orders 
were really fairy tales of long ago, now by the learned made rigid, 
mechanical and inane in the books he was pursuing, wherein they 
were stultified, for lack of common sense and human feeling. . . . 
He began to feel a vacancy in himself, the need of something more 



34 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

nutritious to the mind than a play of marionettes. He f^lt the need 
and the lack of a red-blooded explanation, of a valiant idea thai 
should bring life to arouse this cemetery of orders and of 
styles. . . . Moreover, as the time passed he began to discover 
that this school was but a pale reflection of the Ecole des Beaux 
Arts; and he thought it high time that he go to headquarters to 
learn if what was preached there as a gospel really signified glad 
tidings." 

Louis made up his mind that he would leave M.I.T. at the end 
of his first year. He was aggressive and impatient; he knew what 
he wanted. He determined at that time to go to the Ecole, but before 
this he wanted a year or so of actual experience in an architect's 
office to investigate the practice as well as the theory of archi- 
tecture. This decision was a very important one, as it gave him a 
certain hard-headed knowledge of building that stood him in good 
stead when he later encountered the glamour and the superficial 
brilliance of the Ecole training. 

Louis said good-bye to "Tech" at the end of his first year, and 
headed for Philadelphia to live with his grandfather and uncle. 
On his way he stopped off in New York for a few days. He met 
Richard Morris Hunt, then in his middle forties but already suc- 
cessful. Hunt, first of American architects to study in Paris, told 
Louis stories of life at the Ecole in the good old days of 1845, 
and of his work in the atelier libre of Hector Lefuel, and later of 
the great work on the New Louvre in which he had assisted Lefuel. 
Hunt patted the enterprising youth of sixteen on the back, and 
encouraged him in his aspirations. Louis went on to Philadelphia. 

Once established at his grandfather's, he went out to look for 
work in his own way. It was not his method to comb the archi- 
tects' offices to see which one would take him. Rather he combed 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 35 

the street^ looking at the work of architects to see which office he 
would take. It was characteristic of his taste that the building which 
most appealed to him a large residence being completed on South 
Broad Street was by one of the freest and most original architects 
of Philadelphia in that day, Frank Furness. Louis accordingly 
presented himself at the office the next day, and informed Mr. Fur- 
ness that he had come to enter his employ. Mr. Furness inquired 
as to his experience, and when informed that Louis had just come 
from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, exploded, blowing 
up in fragments all the schools in the land and scattering the 
professors headless and limbless to the four quarters of earth and 
hell. Louis, he said, was a fool; a fool and an idiot to have wasted 
his time in a place where one was filled with sawdust, like a doll, 
and became a prig, a snob, and an ass. Louis was warmed by this 
fire ; to hear his own sentiments so eloquently expressed reinforced 
his determination to work for this Frank Furness. He agreed that 
he knew little or nothing, but said that he was capable of learning, 
told of his discovery of the house on Broad Street and how he had 
followed "from the nugget to the solid vein," said that here he 
could learn, that here he was, and that here he would remain. By 
this time Louis was capable of something of a Celtic eloquence 
himself, and it ended in his being taken on at ten dollars a week.: 
"Come tomorrow morning for a trial," said Furness, "but I 
prophesy you won't outlast a week." Louis entered the office. At 
the end of the week Furness said, "You may stay another week," 
and at the end of that week he said, "You may stay as long as you 
like." His first job was to retrace a set of plans for a Savings Insti- 
tution to be erected on Chestnut Street. 

"Frank Furness was a curious character. He affected the Eng- 
lish in fashion. He wore loud plaids, and a scowl, and from his 



36 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

face depended fan-like a marvellous red beard, beautiful in tone 
with each separate hair delicately crinkled from beginning to end. 
Moreover, his face was snarled and homely as an English bull- 
dog's. . . . The other member of the firm was George Hewitt, a 
slender, mustached person, pale and reserved, who seldom re- 
laxed from his pose. It was he who did the Victorian Gothic in its 
pantalettes, when a church building or something of the sort was 
on the boards. With precision, as though he held his elements by 
pincers, he worked out these decorous sublimities of inanity, as 
per the English current magazines and other English sources. . . , 
Louis regarded him with admiration as a draftsman, and with mild 
contempt as a man who kept his nose in the books. Frank Furness 
'made buildings out of his head.' That suited Louis better. And 
Furness as a freehand draftsman was extraordinary. He had Louis 
hypnotized, especially when he drew and swore at the same time.'* 
John Hewitt, George's younger brother, helped Louis a great 
deal with his draftsmanship. Louis worked hard day and night. 
At first he lived with his grandfather and uncle in West Philadel- 
phia, but soon moved into town to be nearer the office. The summer 
was hot, and he frequently walked through Fairmount Park (be- 
fore it was landscaped for the Centennial Exhibition) and up the 
small valley of the Wissahickon of a Sunday. The offices of Furness 
& Hewitt were on the top floor of a four-story brick building at the 
corner of Third Street and Chestnut From this vantage point, on 
a hot September day, Louis looked down into the streets on the 
mob scenes attendant on the closing of Jay Cooke & Company's 
office, a few doors down the street, that inaugurated the bank runs 
and historic panic of 1873. His first architectural experience was 
to be short-lived. Furness & Hewitt, like every other firm, was 
hit by the depression. They finished up commissions already under- 
taken, but in November work was running dry, and since Louis 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 37 

had been the last to be taken on, he was the first to be released. 
He left the office with the regrets and warm best wishes of Frank 
Furness. 

Within a week Louis took the train for Chicago to join his 
parents. He arrived through miles of disheartening shanties and 
the dirty ruins of the Great Fire. It was the day before Thanks- 
giving, 1873. The city was still largely in ashes, but the ambition 
of recovery was in the air. Building was extremely active. In the 
first years after the fire, 1872 and 1873, the output of the more 
important architects' offices was actually measured by the mile. 
John M. Van Osdel designed over 8,000 feet of "first class" front 
during the eighteen months after the fire; Carter, Drake & Wight 
did five miles; W. W. Boyington over three. Less important then, 
but to become big names in the world of architecture during the 
next generation, were the firms of Jenney, Schermerhorn & Bogart 
(William LeBaron Jenney began practice in Chicago in 1868); 
Burling & Adler (established 1871); and the promising young 
firm of Burnham & Root (established 1873). 

The seventeen-year-old youth was fascinated by the city. "Louis 
thought it all magnificent and wild: a crude extravaganza, an 
intoxicating rawness, a sense of big things to be done. . . . The 
elevated wooden sidewalks in the business district, with steps a I 
each street corner, seemed shabby and grotesque; but when Louis 
learned that this meant that the city had determined to raise itself 
three feet more out of the mud, his soul declared that this resolve 
meant high courage; that the idea was big; that there must be big 
men here. The shabby walks now became a symbol of stout 
hearts. . . . The pavements were vile, because hastily laid; they 
erupted here and there and everywhere in ooze. Most of the build- 
ings, too, were paltry. . . . But in spite of the panic, there was 
stir; an energy that made him tingle to be in the game/' 



38 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

Louis followed his Philadelphia procedure in looking for a job. 
In the course of his explorations, he especially admired the Port- 
land Block, a new building at the southeast corner of Dearborn 
and Washington Streets. He inquired as to the architect, and was 
given the name of Major William LeBaron Jenney. He forthwith 
applied at the Major's office, and was taken on immediately, as 
more help was needed. During his six months in Major Jenney 's 
office, Louis formed his first acquaintance with the many interest- 
ing personalities of the architectural world in Chicago. Major 
Jenney was the first of these, and Louis has left a classic descrip- 
tion of him. "The Major was a free-and-easy cultured gentleman, 
but not an architect except by courtesy of terms. His true profession 
was that of engineer. He received his training at the Ecole Poly- 
technique in France, and had served through the Civil War as 
Major of Engineers. He had been with Sherman on the march 
to the sea. He spoke French with an accent so atrocious that it 
jarred Louis' teeth, while his English speech jerked about as though 
it had St. Vitus' dance. He was monstrously pop-eyed, with hang- 
ing mobile features, sensuous lips, and he disposed of matters 
easily in the manner of a war veteran who believed he knew what 
was what. Louis soon found out that the Major was not, really, 
in his heart, an engineer at all, but by nature and in toto, a bon 
vivant, a gourmet. He lived at Riverside, a suburb, and Louis often 
smiled to see him carry home by their naked feet, with all plum- 
age, a brace or two of choice wild ducks, or other game birds, or a 
rare and odorous cheese from abroad. And the Major knew his 
vintages, every one, and his sauces, every one; he was also a master 
of the chafing dish and the charcoal grille. All in all the Major was 
effusive; a hail fellow well met, an officer of the Loyal Legion, 
a welcome guest anywhere, but by preference a host. He was also 
an excellent raconteur, with a lively sense of humor and a certain 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 39 

piquancy of fancy that seemed Gallic. In his stories or his mono- 
logues, his unique vocal mannerisms or gyrations or gymnastics 
were a rich asset, as he squeaked or blew, or lost his voice, or ran 
in arpeggio from deep bass to harmonics, or took octaves, or fifths, 
or sevenths, or ninths in spasmodic splendor. His audience roared, 
for his stories were choice, and his voice as one caught bits of it, 
was plastic, rich and sweet, and these bits, in sequence and collec- 
tively had a warming effect." 

Many stories attest to the kindliness and generosity of the Major, 
and his abilities as a teacher are indicated by a list of some of 
the men who got their start in his office. Besides Louis Sullivan, 
there were, at one time or another, Martin Roche, William A. 
Holabird, John Edelmann, Irving K. Pond, Howard Van Doren 
Shaw, James Gamble Rogers, and Alfred Granger. If the Major 
liked a student in his office, or a draftsman, he would stop his 
work and spend an hour or two teaching, instructing, explaining. 

At the time Louis entered the office John Edelmann was fore- 
man. They became close friends, and Louis conceived an admira- 
tion for John which lasted the rest of his life. Edelmann was twenty- 
four at the time, "brawny, bearded, unkempt, careless, his voice 
rich, sonorous, modulant, his vocabulary an overflowing reser- 
voir. ... By nature indolent, by vanity and practice very rapid. 
He was a profound thinker, a man of immense range of reading, 
a brain of extraordinary keenness, strong, vivid, that ranged in 
its operations from saturnine intelligence concerning men and their 
motives to the highest transcendentalisms of German metaphysics. 

"There was enough work in the office to keep five men and a 
boy busy, provided they took intervals of rest, which they did. 
In the Major's absences, which were frequent and long, bedlam 
reigned. John Edelmann would mount a drawing table and make 
a howling stump speech on greenback currency, or single tax, 



40 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

while at the same time Louis, at the top of his voice, sang selections 
from oratorios, beginning with his favorite, 'Why Do the Nations 
So Furiously Rage Together?'; and so all the force furiously raged 
together in joyous deviltry and bang-bang-bang. ... The office- 
rat suddenly appears: 'Cheese it, Cullies; the Boss!' . . . Sudden 
silence, sudden industry, intense concentration. The Major enters 
and announces his pleasure in something less than three octaves. 
Thus the day's work comes out fairly even. ..." 

With John Edelmann Louis went every Sunday afternoon 
through that winter to hear Hans Balatka and his orchestra play 
Wagner in Turner Hall, on the North Side. Wagner was the first 
of his great enthusiasms. He saw in him a mighty personality, a 
great free spirit, who had created a domain of his own out of his 
imagination and his will. He responded to the power in Wagner 
as he later responded to the unbounded power of Michelangelo. 
Louis and John Edelmann also frequented the gymnasium together, 
and in the spring lived for a time in the latter' s boat-house in the 
preserves of the "Lotus Club," on the Calumet River. 

As the spring months wore on Louis decided that his experience 
in the offices of Furness & Hewitt and of Jenney had given him 
that taste of architecture as it is practiced which he had desired 
as a part of his training, and that it was now time for him to fulfil 
his resolve to go to the fountain-head of architectural education 
the Ecole des Beaux Arts. He took the train East,' and on July 10, 
1874, sailed from New York on the Britannic. The boat called at 
Queenstown, where Louis got a glimpse of the high hills of the 
coastline, his only view of Ireland, and landed at Liverpool. He 
remained in Liverpool a day or two, and in London two weeks, 
then took the Dover-Dieppe Channel boat for France. He arrived 
in Paris after nightfall, and went to the Hotel St. Honore. After 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 41 

a few days there he found himself permanent quarters on the 
seventh floor of a rooming hotel at the corner of the Rue Monsieur 
le Prince and the Rue Racine, in the Latin Quarter, 

Louis had six weeks in which to prepare himself for the search- 
ing entrance examinations of the Ecole. During this time he had 
to become proficient in spoken French, and brush up on a wide 
range of subjects, especially Mathematics and History. He was 
in good physical condition, and he planned to work eighteen hours 
a day, allotting one hour a day for gymnasium to keep himself in 
trim. His high-school French, he found, was woefully inadequate. 
He intended to work several hours a day and to learn colloquial 
French. He engaged a tutor to come every day, was not satisfied, 
and selected a second who was soon worn out. The third one stuck. 
"He saw into Louis' plan and it amused him greatly, so much so 
that he joined in jovially, and made a play of it. A petit verre 
started him off nicely. He possessed a rare art of conversation, was 
full of anecdote, personal incident and reminiscence, knew his 
Paris, had the sense of comedy to a degree, looked upon life as 
a huge joke, upon all persons as jokes, and upon Louis as such in 
particular he would amuse himself with this frantic person. At 
once he spoke to Louis en camarade, vieux copain> as one French- 
man to another. He made running comments on the news of the 
day, explained all sorts of things Louis was beginning to note in 
Paris life, put him in the running. He had a gift of mimicry, would 
imitate the provincial dialects and peasant jargon, with fitting 
tone and gesture, and, taking a given topic or incident, would re- 
late it in terms and impersonations ranging in series from garnin to 
Academician. ... He was well built, well under middle age, 
seldom sat for long, but paced the floor, or lolled here and there 
by moments. His voice was suave, his manner frank and free. He 



42 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

had an air, was well bred. He was either an unconscious or a crafty 
teacher, a rara avis, he knew how to get results. The daily lesson 
lasted one hour, and Louis plowed on at high tension." 

At the American Legation he was referred to a Monsieur Clopet 
as an excellent tutor in Mathematics. He lost no time in calling, 
and was greeted by a small dark man. The preliminaries over, 
M. Clopet asked: "And what are the books you have under your 
arm?" Louis replied, "Books I was told at the American Legation 
I would need." He took the books, selected a large work on Descrip- 
tive Geometry, and began to turn the pages. "Now observe: Here 
is a problem with five exceptions or special cases; here is a theorem, 
three special cases; another nine, and so on and on, a procession 
of exceptions and special cases. I suggest you place the book in 
the waste basket; we shall not have need of it here; for here our 
demonstrations shall be so broad as to admit of no exception." 
The phrase flashed through Louis' rnind. Here, perhaps, was born 
his life's aim in the field of architecture: to make a "Clopet demon- 
stration" for architecture to formulate a rule so broad as to admit 
of no exceptions. 

Louis joined the Mathematics class, consisting of some twenty 
young men, but no other English or Americans. "At M. Clopet' s 
class all were hard put to it to keep up their notes as a lecture 
progressed. M. Clopet was gentle, polished, forceful. 4 0ne must 
work; that is what one is here for/ As a drill master he was a 
potent driver, as an expounder he made good his word to Louis 
in a method and a, manner, revealing, inspiriting, as he calmly un- 
folded, step by step, a well reasoned process in his demonstra- 
tions, which were so simple, so inclusive, so completely rounded as 
to preclude exception; and there was not a book in sight. . . . 
Louis was especially pleased at the novelty of saying je dis 
'I say' at the beginning of a demonstration. It humanized mat- 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 43 

ters, brought them home, close up, a sort of challenge. How much 
more intelligent and lively to begin: 'I say that the sum of the 
angles of any triangle equals two right angles' than the formal 
impersonal statement: 'The sum of the angles of any triangle equals 
two right angles.' The latter statement one may take or leave. The 
former is a personal assertion and implies C I will show you.' In 
fact, it was this '1 say' and this 'I will show you' that made up the 
charm of M. Clopet's teaching method. ... At the end of the 
first half-hour M. Clopet always called a recess. From his pocket 
he drew forth his pouch and his little book of rice papers; so did 
the others. There was sauntering, spectacular smoking and con- 
versation. The cigarette finished, work was resumed. . . . After 
recess the students were put through their paces at the blackboard 
for the final half-hour." 

At the earnest urging of his fellow students, Louis discarded 
his flannel suit and white canvas shoes, to appear in a tall silk hat, 
an infant beard, long tail coat, dark trousers, polished shoes, kid 
gloves, and a jaunty cane a student among the students. Every 
night he studied by candle-light in his small room on the seventh 
floor arranged his Mathematics notes, studied French vocabu- 
lary, read History by the hour. And so the six weeks passed; the 
examinations, early in October, had arrived. 

The examinations were written, drawn, and oral, covering a 
period of three weeks. The free-hand drawing, the mechanical 
drawing, and a simple architectural project were easy for Louis. 
More difficult were the oral examinations, which were conducted 
in little amphitheatres, with a professor presiding, and all aspirants 
free to come and go as they wished. Louis faced his inquisitor in 
Mathematics for over an hour of steady questioning. The examina- 
tion was designed to test, not his memory, but his ability to think 
in mathematical terms. At the end of the examination the professor 



44 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

shook his hand and said: "I felicitate you, Monsieur Sullivan; 
you have the mathematical imagination which is rather rare. I 
wish you well." The examination in History included only three 
questions, but each of these involved an hour and a half of constant 
talking. The three questions were: "Monsieur, will you be kind 
enough to tell me the story of the Hebrew people?"; "I would like 
an account of ten emperors of Rome"; and "Give me an intimate 
account of the times of Francis I." The latter question interested 
Louis especially, as he had studied the period carefully, and the 
time and its people, its manners and customs and thoughts stood 
out before him as a very present picture. He passed the examina- 
tion with the highest rating. These examinations gave Louis an in- 
sight into the quality and reach of French thought its richness, 
its solidity, and above all the severity of its discipline beneath so 
smooth a surface. 

The examinations passed successfully, Louis was entered as a 
member of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, and elected to study in the 
atelier libre of M. Emil Vaudremer. M. Vaudremer was a practic- 
ing architect of middle age, considered a distinguished member of 
his profession. The first problem was a three-months' projet, for 
which the twenty-four-hour sketches were made en loge and filed as 
briefs. The esquisse-en-loge served as a kind of outline, a thesis, 
which must be adhered to closely in the development of the com- 
plete conception. This, it seemed to Louis, was discipline of an 
inspired sort, as it permitted free play to the individual creative 
imagination in establishing the essentials of a problem, then a firm 
adherence to those essentials in working out its ramifications and 
details. Once the projet was given out all the students in the atelier 
vanished, to work out the details wherever and however they 
wished. Many of them left the city. Louis felt the need of relaxa- 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 45 

tion after the stress of preparing for the examinations, and decided 
to take a short trip to Italy. 

He went first to Rome. He spent only three days there two 
of them in the Sistine Chapel. Needless to say, it was Michelangelo's 
great ceiling paintings which held him. Michelangelo became for 
him another and a greater than Wagner. "Here Louis communed 
in silence with a Super-Man. Here he felt and saw a great Free 
Spirit. Here he was filled with the awe that stills. . . . Here was 
power, as he had seen it in the mountains, here was power as he had 
seen it in the prairies, in the open sky, in the great lake stretching 
like a floor toward the horizon, here was the power of the forest 
primeval. Here was the power of the open of the free spirit of 
man striding abroad in the open. Here was the living presence of 
a man who had done things in the beneficence of power." This 
enthusiasm for Michelangelo when a boy of eighteen remained 
with him the rest of his life, and he always kept as a prized posses- 
sion a little folio of reproductions of the paintings of the Sistine 
Ceiling. Next, he journeyed to Florence, where he stayed six weeks, 
but nothing there seemed to have impressed him as much as did 
Michelangelo. He returned along the Riviera to Nice, and thence 
to Paris. 

Louis went back to his old rooms at the corner of the Rue Mon- 
sieur le Prince and the Rue Racine, and took up again his work 
in the atelier. The quarters were not palatial. "The atelier . . . 
was at the ground level, a rough affair, like a carpenter's shop, 
large enough to accommodate about twenty young ruffians. Here 
it was the work was done amid a cross-fire of insults, and it was 
also here that Monsieur Emil Vaudremer came to make his 'criti- 
cisms/ He was one of the dark Frenchmen, of medium size, who 
carried a fine air of native distinction; a man toward whom one's 



46 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

heart instantly went out in respectful esteem bordering on pride 
and affection. His personality was calm, deliberate yet magnetic, 
a sustained, quiet dignity bespeaking a finished product. His 'criti- 
cisms' were, therefore, just what one might expect them to be, clear, 
clean-cut, constructive, and personal to each student in each case 
with that peculiar sympathy with the young which comes from 
remembrance of one's own youth. Always, however, he was a dis- 
ciplinarian, and one felt the steady pressure." 

Louis went to work to carry out his projet, entering heart and 
soul into the serious yet occasionally tumultuous life of the atelier. 
At first, like all the nouveaux, the neophytes, he was required by 
the older students to carry wood for the stove, or clean the draw- 
ing boards. But his ready command of French and the sprinkling 
of thieves' slang which he had picked up from his tutor and used 
effectively on occasions soon raised his status to that of an ancien. 
The intimate contacts, the free commingling of younger and older 
students, the discussions about the work, seemed invaluable to him. 
* Louis remained in Paris about two years. 2 He studied carefully 
all the monuments and museums of Paris, followed all the archi- 
tectural exhibitions at the Ecole, and thoroughly familiarized him- 
self with the theory of its training. But like the architectural school 
at M.I.T., he soon found it merely academic. The problems it set 
were not the real problems of architecture. How could they teach 
creation in a vacuum? To Sullivan in his later years there could 
be no real creation in architecture without the stimulus of a definite 
and actual problem that had to be solved, a need that had to be 
filled. The problems set at the Ecole were not such as would be met 
with in actual architectural practice, and because they were not 
real problems they failed to achieve the general value and signifi- 
cance that they might have had. In Louis' mind, the theory of the 
school "settled down to a theory of plan, yielding results of extraor- 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 47 

dinary brilliancy, but which, after all, was not the reality he sought, 
but an abstraction, a method, a state of mind, that was local and 
specific; not universal. Intellectual and aesthetic, it beautifully 
set forth a sense of order, of function, of highly skilled manipula- 
tion. Yet there was for him a fatal residuum of artificiality, which 
gave him a secret sense of misery where he wished but too tenderly 
to be happy." 

It was not that Louis disliked the history of architecture, which 
he studied intensively. It was the tendency of the Ecole to study 
the history of architecture as a series of crystallizations called 
"styles" that seemed artificial to him. He preferred to study the 
history of architecture "not merely as a fixation here and there in 
time and place, but as a continuous outpouring never to end, from 
the infinite fertility of man's imagination, evoked by his changing 
needs." There came to him the conviction that the Ecole, perfect 
as it was within the limits of its theory of education, lacked "the 
profound animus of a primal inspiration." "Thus crept over him 
the certitude Jthat the book was about to close; that he was becom- 
ing solitary in his thoughts and heart-hungry, that he must go his 
way alone, that the Paris of his delight must and should remain 
the dream of his delight, that the pang of inevitable parting was at 
hand." 

Louis returned to Chicago. When he arrived the effects of the 
panic of_187^had not wholly passed, and the building industry 
was inactive. He found no immediate employment, and to put in his 
time he made a systematic reconnaissance of the city. Daily he 
made twenty miles or more on foot. Thus he discovered and knew 
the whole city. After a time he obtained a minor position in an 
architect's office, and after this a series of brief engagements in 
other offices, until he had nearly covered the field. Most of his 
employers were men of the older generation, of homely make-up 



48 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

and homely ways, who had little respect for Louis' new-fangled 
foreign education, and for whom he felt much sympathy. He found 
them very human, and enjoyed their shop-talk, which was that of 
the graduate carpenter. During the course of the year 1877 build- 
ing conditions were improving and his engagements in offices grew 
longer. He came to have the reputation of a hard worker and a 
clever draftsman, and he increased his salary somewhat with each 
move. But still he was not satisfied to remain a draftsman. His 
intention was to enter the office of an older architect with an estab- 
lished practice, provided he could find the right man, and to work 
up as rapidly as his industry and his talents would permit to the 
position of a partner in the firm. But the desired opportunity did 
not appear at once. For some three years after his return from 
Paris Louis was a rolling stone. 

Although not definitely located professionally, he used his 
evenings to try to locate himself intellectually. He was consciously 
trying to work out a "Clopet demonstration" for architecture. At 
first he swung to pure engineering. He often saw Frederick Bau- 
mann, an able engineer who had published a paper on A Theory 
of Isolated Pier Foundations in 1873, which was to become the 
basis for standard practice during the eighties and nineties. To- 
gether they discussed engineering problems. Louis made Traut- 
wine's Engineer's Pocket Book his bible, and spent long hours 
with it. The engineering journals kept him in close touch with cur- 
rent doings; he followed every detail of the construction of the 
Eads Bridge over the Mississippi at St. Louis, and the Kentucky 
River Bridge. The chief engineers became his new heroes, and as 
he went into the subject he began to feel that the engineers of the 
day were the only builders who faced a problem squarely. He even 
dreamed for a while of becoming an engineer. 

But his interest in the science of engineering soon developed 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 49 

into a larger interest in science in general. He read much of Dar- 
win, Spencer, Huxley, and Tyndall. In them he found an enormous 
new world opening before him. The scientific method appealed 
to him as a weapon of thought for him to master and apply to the 
solution of his problems in architecture. 

One day his old friend John Edelmann returned from Iowa, 
where he had had a spell of farming during the dull period, and 
found a position in the office of the firm of Burling & Adler. Louis 
met him in Kinsley's restaurant, where the draftsmen from various 
architects' offices habitually lunched and talked shop. Edelmann 
suggested that Louis go over to his office to meet Adler. This was 
the first meeting between Dankmar Adler and his future partner. 
Edelmann and Sullivan "entered the large bare room, drawing 
tables scattered about it; in the center were two plain desks . . . 
both partners were present and busy. Burling was slouched in a 
swivel chair, his long legs covering the desk top; he wiggled a 
chewed cigar as he talked to a caller, and spat into a square box. 
He was an incredible, long and bulky nosed Yankee, perceptibly 
aging fast, and of manifestly weakening will one of the passing 
generation who had done a huge business after the fire but whom 
the panic had hit hard. . . . Further away stood Adler at a drafts- 
man's table. . . . He was a heavy-set short-nosed Jew, well- 
bearded, with a magnificent domed forehead which stopped sud- 
denly at a solid mass of black hair. (Fig. 2 is a photograph of 
Adler taken about 1880.) He was a picture of sturdy strength, 
physical and mental. . . . His broad, serious face, and kindly 
brown, efficient eyes joined in a rich smile of open welcome. It 
did not take many ticks of the clock to note that Adler's brain was 
intensely active and ambitious, his mind open, broad, receptive, 
and of an unusually high order. . . . The talk was brief and 
lively; Adler said nice things, questioned Louis as to his stay at 



50 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

the Beaux Arts. The little talk ended, Louis left; John remained 
in his preserve. This was the last Louis saw of Adler for many 
moons. He was pleased to have met him and to have reason heartily 
to respect his vigorous personality. But he was no part of Louis' 
program, hence he soon faded from view, and became almost com- 
pletely forgotten." 

It was not until about a year later that the two men came together 
again. John Edelmann had in the meantime established a partner- 
ship with George H. Johnson, a pioneer in the use of tile for fire- 
proofing buildings, but he kept in touch with his former employers. 
One day early in 1879 Edelmann sought Louis out to tell him 
that Adler had dissolved his partnership with Burling, and had set 
up independently. Adler had put through the important new 
Central Music Hall, then under construction, and had other jobs 
in the office. Edelmann urged that this was Louis' opportunity. 
Adler, he knew, would welcome a competent designer. 

"So they made a second call on Adler. There ensued a mutual 
sizing-up at close range, very friendly indeed. And it was then 
and there agreed that Louis was to take charge of Adler's office, was 
to have a free hand, and, if all went well for a period and they 
should get along well together, there was something tangible in 
the background. Louis took hold and made things hum. Soon there 
came into the office three large orders; a six-story high grade office 
building the Borden Block; an up-to-date theatre, and a large 
substantial residence. Louis put through the work with the effi- 
ciency of combined Moses Woolson and Beaux Arts training. It 
was his first fine opportunity. He used it. He found in Adler a 
most congenial co-worker, open-minded, generous-minded, quick 
to perceive, thorough-going, warm in his enthusiasms, opening to 
Louis every opportunity to go ahead on his own responsibility, 
posting him on matters of building technique of which he had a 



YOUTH AND TRAINING 51 

complete grasp, and all in all treating Louis as a prize pet. . . . 
Thus they became warm, friends. Adler said one day 'How would 
you like to take me into partnership?' Louis laughed. 6 A11 right/ 
said Adler, 'draw up a contract for five years, beginning first of 
May. First year you one-third, after that even.' Louis drew up a 
brief memorandum on a sheet of office stationery, which Adler 
read over once and signed. On the first day of May, 1880, D. Adler 
and Co. moved into a fine suite of offices on the top floor of the 
Borden Block aforesaid. On the first day of May, 1881, the firm 
of Adler & Sullivan, Architects, had its name on the entrance 
door." Thus after architectural training and experience of nearly 
nine years, Sullivan became at the age of twenty-four a full partner 
in one of the important architectural firms of Chicago. 



1 This and subsequent quotations in this chapter are drawn from The 
Autobiography of an Idea. 

2 Sullivan does not state in The Autobiography of an Idea how long he 
remained at the Ecole, and no other definite source of information on this 
point has been uncovered. Mr. George Elmslie, who worked with him later 
for some twenty years, asserts that he was in Paris "short of two years," 
which would have meant that he came back to Chicago before July, 1876. 



II. EARLY WORKS 



BY 1880 architecture in Chicago and the Middle West generally 
had reached its nadir. The earlier Greek Revival tradition, which 
had produced a reasonably satisfactory vernacular architecture, 
died away shortly after the Civil War. In its place there was no 
tradition, only a clamor of discordant fashions ranging from what 
EL Stewart Leonard has termed "carpenter's frenzy," a St. Vitas' 
dance of spindly lathe-work and jig-saw scrolls, to the slightly 
recognizable "styles" of the professional architects; all were pre- 
tentious, all were romantically historical in intention, and all 
were completely and irremediably bad. Although architects and 
carpenter-builders professed to be designing in historical styles, 
there were none in Chicago with even the scholarship of Richard 
Morris Hunt, whose Vanderbilt House in New York (1879-81) 
in the Early French Renaissance manner at least set a new stand- 
ard of imitation in the East. Nor was there such a powerful creative 
figure as H. H. Richardson. Richardson's "Romanesque" was by 
this time beginning to be a vogue in the East; his Trinity Church 
in Boston had been finished in 1877 and was proving a potent in- 
fluence. But his style had not yet reached Chicago. To be sure, his 
American Merchants' Union Express Building in Chicago, built 
in 1872, had used some Romanesque forms, but it was by no means 
typical of his developed style, which did not reach Chicago until 
he built there in the middle eighties. 

The popular "styles" in Chicago in 1880 were those which give 

52 



EARLY WORKS 53 

the epithets "The Gilded Age" and "The Reign of Terror" their 
justification. Most fashionable, perhaps, was the mansarded French 
Second Empire, a style much corrupted in transmission from the 
Paris of Baron Haussmann. It was a comparatively recent im- 
portation to Chicago, its first important exemplar there (and one 
of the most elaborate in America) being the Palmer House, built 
after the fire by John M. Van Osdel, and famous throughout the 
Middle West for its sumptuous elegance and the silver dollars 
imbedded in the barber-shop floor. Van Osdel had not at that time 
been to Europe, but he easily found every last detail in the monu- 
mental tomes of Cesar Daly's Architecture privee du XIX e siecle, 
published in 1864. His position as the dean of Chicago architects 
(he had been the first professional architect in the city and had 
enjoyed a long and honorable practice there for thirty-five years) 
established the new style as fashionable, and in 1880 it was still 
the cachet of wealth and a position in society. 

The only serious rival was the Victorian Gothic, inherited from 
Pugin's and Scott's revivals of the Gothic in England, confused 
by Butterfield's velleity for Italian polychromy, Italian Gothic 
arches, picturesque roof-lines, pinnacles, chimney-buttresses, and 
other "Gothic" paraphernalia. The Victorian Gothic was perhaps 
the most widespread of any single style, lending itself to all types 
of buildings, public and private. Another style, best known to 
Chicagoans in the Potter Palmer "castle" on the Lake Shore Drive 
(1884) and in the quaint old Water Tower (1869) rising in the 
middle of North Michigan Avenue, is commonly referred to as 
"Castellated Gothic," and properly known as "pure Norman" 
according to the architects who employed it. With rough, quarry- 
faced masonry, rugged walls pierced by small and irregularly- 
placed windows, donjon-tower accents and battlemented parapets, 
the style was fairly popular, especially in penitentiary and armory 



54 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

architecture. Then there was a host of other "styles," such as the 
miraculous Byzantine of Boyington's gaudy Board of Trade Build- 
ing, or the Flemish guild-hall effect of the old Dearborn Street 
Station. Perhaps the quintessence of romantic eclecticism had 
been reached in the previous generation in the Crosby Opera 
House (1865), which an account of 1891 describes as "an Italo- 
Byzantine French Venetian structure with Norman windows," 
adding that it was "the finest building in Chicago in its day." There 
was indeed a babel of tongues. 

On the side of engineering, however, Chicago architecture was 
leading the country. The circumstances of the Great Fire of 1871 
and the difficult soil-conditions combined to force experiments in 
new methods of fireproofing and foundation construction. George 
H. Johnson designed, in the Kendall Building in 1872, the first 
fireproof hollow tile floor construction in the country, and the 
Montauk Building, built by Burnham & Root in 1880-81, was 
the first office building entirely fireproofed in the modern manner, 
with all iron framework sheathed. The difficult problem of making 
foundations strong enough to support high buildings on a com- 
pressible soil was partially solved by Frederick Baumann's in- 
vention of isolated spread-footing foundations in 1873. Burnham 
& Root still further improved foundations for high buildings by 
devising the steel-grillage imbedded in concrete in 1884. Mean- 
time, Major William LeBaron Jenney was making the series of 
experiments in the use of an iron frame which resulted in the epoch- 
making invention of skyscraper construction in the Home Insurance 
Building of 1884. 1 

Chicago had fully recovered from the depression of 1873, and 
the building industry was booming. The offices of Burnham & Root, 
Van Osdel, Jenney, and Boyington were full of commissions, and 
the Loop section of the city was being completely transformed. 



EARLY WORKS 55 

There were still thousands of houses to be built to replace those 
destroyed in the fire, and to accommodate the expanding popula- 
tion of the city. The spirit of growth was in the air. 

It was into this melange of high ambition, practical sense, and 
aesthetic confusion that Sullivan stepped when he began practice 
with Adler in 1880. From the time of their first joint work to the 
undertaking of the Auditorium, they designed some sixty-five 
structures of various types office buildings, factories, theatres, 
residences, etc. 

It was in the office buildings that the most signal advances in 
construction and design were achieved. The engineering problems 
were more difficult than those of residential building, and the op- 
portunities for improvement in design more apparent, to a man 
like Sullivan, than those of either residential or theatre architec- 
ture. The multi-story office building was new; it called for new 
functional arrangements of the interior and for new structural 
methods. What more stimulating than the problem of evolving a 
suitable design to express these new facts? Sullivan writes: "The 
building business was again under full swing, and a series of 
important mercantile structures came into the office, each one of 
which he (Sullivan) treated experimentally, feeling his way 
toward a basic process, a grammar of his own. The immediate 
problem was daylight, the maximum of daylight. This led him to 
use slender piers, tending toward a masonry and iron combination, 
the beginnings of a vertical system. . . . Into the work was slowly 
infiltrated a corresponding system of artistic expression, which ap- 
peared in these structures as novel, and, to some, repellent in its 
total disregard of accepted notions." 2 

The "accepted notions" of office-building design in 1880 may 
be briefly set forth, as it is only thus that the innovations made by 
Adler & Sullivan may be understood. Office buildings at that time 



56 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

were ordinarily three or four stories high. Their walls rested on a 
continuous foundation of considerable weight and depth in 
Chicago, usually extending several feet down to hardpan. Above 
the street level, the wall at the base might be about two and a half 
feet thick for a three-story building, three feet thick for a four- 
story building, somewhat more for a five-story building, and so 
on. The wall of the tallest masonry building in Chicago, the sixteen- 
story Monadnock Block built as late as 1891, is about twelve feet 
thick at the base, Thus for buildings over six or seven stories, a 
great deal of the lot-area was taken up by thick walls, and potential 
space for renting was lost. The floors were usually supported in- 
side the walls by a framework of cast-iron and wrought-iron posts, 
girders, and beams, carrying hollow tile floor arches. The outside 
ends of the floor beams were carried by the brick wall, which might 
be thickened into piers at the points of support. Cast-iron posts 
were sometimes used to reinforce these piers. This type of wall 
construction meant that only relatively small windows could be 
used, and even then the reveals were so deep that much light was 
lost. 

Architecturally,, the building was an envelope, the exterior of 
which was treated in any way that pleased the architect or his 
client. Since the multi-story building was a new problem in design, 
for which there were no satisfactory historical precedents, its 
height became an embarrassment rather than an advantage. Archi- 
tects usually cut it up horizontally by string courses or cornices into 
units of one or two stories, using every device to make a high build- 
ing look like a low one. At the top they capped it with a large 
cornice of galvanized iron of the cheapest construction compatible 
with aesthetic decency, or else a mansard or pitched roof such as 
might be found on a residence. 

Adler & Sullivan did not solve all the problems of construction 



EARLY WORKS 57 

and design in the office building at once. In fact, their best solution 
of the problem did not come until ten years later. But it is interest- 
ing to see how far beyond the standard of the day they advanced in 
the first office building they put up the Borden Block in Chicago. 
(PL 50) It was built 1879-80, completed before May 1, 1880, as 
on that date the firm of D. Adler & Co. moved into a suite of offices 
on its top floor. Adler doubtless accomplished the business arrange- 
ments and supervised the structural engineering, while Sullivan 
did the designing. He was chief draftsman in Adler' s office at the 
time. 

The Borden Block embodied several structural innovations. 
Adler & Sullivan realized that the primary need in office-building 
design was to lighten the walls and to open more window space. 
They accomplished this by strengthening the brick weight-bearing 
piers, thus dividing the wall into a series of bays, reducing the 
thickness of the wall in these bays. The two windows in each bay 
were separated by a cast-iron mullion, giving more light and 
strength than a masonry pier between them would have permitted. 
The lintels over the windows were cast-iron I-beams imbedded in 
the masonry of the piers, carrying spandrel panels of carved stone. 
The structural system of intermittent weight-bearing piers logically 
called for a departure from the old-fashioned continuous founda- 
tion, and the wall-piers were carried on isolated foundations of 
stone carried to a depth of about nine feet. This may have been 
the first example of the use of isolated spread-footings for wall 
support. The late Mr. Paul Mueller, structural engineer who 
worked for years in Adler & Sullivan's office, stated that the Borden 
Block was the first building in Chicago to break away from the 
solid-wall principle, although the first Leiter Building, built by 
William LeBaron Jenney in the same year, may be a rival claim- 
ant, as it is essentially of the same construction. 



58 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

The exterior architectural treatment was quite novel in its day. 
The piers were faced by pilaster-strips 3 carried from bottom to 
top, which served to emphasize the vertical effect of the design. 
Each bay was topped by a semicircular lunette, richly carved, a 
common stylism in Sullivan's buildings of the eighties. The 
spandrels, the entablature over the second story, and panels under 
the top cornice were also carved. The details of Sullivan's early 
ornament can be better studied in later examples, but it will be 
observed that the disposition on non-structural parts, the clear 
bounding of the panels, and the flat surface quality of the orna- 
ment are entirely architectural in governance and feeling. Sullivan 
showed himself still influenced by conventional design in dividing 
the building horizontally into three groups of two stories each by 
the entablature over the second story and the cornice over the 
fourth. These detract from the feeling of vertical continuity that 
the building might have had. The top cornice was simple and of 
no great projection. In comparison with other "high grade" office 
buildings of the day, the Borden Block was dignified and reticent. 

The next building was the Rothschild Store, (PL 1) on West 
Monroe Street, Chicago, built in 1880-81. There is a marked in- 
crease in the amount of window-space in the fagade. In the whole 
width of fifty feet there are only three weight-bearing masonry 
piers, dividing the fagade into two wide bays. Each bay has three 
large windows, and the slender mullions separating them, as well 
as the spandrels between floors, are of cast-iron. Except for the 
three piers, it is entirely a cast-iron front The "beginnings of a 
vertical system" are here clearly apparent: the window mullions 
have unbroken vertical continuity from the second floor to the top. 
The floor-levels are marked on the piers, however, by applied 
ornament. 

The efflorescence of cast-iron ornament at the top is arresting, 



EARLY WORKS 59 

It is totally unlike Sullivan's later ornament in buildings from the 
Auditorium on, and rather difficult to analyze. It is not in any 
sense historical ornament, but it seems derived from the Egyptian 
style more closely than anything else. There are reminiscences of 
the lotus and the palmette, and small wheel-like projections re- 
sembling the seed-pod of the lotus. There are corrugated spirals not 
unlike certain sea-shells, and other shell-like and flower-like forms. 
The general appearance is rather brittle and spiky, and certain de- 
tails project strongly. The growth of one motive into another at the 
top of the piers in a continuous development is worthy of note. 
This type of ornament occurs in most of Sullivan's buildings of the 
early eighties, dying out after 1884. Its origin may be sought in 
his friendship with John Edelmann, begun eight years before in 
Jenney's office, and ripened after his return from Paris. Sullivan 
was twenty-four now; Edelmann thirty-two. That Edelmann had a 
somewhat romantic flair for the Egyptian we can guess from his 
giving the name "Lotus Club" to his summer-outing retreat on the 
Calumet River; certainly his ornament, such as that on the stair rails 
and elevator grilles in the Pullman Building in Chicago (done 
when he was a draftsman in S. S. Beman's office) employs Egyp- 
toid forms, and although it is less brittle than Sullivan's, there 
seems little doubt that Edelmann influenced Sullivan considerably 
during these early years. 

From 1881 to 1886 Adler & Sullivan designed four office build- 
ings in Chicago for Martin Ryerson. Three of these are still stand- 
ing; the fourth, built in 1886, was demolished several years ago. 
The first of the series, at Wabash Avenue and Adams Street, was 
for years occupied by the Alexander H. Revell Furniture Com- 
pany, and is commonly known as the Revell Building. (PL 2) It 
was begun in 1881 and finished in 1883. The two lower stories were 
completely modernized in 1929. It was a large, solidly built, fire- 



60 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

proof structure, and the biggest commission obtained by the firm 
before the Auditorium, costing over $320,000. The interior con- 
struction was of iron columns and girders sheathed in a new fire- 
proof building material obtained from Peter B. Wight. According 
to Sullivan, the fireproofing of the structure added between 
$60,000 and $75,000 to the cost. 4 The exterior design shows no 
marked changes from the scheme of the Rothschild Store. Since it 
has a wider frontage, it is divided into more units. Vertical lines of 
windows are embraced by projecting piers of brick and stone, and 
between them are bays of triple-windows, slightly recessed, the 
spandrels and mullions being of cast-iron, a partial anticipation of 
skyscraper construction. The south fagade, being wider than the 
west, has a somewhat more complex division. The ornamental de- 
tail of the attic is similar to that of the Rothschild Store, but more 
clearly confined in panels. The small pediments and fan-like pro- 
jections against the skyline are unusual features. The fagade as a 
whole is original in its details, and the one-one-three-one disposi- 
tion of the stories suggests the later development into a base-shaft- 
capital ordinance, but the vertical division into projecting pavilions 
and receding bays shows the influence of conventional design. 

A second structure built for Martin Ryerson, in 1881-82, is 
known as the "Jewelers' Building." It is much smaller than the 
Revell Building, with five stories and a frontage of only sixty feet, 
but is essentially the same in its interior iron construction and its 
exterior design. The decorative panels of the attic and the top 
cornice are much more sober and restrained than in the Revell 
Building. 

The third extant structure built for Martin Ryerson is a six-story 
office building on East Randolph Street, built in 1884. (PL 3) 
The front is divided into three bays by masonry piers, carrying an 
armature of iron and glass. Although the organization is logical, 



EARLY WORKS 61 

and a great deal of light is admitted into the interior by the expanse 
of glass, it is the least successful of Sullivan's attempts to evolve a 
new grammar of ornament. The forms are the Egyptoid motives 
employed on the Rothschild Store and other early buildings, but 
are unskilful and redundant. There is a curious exotic quality, 
notably in the heavy squat pillars of the lower story which suggest 
an Aztec origin, and in the flare of the masonry piers as they spread 
into the window-space of the fifth story. The decoration of the cen- 
tral piers and of the heavy flat lintel under the top story, the strange 
baluster-like mullions separating the top windows, and the cor- 
rugation of the fagade through the projecting oriels all contribute 
to a flickering disruption of the surface which endows it with an 
impressionistic texture but robs it of surface continuity. 

The Troescher Building in Chicago (now the Daily Times Build- 
ing) is much more direct and successful. (PI. 4) Built the same 
year as the Ryerson Building on Randolph Street, and of compar- 
able size and cost, it offers an interesting contrast in treatment. 
Instead of the clumsy columns at the lower story, the fagade is 
carried on small rectangular piers with simple capitals and four 
semi-elliptical arches of slightly rusticated brownstone. Rising 
from this as a base are five slender piers of brick, undecorated, and 
uninterrupted through the four middle stories. Their projection 
emphasizes the verticality. Three windows in each bay, separated 
only by iron mullions, admit the maximum amount of light, 
equivalent to the amount of window-space possible in metal-skele- 
ton construction. In fact, the use of eight-inch iron I-beams as 
lintels resting from pier to pier to support the spandrels over these 
windows constitutes the essential element in skyscraper construc- 
tion, here not complete because there are no iron supporting 
columns in the piers. Only the spandrels between the second and 
third stories are decorated with terra cotta panels. The top story is 



62 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

distinguished from the uniform treatment of the others by the use 
of colonet-forms as mullions, and lunettes embellished with terra 
cotta reliefs. It is noteworthy that although the same ornamental 
motives are employed, they are given less individual prominence 
and are woven into more geometrical compositions than in the 
Ryerson Building, and are more clearly subjected to the aim of 
architectonic clarity. The Troescher Building was the most concise 
solution of the office-building problem achieved by Adler & Sulli- 
van through the middle eighties, and still has an air of unity and 
directness which contrasts strongly with its contemporary neighbors 
on Market Street. The transom windows at the top of the two middle 
bays increase the amount of available light in a top-story drafting- 
room, also lighted by skylights. 

In 1886 two office buildings were erected by Adler & Sullivan: 
a small and inexpensive five-story structure built for Ferdinand 
W. Peck at the corner of LaSalle and Water Streets, demolished 
when the Wacker Drive development was put through; and a larger 
office building at 318 West Adams for Martin Ryerson, which for 
years served as the Martin Ryerson Charities Trust Building, but 
which was eventually demolished for the erection of a larger sky- 
scraper. 

The next office building, and the last both chronologically and 
stylistically before the era of the Auditorium, was the Dexter 
Building on South Wabash Avenue. (PL 5) It was a six-story 
structure built in 1887. A logical outgrowth of the Troescher Build- 
ing, with which it may be closely compared, the Dexter Building 
represents the end-point of the style-development of the early and 
middle eighties. Entirely different from the Auditorium, which 
was under way during the year in which this was completed, it 
shows no trace of Richardson's influence, nor of the characteristic 
leaf-ornament which Sullivan developed during the next decade. 



EARLY WORKS 63 

On the other hand, it is an entirely mature work, rigorously thought 
through. Sullivan has here finally eliminated the Egyptoid orna- 
mental forms of the earlier buildings, and attained a new simplic- 
ity and monumentally growing directly out of the problems of the 
commercial office building. Doubtless he was influenced toward 
simplicity by his experience in factory designing in the preceding 
years, but also by the clarification of his ideas and the beginnings 
of the formation of his architectural credo, which may be placed 
at about 1885 or 1886. The conflict between realistic structure and 
romantic ornament is here eliminated through the virtual abandon- 
ment of ornament, and the growth in its place of a purely structural 
monumentally. This represents a clear-cut step beyond which 
Sullivan, if he had possessed less creative fertility, might never 
have progressed, and indeed a step beyond which most of his lesser 
contemporaries never went. During the next decade, however, 
stimulated by the difference in structural nature between the 
masonry and the metal skeleton building, and by the growth of a 
new conception of ornament, Sullivan progressed toward new and 
entirely different achievements in his mature style. The Dexter 
Building represents both the culmination of the old and the wiping 
clean of the slate in preparation for the new, and is thus a signifi- 
cant monument in Sullivan's development. 

Like other Chicago architects of the eighties, Adler & Sullivan 
were called upon to, do almost as many factories and warehouses 
as office buildings. The expansion of the city was industrial as well 
as commercial, and although the usual practice was to hire an 
engineer to design an industrial building, commissions were often 
given to architects accustomed to a more polite practice. There 
was, perhaps, less distinction between the architect and the engineer 
in those days than at present, and this was especially true in the 



64 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

boom days after the fire in Chicago. Although the disparaging 
critic might point out that monumental architecture was often no 
better than industrial building, the comparison works both ways, 
and it is worth remarking that the distinguishing quality of Chicago 
architecture during the eighties and nineties was a forthright 
simplicity and bareness which may be attributed largely to its close 
relationship to industrial architecture. Structures such as the 
Monadnock Building, of 1891, mark the dawn of an "engineer's 
aesthetic" long before Le Corbusier thought of the phrase, and 
critics as different as Montgomery Schuyler and Paul Bourget were 
quick to remark on the superiority of Chicago's achievements over 
those of New York in advancing toward a truly modern architec- 
ture. 

Of the ten or a dozen factory structures designed by Adler & 
Sullivan in the eighties, none is of especial note, with the single 
exception of the Walker Warehouse built in 1888-89, after the 
Auditorium. Their average cost was less than six cents a cubic foot, 
and although some of them have a dignified simplicity, it was 
doubtless a simplicity of necessity rather than of choice. They do 
not seem to have influenced the design of other types of buildings, 
with the possible exception of the Dexter Building, mentioned 
above. Although it is commonly believed that Sullivan's whole 
philosophy of architecture was a kind of mechanistic functional- 
ism, he actually insisted on the infusion of a degree of emotional 
expression which was quite impossible in these factory buildings, 
and certainly his taste for ornament was incapable of satisfaction 
in brick boxes costing less than six cents a cubic foot. For these 
reasons the factory buildings and warehouses of Adler & Sullivan, 
although often impressive, do not seem of great significance in the 
formation of Sullivan's style. 

The Kniseley Building in Chicago, built in 1884, may be taken 



EARLY WORKS 65 

as an example. (PL 6) The plain brick wall is given variety and 
vertical emphasis by the projecting piers between the windows, and 
the recessing of the arched central bay creates an effective accent. 
Without the exterior fire-escape and the partial top story, added 
after the original construction, the fagade must have been a very 
satisfactory one. 

*The most impressive factory building designed by Adler & 
Sullivan is the first unit of the large Selz, Schwab & Company Shoe 
Factory in Chicago, built in 1886-87. (PI. 7) Built at a cost of five 
and a half cents a cubic foot, it is utterly simple, and achieves its 
effectiveness through its very economy. The scheme followed is the 
same as that of the Kniseley Building, with the bays widened to 
include two windows each, and the piers between windows both 
wider and deeper. The verticals of the piers dominate the composi- 
tion, being carried unbroken from bottom to top, and there is not 
even a projecting cornice. The horizontal floor lines are clearly 
indicated by the white stone sills of the windows, but these are 
suppressed behind the piers. The stark angularity of the building is 
relieved by the graceful tapering of the piers. The structure of the 
building calls for thicker walls at the base than at the top, and this 
thickening is accomplished in the exterior piers rather than inside; 
the projection of the piers is greatest at the bottom, and the reveals 
are gradually diminished in the upper stories. The window-head- 
ings, instead of being hard horizontal lines, are slightly curved 
segmental arches. These features give the building a movement and 
grace which somewhat mitigate its austerity, and the result is quite 
comparable to the more lofty Monadnock Building built four years 
later by Burnham & Rooty/ 

In the special field of theatre design Adler & Sullivan early ac- 
quired a reputation. Some ten theatres were designed during the 



66 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

years from 1880 to 1891, the greatest of which was the Auditorium. 
The reputation of the firm was based largely on Adler's unique 
knowledge of acoustics, his talent in engineering, and his ability 
in planning an efficient complex of seats, corridors, and public 
spaces. The Central Music Hall, built by Adler in 1879, was a 
great success and it brought other commissions to the firm in the 
following years, several of which were for remodelling older 
theatres. 

The first of these was the remodelling of the Grand Opera House 
for William Borden in 1880. The remodelling, which cost $55,000, 
was completed in September. Although Adler was responsible for 
the general lay-out, undoubtedly Sullivan did much of the design- 
ing. There is no available information on the appearance of the 
proscenium and stage after this remodelling, but an old photograph 
of the auditorium shows two curved balconies and a species of 
coved ceiling similar in general arrangement to that of the Central 
Music Hall. The sight-lines and acoustics of the building were 
much admired, and the general plan remained in effect through 
many later remodellings of entrances, stage boxes, and decora- 
tions. Sullivan writes: "The Grand Opera House was immediately 
a great success. It was quite a luxurious theatre for that day, and 
quite a wonder in its architecture." 5 

Adler & Sullivan remodelled "Hooley's Theatre," Chicago, in 
1884-85. Both the Grand Opera House and Hooley's Theatre have 
been known under several other names, and there has consequently 
been much confusion in accounts of these two buildings, but since 
the former was completely rebuilt in 1925, and the latter de- 
molished in 1923, this need not concern us greatly. No photographs 
of Adler & Sullivan's work on Hooley's Theatre have been found, 
but from descriptions we know that the proscenium boxes were 
made of cast-iron, decorated in gold and bronze colors. 



EARLY WORKS 67 

A third remodelling job was done by Adler & Sullivan on the 
McVicker's Theatre in 1885. The building dated from 1872, and 
this work, on which $95,000 was spent, was almost entirely de- 
stroyed in a serious fire in 1890, despite the supposedly fire- 
resistant construction. Sullivan wrote of it many years later. "At 
that time, I believe, was made the first decorative use of the electric 
lamp. It was a little innovation of my own, that of placing the 
lamps in a decoration instead of clustering them in fixtures, but 
even then the installation of an electric lighting system was primi- 
tive to the last degree. The wires were bedded in plaster; the light- 
ing conduit not being known. The dynamos were run by little 
primitive engines." The decorative use of the electric lamp is of 
interest, as Sullivan developed this motive very successfully in the 
Auditorium a few years later. 

The great forerunner of the Auditorium, however, was the 
temporary opera house built within the huge barn-like Interstate 
Exposition Building in Grant Park. The Exposition Building, 
built in 1873 by W. W. Boyington, was used for fairs and exhibi- 
tions, and had housed the Republican Conventions in 1880 and 
1884. It was standing empty, and in the winter of 1885 Messrs. 
N. K. Fairbank and Ferdinand W. Peck, two of the city's most 
influential citizens, conceived the idea of remodelling it for an 
opera festival. Ferdinand Peck approached Adler for assistance 
on the architectural problem. It was decided that a temporary 
structure of wood, housed within the extant building, could be 
built at a reasonable cost. But since the opera festival was sched- 
uled to last only two weeks, an enormous number of seats had to 
be provided. A vast auditorium, to seat 6,200 persons, was planned 
to fit within the shell of the old building. Work was begun in 
February, with armies of men employed to shovel away huge banks 
of snow and to team in great quantities of lumber; carpenters and 



68 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

decorators swarmed through the noisy interior, and by April 1st 
the new Grand Opera House was ready. (Fig. 3) 

The auditorium was fan-shaped in plan, with aisles radiating 
out from the proscenium. Nearest the stage was the parquet, seat- 
ing 2,238 persons; back of this and elevated slightly above it was 
the dress-circle, seating 1,486, curving backward in the center. 
Projecting over it some twenty-five feet was the main balcony, for 
1,824 persons, with a rise of thirty feet toward the rear. From 
the proscenium two lines of boxes on each side, with bowed-out 
fronts, and each with its own entrance from a lobby, extended out- 
ward to meet small dress balconies extending back to the main 
balcony; boxes and dress balconies seating 652 persons. This made 
a total of 6,200 seats, about 2,000 more than were later provided 
for in the permanent structure of the Auditorium Theatre. 

The stage at the north end of the building, eighty feet deep and 
one hundred and twenty feet wide, was one of the largest in the 
country. It was completely fitted out for scene-shifting, with a 
rigging-loft sixty feet above the floor, numerous fly-galleries and 
traps. Dressing-rooms were provided on each side, a musicians' 
room beneath it, and rooms for the chorus in the rear. The stage 
opening was sixty feet wide, topped by an arch curving up to a 
height of forty feet. The stage floor projected twenty feet in front 
of the curtain line, and above it a sloping ceiling, expanding out- 
ward and extending eighty feet over the auditorium, formed an 
immense sounding-board, which afforded such perfect acoustic 
properties that the singing could be heard in full volume and 
purity from every seat in the immense house. "The effect was thrill- 
ing. An audience of 6,200 persons saw and heard; saw in a clear 
line of vision; heard, even to the faintest pianissimo. No reverbera- 
tion, no echo the clear untarnished tone, of voice and instrument, 
reached all." T 



70 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

In addition to the stage and auditorium, the necessary lobbies, 
corridors, dressing-rooms, promenades, salons, and carriage en- 
trances were provided for. The auditorium and stage were bril- 
liantly lighted by seven thousand gas jets. An article in the Chicago 
Tribune of March 1st, 1885, says: "The grand promenade will be 
beautifully adorned with evergreens, plants, pictures, statuary, 
mirrors, etc. The grand salon will be elegantly arranged, and the 
audience will be privileged to leave the seats between acts and 
enjoy the relief of promenading, refreshments, and social inter- 
course." The advertisements of the opera festival are amusing 
reflections of the era: "April 6 Two Weeks Only! First Chicago 
Grand Opera Festival. Under the Auspices of the Chicago Opera 
Festival Association. The Greatest Musical Event in the History of 
Chicago! Special Notice: The Grand Opera Hall will be thoroughly 
warmed by Steam, furnished with Elegant Opera Chairs by the 
American Store Stool Company, and brilliantly lighted. Madame 
Adelina Patti's Farewell Appearance in America, with many other 
notables, including tenori, baritoni, and bassi. The repertoire will 
include the following favorite operas, presenting a pleasing variety 
from the German, Italian, and French Masters to gratify all tastes: 
Lohengrin, Der Freischutz, A'ida, Mirella (first time), Luida di 
Chamouni, PAfricaine, Semiramide, Faust, Martha, I Puritani, 
Lucia di Lammermoor, and La Traviata." 

The opera festival was a great success. It demonstrated that the 
Chicago public was interested in grand opera, that it was possible 
to seat a huge audience so that all might see and hear, and it gave 
birth to Ferdinand Peck's dream of a great permanent opera house 
for Chicago. The very great similarity in the general lay-out of the 
Exposition Opera Hall and the later Auditorium Theatre indicates 
that the experience of Adler & Sullivan in designing the temporary 
structure stood them in good stead in their greatest commission, 



EARLY WORKS 71 

and undoubtedly was the chief reason for their selection as the 
architects of the Auditorium. The old Exposition Building was 
demolished in 1892, and* the present Art Institute erected on the 
site. 

Almost half the total number of buildings designed by Adler & 
Sullivan between 1880 and 1887 were residences. The building list 
given in the appendix names thirty. On the whole, the residences 
show less difference from the contemporary average than do the 
office buildings. Perhaps this may be explained by the fact that 
they offered a less novel problem, a problem in which functional 
and structural articulations were traditionally established, and 
therefore afforded less striking need for changes in design. Of 
course the style of Adler & Sullivan houses is readily distinguish- 
able from that of other contemporary architects, as the ornamental 
motives are quite unique. But the use of ornament and the general 
composition is entirely in accord with the aesthetic of the early 
eighties. The picturesque is increasingly the dominant quality. 
Fagades are broken by oriels and bays, roofs have pavilions or 
cupolas, and the skyline silhouette is often quite fantastic. Orna- 
ment in cast-iron or terra cotta is freely used in panels or along 
cornice lines. The general effect is of broken surfaces, rich texture, 
and irregular outline, impressionistic in character. 

The first residence by the firm was built for John Borden on 

j \ 

Lake Park Avenue in Chicago in 1880. (PL 8) This is probably 
the "large substantial residence" mentioned by Sullivan 8 as one 
of the three commissions which came into the office shortly after his 
arrival. The house' is a three-story structure, soundly built, and is 
still standing. It might be almost any solid residence of the day, 
with the tall, narrow windows, the prominent chimneys, the color 
contrast of red brick and white stone trim, and the mansard roof 



72 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

popular in Chicago in 1880. But the inset panels above the second- 
story windows, and an astonishing efflorescence of Sullivanesque 
ornament on a pavilion roof in the middle of the south side, betray 
the individuality of the architect. The slight projection and simple 
treatment of the dormers, and the subtly tapered tops of the high 
chimneys do much to create a feeling of compact density in the 
mass as a whole. 

Quite in contrast to the dignified solidity of the Borden house, a 
very small house on West Chicago Avenue (PL 9) shows the only 
instance of an apparent effort on Sullivan's part to carry over the 
open construction and vertical design of the early office buildings 
into domestic architecture. It is highly original, and without the 
"Cozy Hand Laundry" now installed in a basement addition, must 
have been highly effective. The wall-surface is plaster, grooved to 
simulate masonry. This smooth surface is broken by incised orna- 
mental patterns and the projecting piers topped by spreading 
lotus-flower caps. The lunettes of the top-story windows are left 
bare. The most arresting feature of the fagade is the triple window 
bay extending through the two lower stories. The windows are 
separated by slender iron mullions like double reeds, and recessed 
spandrel panels, also of iron. This is clearly an adaptation of the 
scheme of the Rothschild Store to a smaller building, and its suc- 
cess makes one wonder why Sullivan never attempted it in another 
residence. The calculated asymmetry of the fagade is worthy of 
note. 

Adler & Sullivan did several small and inexpensive residences 
and flat-buildings for Mr. Max M. Rothschild during the early 
eighties. Of these, the most interesting is a three-family house on 
Indiana Avenue, Chicago, built in 1883. (PL 10) Although cer- 
tainly not distinguished, its effect is gained solely through archi- 
tectural forms rather than ornamental details. The grouping of 



EARLY WORKS 73 

three stories of windows under large arches reminds one of the 
later Walker Warehouse, except that here there is no suggestion 
of a structural articulation of the fagade: it is merely a flat surface 
pattern. The smooth surface, the proportions of the openings, and 
the cornice all suggest a carry-over into Sullivan's work of the 
Greek Revival tradition of a few decades earlier, but this is re- 
duced to a composition of the elementary architectural forms, the 
pier, the lintel, and the arch. 

In the latter part of 1883 and in 1884 the style of Adler & Sul- 
livan residences reaches the apogee of its impressionistic disinte- 
gration of volume and emphasis on brilliant, not to say florid sur- 
face ornament. The houses of these years are almost identical in 
feeling to the Ryerson Building on Randolph Street. Late in 1883 
came two adjacent residences built for Morris Selz and Charles H. 
Schwab on Michigan Avenue. They have since been remodelled 
and most of the ornate roof-cresting removed, but originally they 
must have presented a most elaborate aspect, with the mass much 
broken by bay-windows, mansards and dormers, and adorned by 
brittle fans and wheels, conventionalized lotus-flowers, and heavy 
forms like grotesque masks along the roof-cresting. They seem to 
represent a conscious, if unsuccessful, striving for originality. 

Much the same quality can be found in the Barbe residence on 
Prairie Avenue and the Strauss residence on Wabash Avenue, both 
built in 1884. One new decorative motive popular in residences of 
the eighties occurs in the Barbe residence: a kind of stylized half- 
timber work in the gable of a projecting bay. This was often exe- 
cuted in cast-iron or terra cotta, rather than in wood. The Strauss 
residence has in its largest and clearest form a decorative motive 
of which Sullivan seems to have been very fond: what may be 
termed, for lack of a better name, a caduceus-motive, as its curious 
form suggests more than anything else the snakes curling around 



74 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

the wand of Hermes. Sullivan used it repeatedly in the buildings of 

the eighties. 

A marked sobering down of the style becomes apparent in the 
houses of 1885 and 1886. This is notably true of the Lindauer resi- 
dence on Wabash Avenue, built in 1885. This has a fagade of 
rusticated masonry, a bold mass, and very little ornamental detail. 
A large tower projects from one corner of the fagade, is carried 
above it to three full stories, and is capped by a pyramidal roof. 
The main roof slopes inward more than a typical mansard, and the 
large dormer with segmental pediment is unique for Adler & Sul- 
livan. In mass, it has much the quality of large solidity that char- 
acterized the Borden residence; in detail it represents the same 
sobering down from the ornateness of 1883 and 1884 that is found 
in the Troescher Building and the Dexter Building. The Goodman 
residence on Wabash Avenue, built in 188586, shows the same 
trend toward simplification and elimination of ornament. The brick 
wall with angle quoins regains an effect of integrated mass, and 
the mansard roof, although retaining some ornamental features, is 
less picturesquely conceived. 

In the year 1885-86, Dankmar Adler built three small houses 
on Ellis Avenue as residences for himself, his mother-in-law Mrs. 
Abraham Kohn, and Mr. Eli B. Felsenthal. (Fig. 4) Although some- 
what remodelled, they are still standing. Smaller and less pre- 
tentious, these houses are still picturesquely conceived but are far 
more successful than those of the previous years. The other houses 
of the eighties do not merit individual mention. 

Brief mention, however, should be made of two of the miscel- 
laneous structures of the period 1880-87, which include a library, 
a schoolhouse, a synagogue, a clubhouse, and two small railroad 
stations. One of these was the Zion Temple, at Washington Street 




^*T*^' 

- ~^^^ 



V* 



Figure 4. Residences of Dila Kohn, Dankmar Adler and Eli B. 
Felsenthal, Chicago. 1885-86. (From Building Budget.} 



76 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

and Ogden Avenue, Chicago, built in 1884-85. A brief account of 
this building, published in 1891, describes it as follows: "The 
Moresque style was adopted for this building, and the contractor, 
with the aid of Adler & Sullivan and of the pressed-brick and terra 
cotta manufacturers, gave to that, section of the city its best speci- 
men of Spanish architecture, as it was known in the days of the 
occupation of Spain by the Moors." One is curious to know what 
the other "specimens" may have looked like; judging from a draw- 
ing made before the building was destroyed that section of the city 
must have presented a gala appearance. One is also curious to know 
just how much of the design of the building was due to the pressed- 
brick and terra cotta manufacturers and the clients, and how much 
to Adler & Sullivan. If they indeed had any important part in it, it 
is the only example in their work of an intent to design in an his- 
torical style. That style, needless to remark, was only remotely 
Islamic, and rather more directly an expression of American 
popular taste in the 188(Fs. The building was destroyed by fire in 
1930. 

The West Chicago Club, on Throop Street, was built in 1886. 
(PL 11) It is of brick, with stone and terra cotta trim, and similar 
to the residences in general appearance. The projecting bay over 
the entrance is a striking feature, with its central mullion like three 
attenuated lotus-stems bearing seed-pods, its flat spandrel panel 
decorated by interlaced circles, and the "half-timber" motive in 
the gable. 

All told, it must be admitted that Sullivan's buildings of the 
eighties (at least, all those prioV to the Auditorium and the Walker 
Warehouse) have more interest to the historian than to the critic of 
modern architecture. In their picturesqueness, their use of elabo- 
rate ornament, their striving for individuality, they represent their 



generation ; they seem to bear little if any relation to modern archi- 
tectufe. Yet^e*4aia things about them are worthy of note. The office 
buildings and theatres and factories, especially, reveal not only an 
advanced krbwledge of such technical matters as foundations, iron 
construction! and fireproofing, but a disposition to regard these 
things as of architectural importance. As Sullivan himself wrote, 
he was treating these new problems experimentally, "feeling his 
way toward a basic process, a grammar of his own." jfarl the use of a 
masonry-and-iron combination to admit the maximum amount of 
light to the interiors of office buildings he was/not only recognizing 
the importance of function putting firstinings first but recog- 
nizing that his architectural expression must depend on and grow 

out of the structural form rather than deny it. This was a kind of 

/ 

hard realism, of architectural pdmmon-sense, that was rare indeed 
in the decade of the eighties/ 



Sullivan's early ornament doe: 
tectural expression with complet< 
in the right direction. In attemj 
beauty he was not content to bo] 



not carry through his basic archi- 
success, but at least it was aimed 
ting to endow his buildings with 
ow past forms of beauty, such as 



historical ornament, but attempted to devise a new vocabulary of 
ornamental forms. The Egyptoid forms (if so they can be de- 
scribed) which he employed were by no means imitative, nor, it 
must be admitted, were tl/ey entirely successful. But this is not 
surprising; for many generations there had been little or no de- 
velopment of a modern architectural ornament, and one man could 
hardly be expected to dp the creative work of a century overnight. 
Sullivan's use of ornament was very largely conditioned by the 
aesthetic of his generation; hisVwhole experience of architecture 
had been that ornament was something applied to a building rather 
lavishly to make it look picturesquf and expensive. This he could 
not at once foi^jet. The extent of his originality was limited, and 



78 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

for a time he used new ornament in old ways. But already in 1886 
he was feeling his way toward wiping clean the slate, and in such 
structures as the Dexter Building he was beginning, like Cezanne, 
to return to fundamentals and to become the primitive of his own 
way. 

The years from 1880 to 1886 w^re the formative period in 
Sullivan's development. But even J^iough he had not yet arrived 
at his most productive years, hi/ influence was being felt. Few 
American architects were known in Europe at that time, but as 
early as 1883, when Sullivan/was only twenty-six, some of his de- 
signs for an exhibition of silver work in Chicago were.commented 
on favorably in the Parisian journal Arts Decoratif$, l( /and in 1885 
his first essay, an address on "Characteristics and Tendencies of 
American Architecture," read before a convention of the Western 
Association of Architects in St. Louis, was published in full, with 
laudatory comments, in "The Builders' Weekly Reporter" of Lon- 
don. 11 By 1886, Sullivan's thirtieth year, his ideas concerning 
architecture were clearly formulated, and destined to become the 
strongest single factor in the development of a modern system of 
thinking about architecture. The first public exposition of these 
ideas in this country occurred in the famous "Inspiration" address, 
read before the Third Annual Convention of the Western Associa- 
tion of Architects in Chicago on November 17, 1886. Sullivan was 
ready to enter the period of his* greatest achievements. 



1 A recent article by E. M. Upjohn makes an admirable analysis of 
Leroy S. Buffington's claim to the invention of the skyscraper. This demon- 
strates conclusively that Buffington antedated Jenney in theory, having a 
clear conception of the principle of skyscraper construction and many of 
its practical potentialities as early as 1&82. Since he did not build one, 
Jenney still has the distinction of the first application of the idea. See 



EARLY WORKS 79 

E. M. Upjohn: "Buffington and the Skyscraper," Art Bulletin, vol. XVII, 
no. 1, March, 1935. 

2 Autobiography, p. 258. 

3 From the very beginning, Sullivan modified traditional elements of 
design so that such terms as "pilaster," "entablature," "cornice," etc., are 
not strictly applicable. His forms are not historical, and they vary from 
building to building. But since we have no other vocabulary to apply to 
them, the terms will be used with the understanding that they only loosely 
describe these forms. 

4 Sullivan: "Development of Construction," The Economist, vol. 55, 
no. 26, p. 1252, June 24, 1916. 

5 Sullivan : "Development of Construction," The Economist, vol. 55, 
no. 26, p. 1252, June 24, 1916. 

6 Sullivan : "Development of Construction," The Economist, vol. 55, 
no. 26, p. 1252, June 24, 1916. 

7 Autobiography, p. 293. 

8 Autobiography, p. 256. 

9 Industrial Chicago, p. 267. 

10 A. D. F. Hamlin: "L'Art Nouveau," The Craftsman, vol. Ill, p. 129. 

11 Inland Architect and Builder, vol. 7, p. 6, February, 1886. 



III. THE AUDITORIUM 



WHEN the Auditorium commission came into the office, Dankmar 
Adler was forty-two years old, Louis Sullivan was thirty. Both 
men were at the height of their powers. It is interesting to attempt 
a description of how they looked and worked, their personal char- 
acteristics, and their relations with each other. For this we must 
draw largely on the writings of their contemporaries and pupils. 
One of the most vivid pictures is contained in the pages of Frank 
Lloyd Wright's Autobiography, from which I quote ad lib. 

"What was Dankmar Adler like? Just before noon he opened 
the same door from which Mr. Sullivan had entered. A personality, 
short-built and heavy, like an old Byzantine church . . . one to 
inspire others with confidence in his power at once. I felt com- 
forted. He walked with deliberate, heavy-legged, flat-footed steps 
over to Mueller's desk, talking to him. The while his deep bass 
voice rumbled, he went about with his hands stuck under his coat- 
tails, looking at drawings, a word of greeting occasionally. He 
would sit and make suggestions in a fatherly sort of way. He got 
to me. Looked at me pleasantly from his deep-set eyes under the 
bushy brows. 6 Hello! Sullivan's new man?' 6 Yes, sir!' He sat down 
on the stool I had vacated to stand up to him. As he put one leg 
over the other I noticed his enormous mannish feet. They spread 
flat like the foundations for some heavy building. 'Sullivan needs 
help, Wright. It's difficult to find anyone to catch on to what he 
wants. I hope you will succeed!' He got up abruptly almost as soon 

80 



THE AUDITORIUM 81 

as he had sat down and, as though suddenly remembering some- 
thing, he went heavily out among the draughting tables like a barge 
making its way between river craft. . . . Dankmar Adler had 
been an Army engineer. He commanded the confidence of con- 
tractor and client alike. His handling of both was masterful. . . . 
He was a good planner, a good critic, but all for Sullivan. He always 
called him 'Sullivan,' never 'Louis.' In Sullivan's genius Adler had 
implicit confidence." It may be remarked that all the office staff 
from Sullivan, Wright, Elmslie, and Mueller down to the lowest 
office cub always referred to Adler with respect and affection as 
the "Big Chief." 

Louis Sullivan was different. Decided and unyielding, he could 
be extremely arrogant toward some, affable and pleasant toward 
others. Wright's first morning in the office gives us a good picture: 
"About 10: 30 the door opened. Mr. Sullivan walked slowly in 
with a haughty air, a handkerchief to his nose. Paying no attention 
to anyone. No 'good mornings.' No words of greeting as he went 
from desk to desk. Saw me waiting for him. Came forward at once 
with a pleasant 'Ah! Wright, there you are,' and the office had my 
name. And evidently, in Sullivan's unusually pleasant address, 
also my 'number.' 'Here,' lifting a board by my table, 'Take this 
drawing of mine, a duffer I fired Saturday spoiled it. Redraw it 
and ink it in.' And they all knew what I was there for. He wandered 
about some more in a haughty sort of way. . . . The Master's 
very walk at this time bore dangerous resemblance to a strut. 1 He 
had no respect whatever for a draughtsman, as he more than once 
confided to me in later years. Nor, so far as I could see, respect 
for anyone else except the Big Chief Dankmar Adler whom he 
trusted and loved. And also Paul Mueller. ... But I had from 
the first seen a different side of him, as I felt I would. He always 
loved to talk and I would often stay after dark in the offices in the 



82 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

upper stories of the great tower of the Auditorium looking out over 
Lake Michigan, or over the lighted City. Sometimes he would keep 
on talking, seeming to have forgotten me keep on until late at 
night. ... I believe the Master used to talk to rne to express his 
own feelings and thoughts, regardless, forgetting me often. . . . 
He was absorbed in what seemed extravagant worship of Wagner 
at the time, which I could not share, but which I could understand. 
. . . He would often try to sing the leitmotifs for me and describe 
the scenes to which they belonged as he sat at my drawing board. 
He adored Whitman, as I did. And, explain it as you can, was deep 
in Herbert Spencer. Spencer's 'Synthetic Philosophy' he gave me 
to take home and read. . . . The deep quiet of his temper had 
great charm for me. The rich humor that was lurking in the deeps 
within him and that sat in his eyes whatever his mouth might be 
saying, however earnest the moment might be, was rich and rare 
in human quality." 

George Elmslie, the most faithful friend of Sullivan, and one 
of his most talented disciples, entered the office in 1889, and re- 
j mained with him for twenty years. Elmslie writes of him: "Sullivan 
was a faithful worker, a tireless thinker, an extraordinary talker; 
wherever he sat was the head of the table. That was easy to see at 
the Cliff Dwellers. He could be arrogant and unnecessarily decisive 
at times, and a bit prone to give advice where not needed to good 
clients. Of course he lost many jobs because he would not com- 
promise his ideals or play fast and loose with vital conceptions of 
what was fitting for the purpose intended. Sullivan was a bit of a 
recluse. He liked to be alone, to think and write. He was a solitary 
man in most ways and constitutionally averse to social display of 
any kind. He lived alone most of his life, and when he drank, he 
drank alone. Yet he was the most interesting, fascinating, inspirit- 
ing and encouraging companion anyone could have. He believed 



THE AUDITORIUM 83 

in himself and had reason to do so. He had a true message to de- 
liver and delivered it with eloquence, virility and great power. 
Sullivan started from scratch in a semi-wilderness of cultural values 
to follow a path he never, essentially, departed from." 

In general Adler directed the business and engineering side of 
the office work, Sullivan directed the designing. The relationship 
between the two men seems to have been a perfect partnership in 
the best sense of the word. Many persons, however, basing their 
opinions on an incomplete knowledge of the causes of the break-up 
of the partnership in 1895, or on some personal prejudice in favor 
of the one man or the other, still aver that there was considerable 
friction and even enmity between them, and that one was the guid- 
ing genius and the other merely the pedestrian businessman or the 
eccentric visionary, depending on the point of view. The truth seems 
to be that Adler was the guider and Sullivan the genius, and that 
they got along very well together. It was Adler's vision and gen- 
erosity that opened for Sullivan his great opportunity, and at the 
same time made possible his own greatest contributions to archi- 
tecture. From a study of the work which each did independently 
before and after the partnership there can be no question that Sulli- 
van did his greatest work while he was with Adler, and that Adler 
reached the height of his achievement while with Sullivan. Sullivan 
himself writes of Adler in the Autobiography as follows: "Adler 
was essentially a technician, an engineer, a conscientious adminis- 
trator, a large progressive judicial and judicious mind securing 
alike the confidence of conservative and radical. ... He was a 
man whose reputation was solidly secured in utter honesty, fine 
intelligence and a fund of that sort of wisdom which attracts and 
holds. Between the two there existed a fine confidence, and the 
handling of the work was divided and adjusted on a temperamental 
basis each to have initiative and final authority in his own field, 



84 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

without a sharp arbitrary line being drawn that might lead to dissen- 
sion. What was particularly fine, as we consider human nature, was 
Adler's open frank way of pushing his young partner to the front." 2 

Nevertheless, from the point of view of the historian of archi- 
tecture, Sullivan must remain the more interesting figure. Both as 
designing artist and as thinker he stands out as Adler's master. 
Montgomery Schuyler, writing in 1895, said: "It is of the essence 
of every work of art that it should be done by an individual and 
embody an individual conception. This does not prevent the tak- 
ing of counsel in an architectural work, and the modification of 
it accordingly. But it is always necessary that there should be a 
single mind behind the work. ... In the biographical notes with 
which he has favored me, Mr. Adler writes that since the forma- 
tion of the firm 'the preeminence in the artistic field of Mr. Sullivan' 
has relieved the senior partner from that branch of professional 
work, and left him free to devote himself to the engineering prob- 
lems involved in the modern office building. ... It is especially 
gratifying to be relieved by Mr. Adler's frankness and magnanim- 
ity from all embarrassment, and to be at liberty to treat the very 
marked artistic individuality in the work of Adler & Sullivan as 
the individuality of Mr. Sullivan." 3 All available information 
points to the justness of this estimate, and in discussing the artistic: 
achievement of the firm of Adler & Sullivan we shall be concerned 
with the architecture of Louis Sullivan. 

The office of Adler & Sullivan occupied most of the top floor of 
the Borden Block. There were about twenty men on the staff. Chief 
among these was Paul Mueller, faithful, competent, German; the 
man whom Sullivan respected. Mueller had been in the office for a 
short time in 1883; then he had gone to Sillsbee's office as an 
engineer for three years. In 1886 Adler needed an intelligent and 
resourceful assistant in engineering and construction to study 



THE AUDITORIUM 85 

through the Auditorium problem, and Mueller came back as office 
foreman. He was young, tall, with black hair and beard, and pierc- 
ing dark eyes. Mueller directed the construction of the Auditorium, 
the Schiller Building in Chicago, the Union Trust Building in St. 
Louis, and many other large structures designed by Adler & Sulli- 
van, finally continuing with Frank Lloyd Wright and achieving 
with him the engineering triumph of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. 

Sullivan also needed help on the Auditorium job. On a Tuesday 
late in 1887, Frank Lloyd Wright, then eighteen years of age, ap- 
peared in the office with some drawings. He had been working a 
few months in Sillsbee's office since his arrival from Madison, 
Wisconsin. Sullivan was very busy, with a convention in St. Louis 
to attend. He asked Wright to do some drawings of ornamental 
details and to bring them in the following Friday. Wright worked 
the following evenings, and on Friday morning arrived at the office 
with quite a sheaf. Sullivan was interested; already he could see 
the mark of genius in this youth. His comments were reserved, but 
he took Wright on at twenty-five dollars a week. Wright very soon 
caught on to Sullivan's style of ornament, and he detailed most of 
the ornament of the Auditorium, although the pencil sketches and 
essential conception were Sullivan's. When the building was done 
Wright was made foreman of the designers, and in the office in the 
Auditorium Tower had thirty draftsmen under him. Wright stayed 
with Adler & Sullivan until 1893, when he began independent 
practice. 

The story of the Auditorium Building goes back to the temporary 
opera hall in the Old Exposition Building. The great success of the 
Opera Festival in the sprite; of 1885 fired its sponsor, Ferdinand 
W. Peck, with the idea of a great permanent opera house. He con- 
ceived of it as a civic center Jor the highest development of the 
opera, the symphony, the dance,Vnd musical festivals, as well as 



86 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

for glittering society balls and political conventions. As the idea 
grew, it became apparent that these functions would require a 
building on such a scale and of such great cost that it could not be 
expected to maintain itself financially. Commodore Peck hit upon 
the idea of adding to the "cultural" part of the building a "com- 
mercial" part which should afford the necessary revenue for the 
maintenance of the whole. Thus the concept was enlarged to include 
a hotel and business offices, arranged as a shell around the theatres, 
all to be controlled by a single organization. The idea, already 
well-formulated, was presented in an address to the Commercial 
Club on May 29, 1886. Other supporters were found, and the 
Chicago Auditorium Association was organized; stock was issued 
to the amount of $2,000,000, and bonds to $900,000; eventually 
there were about three hundred stockholders. 

The architectural commission for such a ' great structure was 
sought by every architect/in the city, but Peck's confidence in Adler, 
and the previous succe/s of the Exposition Opera Hall, brought the 
commission to Adle/& Sullivan. This was in the late summer of 
1886. At that time only two-thirds of the ground and less than one- 
half of the money finally absorbed by the work were placed at Adler 
& Sullivan's disposal. As the months went on the project grew: the 
Board of Directors of the Auditorium Association amplified its 
ideas; all kinds of technical improvements in theatre mechanism 
were incorporated; the building grew in height; a banquet hall 
was added to the hotel; the estimated cost jumped to well over 
$3,000,000. Even after the foundations were built the plans 
changed, and the architects were working on uncertainties because 
conditions changed so rapidly. The plans were drawn and re- 
drawn; over $60,000 was spent by Adler & Sullivan on preliminary 
studies. 

Two of the early renderings for the exterior may be studied in 



THE AUDITORIUM 87 

Pis. 12 and 13. Sullivan's first conceptions were more ornate than 
the final design. The first one shows a building with a two-story 
base of stone, brick walls and elaborate terra cotta decoration to 
a height of eight stories, and a ninth story included under a gable 
roof with numerous dormers and corner pinnacles. Several large 
three-story oriels, carried on iron frames, break the wall surface. 
The tower signalizing the theatre entrance does not rise far above 
the main roof level, but is capped by a steep-pitched roof rather 
Gothic in feeling. Although generally far inferior to the executed 
design, certain features, such as the relative height of the base to 
the main group of five stories under arches, and the recessed (rather 
than projecting) balcony over the Michigan Avenue entrances, are 
better than in the finished work. As the work progressed (PL 13) a 
tenth story was added, the gable roof omitted in favor of a flat one, 
and the silhouette pruned of its picturesque excrescences. The 
fagade, however, was broken up by even more incredible oriels 
than in the first scheme, especially the one on the Congress Street 
side, which was six bays wide, four stories high, and recessed in 
the middle of the upper three stories to form a species of arched 
loggia a Gargantuan conceit which was fortunately omitted in 
the final design. Other features began to take their final form. The 
two lower stories are almost identical with those of the finished 
building, and the tower is nearly the same. Professor Ware, Sulli- 
van's old teacher at M.I.T., criticized the squatness of the tower in 
the first designs, and at his instance Sullivan added to its height and 
gave it a simple pyramidal roof. 

But even with these previous modifications, a decisive change 
took place in the final design. This was chiefly due to the influence 
of H. H. Richardson. Richardson went to Chicago in the early part 
of 1885 to design residences for John J. Glessner and Franklin 
McVeagh, and a large wholesale block for Marshall Field & Com- 



88 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

parry. The Marshall Field Wholesale Building was begun late in 
1885 and was nearing completion early in 1887, just as the final 
designs for the Auditorium were under way. Richardson's work 
was a new and elemental force in American architecture, and more- 
over a force which achieved clear-cut maturity not in Trinity 
Church, Boston, nor even in the Allegheny County Court House at 
Pittsburgh, but in the Field Building in Chicago. (PL 28) Here 
was a building stripped of all sentimentalities and trivialities, all 
but free from historical preconceptions, large and simple in its 
units, bold and starkly geometric in its mass, vibrant in its surface, 
powerfully monumental. Sullivan's admiration for the Field Build- 
ing is evident in his chapter called "The Oasis" in Kindergarten 
Chats, one of the finest tributes ever given by one architect to an- 
other. A comparison of the exteriors of the Field Building and the 
Auditorium (PL 14) can leave no doubt of their close relation- 
ship. Of course Sullivan built creatively on what Richardson gave 
him, never merely imitating but assimilating and going beyond 
Richardson; this can be seen even more clearly in later buildings 
such as the Walker Warehouse in Chicago and the Dooly Block 
in Salt Lake City. 

Other factors doubtless played a part in the modification of the 
preliminary designs of the Auditorium. There is an anecdote that 
John Root, on seeing some of the early designs, made some dis- 
paraging comments to the effect that Sullivan was going to "smear 
another faade with ornament," and that Sullivan, piqued, deter- 
mined to show him that he was capable of a large simplicity. There 
may have been some influence from George B. Post's New York 
Produce Exchange Building, which in general form is strongly 
similar to the Auditorium Building. It is certain that Ferdinand 
Peck so admired the Field Building that he urged a close adapta- 
tion of its design on Adler & Sullivan, and that the Board of Direc- 



THE AUDITORIUM 89 

tors of the Auditorium Association advocated the omission of a 
great deal of the exterior ornament as a measure of economy. Adler 
deplored this latter course: "It is to be regretted that the severe 
simplicity of treatment rendered necessary by the financial policy 
of the earlier days of the enterprise, the deep impression made by 
Richardson's Marshall Field Building upon the Directors of the 
Auditorium Association, and a reaction from a course of indulgence 
in the creation of highly decorative effects on the part of its archi- 
tects, should have happened to coincide as to time and object, and 
thereby deprive the exterior of the building of those graces of 
plastic surface decoration which are so characteristic of its internal 
treatment." 4 Be that as it may, the final designs called for a much- 
simplified exterior, along the lines of the Field Building, and exe- 
cuted entirely of masonry. 

The construction of the Auditorium took three years. The site 
finally acquired was an irregular plot on the south half of the block 
bounded by Michigan, Congress, Wabash, and Van Buren Streets, 
with a total area of 63,500 square feet, or about an acre and a half. 
Excavation was begun on January 28, 1887, and the work was 
rushed. Two hundred men and thirty teams were on the job, and 
sometimes work was carried on at night by electric flood-lights. 
Construction began on June 1, 1887, although the cornerstone cere- 
mony did not take place until October 6, 

Since the exterior walls and the two main partition walls separat- 
ing the theatre from the hotel and the business offices (see longi- 
tudinal section, Fig. 5) were of solid masonry, the load on the 
foundations was continuous rather than intermittent, and the old- 
fashioned type of continuous-abutment foundations was called for. 
These foundations had to carry exceptionally heavy loads over 
two tons per square foot and were made of concrete reinforced 
by huge timbers and a steel grillage. To offset possible excess settle- 



90 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

merit all pipe connections coming into the building were fitted with 
lead insertions to afford flexibility. In the course of years the 
foundations did settle considerably in some parts as much as 
eighteen inches and during his last years Adler worried con- 
siderably about the soundness of the building. But beyond some 
irregularities in the floors no damage was effected, and the build- 
ing stands solid today. Foundations of the same type were later 
used for the eighteen-story Monadnock Building, also of solid 
masonry wall construction. 

Cast-iron columns were used as interior supports between the 
main structural walls, and these were carried in accordance with 
customary practice on isolated spread-footings: small pyramids of 
concrete reinforced by steel rails, placed just below the level of the 
cellar floor. 

The great foundation problem was the support of the immense 
seventeen-story tower, weighing about fifteen thousand tons. This 
called for a special foundation and a special mode of construction. 
The actual area of the tower was 2,870 square feet, but its founda- 
tion was much larger, spreading the load over 6,700 square feet. 
It might be described as a kind of platform composed of a five- 
foot thickness of concrete reinforced by two layers of heavy timbers, 
three layers of criss-crossed steel rails, and three layers of iron 
I-beams, the whole forming an integral foundation supporting the 
tower like a single solid pier or stack. 

But still the necessary settlement had to be allowed for, and this 
introduced one of the most baffling problems, and one of the most 
ingenious solutions in the entire structure of the Auditorium, As 
Sullivan remarked, Adler's handling of the problem was a "regular 
Columbus egg stunt. 5 ' Under normal conditions, the settlement of 
the foundations would have progressed uniformly as the building 




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92 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

continued to rise and the load was increased. But the foundation 
under the tower was designed to support between six and seven 
thousand tons more than the adjacent wall foundations. Therefore 
if the tower were built up along with the adjacent wall the weight 
would be insufficient to compress its foundations, the adjacent walls 
would settle more than the tower walls, and cracks in the masonry 
would ensue. The problem was to load the tower foundations con- 
currently with the wall foundations in proportion to their ultimate, 
loads so that the settlement would be even throughout. The tower 
might have been built up independently, always higher and higher 
than the adjacent walls, but this was impossible because it was to 
be bonded into the walls. 

The only solution was an artificial loading of the tower. This 
Adler did by means of adding pig-iron and brick in vast quantities 
to the lower stories and basement, increasing the artificial load 
gradually as the height of the walls and tower approached the tenth 
story, but always maintaining a constant mathematical equation 
between the relative weight of the tower to its foundation-capacity, 
and the relative weight of the adjacent wall to z/,s foundation- 
capacity. Thus the settlement proceeded absolutely uniformly. After 
reaching the tenth story the full settlement of all the foundations 
had been reached. Above this, as the tower rose above the adjacent 
wall, the problem was merely to translate artificial load into real 
load, and this was done by gradually removing the pig-iron and 
bricks as the tower grew to its full height and weight. When the 
tower i*eached the top, ninety-five feet higher than the adjacent 
walls, all the artificial load was gone, but the total weight was just 
the same as it had been at the tenth-story level. It can be seen that 
modern building operations are enormously simplified by the cais- 
son foundation going down to bed-rock, where no settlement has to 



THE AUDITORIUM 93 

be allowed for, and inequalities of loading on foundations are of 
no great moment. The first caisson foundations were to be used by 
Adler & Sullivan only a few years later. 

Another pioneer solution of a problem in construction was em- 
bodied in the basement floor deep below the stage of the theatre. 
There was a great deal of mechanical equipment below the stage 
pumps and hydraulic rams for the operation of the traps and bridges 
in the stage floor, engines for the curtains and cyclorama, ventilat- 
ing machinery, a sewage ejector, etc. All of this required a base- 
ment floor eighteen feet below the stage and seven feet below the 
water-level of Lake Michigan, which meant a difficult problem in 
waterproofing. The problem was solved by the use of a laminated 
floor built up of several layers of concrete, Trinidad asphalt, and 
asphalt-saturated felt, counterweighted by concrete and steel rails 
to offset the upward pressure of ground-water beneath the floor. 
This treatment proved to be entirely waterproof. 

Above the foundations, jthe construction embodied no important 
innovations. The walls weie of solid masonry (the Auditorium was 
not of skyscraper construction), consisting of brick faced by cut 
stone. The rusticated facingbf the three lower stories was of granite; 
the ashlar facing of the remaining stories was of gray-buff Indiana 
limestone. Although iron was not used as a supporting framework 
in the walls, many of the krger interior spaces were spanned by 
iron girders bearing on the masonry walls. Several thousand tons of 
metal, chiefly cast- and wrdiight-iron, were used in the building, 
enough to tax the capacity o : the Carnegie Company in Pittsburgh, 
so that delayed shipments ii ipeded construction a great deal. The 
entire building had a volume of 8,737,000 cubic feet, and its cost 
was $3,145,291, or about tlirty-six cents a cubic foot. This was 
three times as expensive a| previous first-class buildings by the 



94 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

firm, the average cost of the office buildings before the Auditorium 
being very slightly over twelve cents a cubic foot. 

By March, 1888, the theatre was sufficiently completed to be 
used for the Republican National Convention of that year, and 
underneath the flags entwined in the rafters and scaffolding of the 
unfinished ceiling, Benjamin Harrison and Levi P. Morton were 
nominated as Republican candidates for President and Vice- 
President. Eleven thousand persons were present. Twenty-one 
months later President Harrison and Vice-President Morton were 
among the dignitaries present for the dedication of the completed 
Auditorium, on December 9, 1889. 

The building is so largfp and complex that a description of the 
entire edifice is apt to b<J confusing; for the sake of clarity the 
exterior as a whole will b examined first. (Pis. 14 and 15) The 
theatre itself at no point penetrates to the street fronts, being sur- 
rounded and surmounted by a shell of hotel rooms and business 
offices, the fenestration of these being dominant in the general de- 
sign of the exterior. The main entrance to the theatre is a triple 
arch on the Congress Street fagape, about three-quarters of the 
way down the side. Since this was the natural approach, it does riot 
seem that the main entrance was signalized emphatically enough ; 
possibly a bolder projection fram the wall would have made it 
more evident, or a wider and more lofty arch. The three arched 
entrances to the hotel on Michigan Avenue are more decisive, but 
the projecting balcony carried over them on huge corbels is an 
elephantine accent. Apart frcpi these features the wall is a severe 
and cliff -like mass, proclaiming the solidity of its construction. 

The design is very similar to that onRichardson's Marshall Field 
Building, especially in the grouping omhe four middle stories un- 
der high arches, the grouping of the nex\ two stories under smaller 
arches, two arches over each one below, and the use of small 



THE AUDITORIUM 95 

rectangular windows in the top story. Being a higher building, the 
base is increased to three stories, the rusticated granite very heavily 
treated to give a sense of solid support. The heavy squat columns 
between the display windows, the mammoth size of the granite 
blocks, the narrow windows with heavy lintels and small transoms, 
all give an effect of Richardsonian force. The base is in itself a 
very impressive unit, but in relation to the upper part of the build- 
ing it seems too high. The main horizontal divisions give a 3-4-3 
grouping of stories, and it seems that the design might have been 
more effective if the central group had been more decisive. Both 
the bottom and top stories are set off from the others by minor hori- 
zontal divisions, and counting these the grouping of stories is 12 
4-2-1, still a symmetrical division. The disposition of the elements 
of the fagade is thus in a measure a formal and artificial one, and 
it certainly does not correspond with the internal functional divi- 
sions which vary on the three sides of the building. On the other 
hand, the exterior design admirably expresses the heavy masonry 
construction, and in its large simplicity, its abstinence from merely 
trivial or "picturesque" outbreaks of surface ornament or irregu- 
larities of silhouette, it goes far beyond the buildings of its era in 
achieving a truly monumental form. 

The great tower, like a h^avy campanile, rises on the Congress 
Street side of the building. The main mass, seventeen stories in 
height, is surmounted by a small lantern housing various instru- 
ments of a U.S. Signal Service stmon and affording a stairway 



for access to the roof of the tower as a sightseeing platform. When 
built, it was the highest point in Chicago. The design of the tower as 
a unit is highly effective, but its relationship to the rest of the 
building may be criticized in certain details. Below the main cor- 
nice, it takes its scheme from the adjacent wall, being marked only 
by a slight projection. The main cornice cuts across it and tends to 



96 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

give the upper section of the tower the effect of a separate superim- 
posed mass. The tower would probably have been more effective 
if it had been more decisively detached from the lower wall and 
allowed more vertical continuity by the suppression of the main 
cornice. Nevertheless, the broad corner piers give it a very satis- 
factory solidity, and the increased weight at the top affords a 
proper crown to a proud building; as Sullivan said, "the tower 
holds its head in the air, as a tower should." 

Above the tall arches of the upper section of me tower the wall 
is solid for the height of a full story; inside at/tnis level are several 
large tanks holding water for the hydraulic^machinery of the stage. 
Above this a rectangular panel frames a l^ng opening set with small 
columns resting on a broad overhanging ledge, the whole having 
the effect of an open loggia. Windoy/s are set within these columns 
and a great deal of light is admitted to the rooms inside. This en- 
tire story was designed for the offices of Adler & Sullivan, and for 
more than twenty years Sullivan did his work in this spacious and 
well-lighted office overlooking the city. The copestone on top of the 
tower was laid with appropriate ceremonies on October 2, 1889. 

The Auditorium Hotel occupies a loftd of shell, surrounding two 
sides of the theatre: the Michigan Avenue side, and the Congress 
Street side as far as the line of ythe tower. The plan is very in- 
genious. The average depth isyxmly forty-five feet, yet the hotel 
includes a large lobby, menjs smoking-room, parlor, restaurant, 
dining-room, banquet hall, /our hundred large guest rooms, and 
the necessary kitchens and j^ervice rooms. The three entrance arches 
on Michigan Avenue op/u into a spacious lobby (PL 16) with a 
marble mosaic floor, and a six-foot dado of Mexican onyx. A row 
of piers supports the ceiling, divided into panels by beams and 
stencilled with geometric patterns. The decoration of the archivolts 
and soffits of the arches,\the frieze at the top of the wall, and the 



THE AUDITORIUM 97 

corbels and pier capitals is all, of gilded plaster relief made from 
Sullivan's designs. This wp^C together with the richly colored ceil- 
ing and the fine marM#C has the sumptuous effect deemed proper 
for hotel lobbies^! the eighties, without the vulgarity of other 
fashionable hp^felries of that era. 

The decoration of the long bar in the restaurant (PL 17) is note- 
worthy: the forms executed in carved wood and moulded plaster 
are entirely new architectural ornament, revealing Sullivan's re- 
bellion against traditional forms and proportions, and his extraor- 
dinary fertility in the invention of a new vocabulary. On the second 
floor, above the lobby, is the main parlor of the hotel, reached by 
a grand staircase rich in onyx panelling and gilded plaster relief, 
and with fine wrought-iron stair-rails. The mosaic floors of the 
landings were especially designed by Sullivan, and show an amaz- 
ing power in the proper use of the material, originality of motive, 
delicacy of treatment and wealth of color. The execution was 
largely by Italian and French craftsmen. The larger part of the 
ten-story building is taken up by guest rooms. The Auditorium 
Hotel was considered the last word in luxury and had large rooms 
and many fine suites. 

Indubitably the finest public room in the hotel was the great dining 
hall on the tenth floor (Pis. 18 and 19), running the whole length of 
the Michigan Avenue front, and with a magnificent view from the 
large windows overlooking the lake-front park. The main room 
was covered by a curved vault, the curve beginning at the floor 
level. Five arched trusses divided the ceiling into bays, and each 
arch was decorated by soffit panels of ornamental plaster reliefs 
centering on electric lights. There were also electric flood-lights 
over the skylights, so that the room was extremely effective at night. 
The ceiling was originally decorated by a rich stencilled pattern, 
now painted over. At the ends were two smaller dining-rooms sepa- 



98 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

rated from the main room by columns carrying a very rich frieze. 
The segmental arches above the frieze were adorned by mural 
paintings. In the conception of the whole and in detail this was not 
only entirely novel, but one of the most beautiful rooms which 
Sullivan designed. The kitchens for this dining-room were located 
in a structurally independent building, four stories high, carried 
by trusses over the theatre stage, and reached from the dining-room 
by bridges. 

Finally, the jxftel possessed a special banquet hall located di- 
rectly over ttfe auditorium of the theatre, and carried by two huge 
iron trusses. 5 Entirely different from the main dining-room, the 
banquet hall was no less original in conception or refined in detail. 
In it another novel decorative use of electric lighting demonstrates 
Sullivan's resource in utilizing every practical necessity as an inte- 
gral element in the architectural whole. These two rooms alone, if 
nothing else remained of his work, would establish Sullivan as a 
great architect. It is regrettable that the present use of the banquet 
hall as a Masonic lodge has effected some unfortunate changes in 
the decorative scheme. 

The business portion of the Auditorium/Building consisted of a 
number of stores on the Wabash Avenue side, and 136 offices on 
the floors above these and in the towei* Although this section of the 
building was independent of the tl^atre and separated from it by 
a thick masonry bearing-wall, it Was used as an auxiliary entrance 
to the two upper galleries of th^ theatre which were connected by 
bridges and doors to the sixth^floor office corridor ; the small recital 
hall above the upper galleries was also entered from the seventh- 
floor office corridor. The business offices in the tower were reached 
by elevators rising fronvme theatre entrance on Congress Street. 

The hotel and the business offices were, when all is said and done, 
merely incidentals. The raison d'etre of the Auditorium Building, 



THE AUDITORIUM 99 

and its most striking architectural achievement, was the great 
theatre. Physically and spiritually it was the heart of the building, 
and to more than a generation of Chicago opera-lovers the name 
"Auditorium" has meant, not the building as a whole, but the 
theatre itself. 

The ten-story building containing hotel rooms and offices formed 
three sides of a rectangle measuring 118 feet by 246 feet; within 
this rectangle was built the theatre. The Auditorium Theatre was 
the largest permanent theatre (excluding open-air theatres) erected * 
up to that time, with seating capacity for 4,237 persons. Including 
its vestibules, foyers, cloak-rooms, etc., it occupied more than half 
of the total area of the building, and about a third of its total 
volume. 

The triple-arched entrance under the tower led into a large box- 
office vestibule, from which six pairs of doors afforded ample en- 
trance to the ground-story foyer of the theatre. Due to the unusually 
great rise of the main floor of the theatre from front to back, en- 
trances to it were provided from foyers on two different levels, the 
ground-story foyer leading by means of tunnels underneath the 
rear half of the floor to the front seats, and the second-story foyer 
connecting directly with the rear seats of the floor, from which it 
was originally separated only by an iron trellis. The main balcony 
was also entered from foyers on two different levels, tunnel en- 
trances connecting the lower foyer with the front half of the balcony 
and the upper foyer with the rear half. All of the foyers were 
equipped with ample cloak-rooms, dressing-rooms, smoking-rooms, 
etc. 

. The parquet, or main floor of the theatre, originally measured 
112 feet from the footlights to the last row of seats, and it seated 
1,442 persons. The rise of the floor from orchestra pit to the back 
was determined by acoustic principles rather than sight-lines, the 



100 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

total rise of seventeen feet being more than is actually necessary 
for clear vision. Adler designed the gradually rising curve on the 
basis of Scott Russell's "isocoustic curve," so that the direct out- 
ward movement of the sound waves from the stage would encounter 
every part of the floor. This, together with the disposition of the 
reflecting arches above, is responsible fbr the nearly perfect acous- 
tic properties. 

There were originally forty boxes at the sides, a lower range 
of eight and an upper range of twelve, on each side, the lower range 
forming a decorative arcade for the support of the upper. The 
fronts were made of cast-iron, slightly curved out, decorated in 
the prevailing color scheme of the house, ivory and gold. The 
plush draperies of the upper boxes were of an ivory color slightly 
darker than that of the box-fronts, and the chairs were upholstered 
in yellow satin. Several years after the completion of the Audi- 
torium new building laws called for the construction of a fireproof 
partition between the parquet seats and the main foyer, and at this 
time the last eight rows of seats in the parquet were removed and 
the double range of boxes carried around the back in a continuous 
curve. This reduced the capacity of the parquet by 412 seats, but 
added to the number of places in the boxes. 

The main balcony was even larger than the parquet, having 
1,632 seats. The curve of the balcony was determined by the same 
acoustic principles which were applied to the parquet, and the total 
rise was forty feet. Above the balcony were two galleries, both 
entered from the same floor-level, since one is not above but in 
front of the other. (Fig. 5) This floor was reached by narrow stair- 
cases from the top of the balcony, but also, and more usually, by 
the elevators in the adjacent office section, the gallery floor connect- 
ing with the sixth-floor office corridor. From the gallery floor, three 
aisles led directly downward into the first gallery, containing 526 



THE AUDITORIUM 101 

seats. The second gallery was carried slightly above and in front of 
the lower one on iron columns and trusses in such a way that it 
did not interfere with the sight-lines of the latter. It was reached by 
horizontal bridges and tunnel entrances, and had 437 seats. The 
total seating capacity of the theatre was thus 4,237, almost 1,200 
more seats than were provided in the Metropolitan Opera House in 
New York, the largest theatre in America up to that time. More 
remarkable than the size, however, was the acoustic perfection and 
the ease of vision from every seat in the house. Music-lovers assert 
that there is not another theatre of comparable size in the country 
that matches the Auditorium in these essential respects, and Frank 
Lloyd Wright says of it: "It was acknowledged to be the greatest 
building achievement of the period: and to this day, probably, is 
the best room for opera, all things considered, yet built in the 
world." 6 

Looking toward the stage (PL 20) the architectural effect is 
strikingly beautiful. The proscenium arch rises in a graceful curve 
bordered by a mural painting by Charles Holloway using as its 
theme the sentence : "The utterance of life is a song, the symphony 
of Nature," the figures forming a frieze against a gold background. 
The reducing curtain is richly ornamented by gilded plaster reliefs 
inscribed with the names of great composers, and the drop-curtain 
is made of silk embroidered with gold. The proscenium wings 
spread out from the curtain at an angle and are decorated by grace- 
ful fan-like trellises and gilded plaster reliefs, with an organ grille 
at the left. The organ itself was placed in an auxiliary building to 
the north, and when built was the most complete instrument in the 
world. The stage-apron projects six feet in front of the curtain, 
with the prompter's box in the middle, and the orchestra pit be- 
low it. 

The general form of theXceiling was determined by acoustic 



102 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

principle4j/4t consists of a series of fonf expanding elliptical 
arches, becoming successively wider and^nigher until the outermost 
one attains the full width of the thegn-e. Between these arches the 
ceiling panels are smooth, to actyfs sound reflectors. Sound waves 
meeting a reflecting surface ap like water waves or light waves: 
the angle of reflection is equ^l to the angle of incidence. The spac- 
ing of these sections of ceiling is so calculated that sound waves 
from the stage are reflected downward to every part of the main 
floor and to part of we balcony. A perfect semicircular reflecting 
arch would have fofcused all reflected waves on one spot in the 
middle of the flop; the flat elliptical arches prevent focusing of 
reflected soundJand the vertical breaks between the arches throw 
the reflected w4ves farther and farther back, diffusing them over 
the entire area. 

Other important acoustic factors entered into the design of these 
arches. If the path difference between direct and reflected sound is 
so great that a sound originating on the stage reaches an auditor 
-more than one-sixth of a second later from a reflecting surface than 
it does by direct outward movement of sound waves, the result is 
an annoying echo ; if the time-difference is less than this, the result 
is reinforcement which is an aid to hearing. This factor determined 
the height of the arches; the one nearest the stage had to be the 
lowest, and is actually only forty-five feet above the floor. Most 
important of all is the reverberation time. Reverberation is the 
prolongation of sound in a room after the source has ceased to 
operate; if it is too great, the overlapping of successive sounds 
blurs the fine effects of music; if it is too small, loss of volume and 
dullness of tone result. Reverberation is directly proportional to 
the total volume of a room and inversely proportional to its ab- 
sorption capacity. Thus in a very large theatre either the total vol- 
ume must be reduced as much as possible or the absorption must 



THE AUDITORIUM 103 

be increased by the use of sound-absorbing surfaces. The great 
arches in the Auditorium serve to reduce the total volume of the 
room very considerably, and thus to dimmish reverberation time. 
It is interesting to note that in the design of the new Chicago Civic 
Opera House built in 1928 the old Auditorium was taken as the 
most desirable acoustic standard, and that despite the advancement 
in the science of acoustics and the variety of new sound-absorbing 
materials available today, the new theatre proved to have a longer 
reverberation time than the Auditorium, which being considerably 
larger was a more difficult problem. This event, coming forty years 
after the construction of the old building, indicates how far ahead 
of his time Dankmar Adler was in the science of acoustics. 

The great arches also serve as ventilating ducts, carrying condi- 
tioned air, washed and humidified, heated in winter and cooled in 
summer, to the numerous air outlets on the front faces of the arches. 
These are treated decoratively as patterned bosses, like small bee- 
hives, and it is probable that few spectators realize their humble 
utilitarian function. It is worth remarking that the main structural 
supports of the ceiling are not housed within the arches, as might 
appear, but are huge horizontal iron trusses 118 feet in length and 
carrying a load of 660 tons, spanning the whole theatre above the 
topmost arch; the arches are light frameworks hung from the 
trusses, shaped almost entirely by acoustical needs. 

The use of these arches as an architectural and decorative motive 
is admirable. Sullivan made them the dominant theme of the in- 
terior and the repeated curves have a grand sweep over the hall. 
They are decorated by plaster reliefs, chevron mouldings dividing 
the faces into hexagons enclosing foliage designs, diamonds en- 
closing the grilled bosses, and smaller triangles enclosing other 
foliage designs. The whole surface is covered by gold leaf and 
studded with electric lights, gleaming like dull, mellow gold. Even 



104 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

the borders of the arched ceiling panels are enriched by relief 
bands and an inner lace-like pattern delicately stencilled in gold. 
Rarely has there been such a wedding of large and majestic sim- 
plicity with refined and subtle detail. The effect is superb. 

Above and outside of the golden arches, a coved ceiling rises 
many feet, and an immense rectangular skylight is filled by stained 
glass. (PL 21) On the sidewalls under this ceiling are two large 
arches framing mural paintings by Fleury. On one side is a scene 
at dawn with a wooded meadow and a running stream, the whole 
in tender shades of green and silver. A solitary poet is inspired by 
the sunrise and the awakening of life, and below is inscribed a line 
from Sullivan's "Inspiration": "0 soft melodious springtime, first- 
born of life and love." On the other side is a scene of pathless wilds ? 
in gray, subsiding autumn, with brown leaves settling through the 
air in a deep twilight. The poet is inspired to an autumn reverie, 
and below is the line: "A great life has passed into the tomb and 
there awaits the requiem of winter's snows." 

One of the most ingenious devices in the Auditorium is a means 
for reducing the seating capacity of the theatre. Concert artists 
with whom Adler conferred impressed upon him the disturbing 
effects of singing or playing solo programs to a half-empty theatre, 
since only symphony concerts and operatic productions were ex- 
pected to fill all of the four thousand-odd seats. Acting on the ad- 
vice of Augustin Daly, Adler devised means for closing off com- 
pletely the first and second galleries, and the rear third of the 
balcony. The curved section of ceiling leading up to the central 
skylight is in reality a hinged panel which can be lifted to reveal 
the second gallery, and in that position it forms part of an upper 
coved ceiling. Similarly, the slanting ceiling below this is a panel 
cutting off the first gallery, and it can be lifted up to fit flat under- 
neath the floor of the second gallery. These two hinged ceilings are 



THE AUDITORIUM 105 

built on iron frames and weigh twenty tons, but are counterbal- 
anced so that one man at each of six windlasses can raise or lower 
them in a few minutes. The rear third of the balcony can also be 
closed off by means of curtains drawn across the row of columns 
supporting the gallery. These various devices made possible the 
reduction of the total seating capacity to 2,574. As a matter of 
actual practice, concert singers soon found that even with both 
galleries open there was a much greater feeling of intimacy with 
the audience than in many smaller theatres, and the acoustics were 
so perfect that they felt their voices carrying clearly to the most 
distant parts of the house. This was so frequently expressed that 
after a few years the gallery mechanism was no longer used, al- 
though it is said to be in perfect condition today. 

The Auditorium theatre was planned not only for symphonic 
and operatic programs, but also for great choral concerts, occa- 
sional conventions, and society balls. For such events the reducing 
curtain of the stage opening could be lifted, the whole stage floor 
could be stepped up from front to back by means of the hydraulic 
mechanism lifting the floor in sections, and thus afford room for 
more than five hundred seats on the stage. Choral concerts with a 
full symphony orchestra and several hundred singers on the stage 
were frequently given. Since the stage floor was normally level 
rather than inclined, its full extent could be used for dancing, and 
a hardwood floor, kept in sections in the storerooms, could be laid 
directly over the whole front half of the parquet seats. In this way 
a ballroom capable of accommodating eight thousand persons could 
be made. The numerous entrances and exits made it possible for 
this number to leave the theatre in about four and a half minutes. 

The mechanical equipment of the stage was the most complete 
installed in any theatre to that date. While the Auditorium designs 
were under way, Adler made a trip to Europe to study the latest 



106 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

improvements in stage design, especially in the opera houses at 
Halle, Prague, and Budapest. All three of these used movable stage 
floors, elevated or depressed by hydraulic apparatus; and those at 
Halle and Budapest used a panoramic horizon in place of the "sky- 
borders" customary for stage back-drops in this country. The ma- 
chinery employed was designed and built by the Asphalia Gesell- 
schaft in Vienna. Adler requested them to prepare designs for 
similar apparatus for the Auditorium, but when the plans arrived in 
Chicago so many divergences between Continental and American 
mechanical practice became apparent that the plans had to be 
largely redrawn by Paul Mueller, and many alterations and im- 
provements were made by the Crane Company engineers who in- 
stalled the hydraulic apparatus. 

The stage of the Auditorium is still one of the largest in the 
country, measuring sixty-two feet from curtain line to back wall, 
and ninety-eight feet clear across, with the side walls one hundred 
and ten feet apart. This gave ample space for the production of the 
largest operatic scenes. The stage floor is level, and is constructed 
with a large number of sections that can be moved up or down, to 
create a base for scenery simulating steps, terraces, hills, pits, etc. ; 
to provide for appearing or disappearing objects or persons; to 
produce wave-like or rocking motions up and down or obliquely; 
and to afford multitudinous other "effects" in the spectacular stage 
realism of the day. Above the stage the mechanism is no less elabo- 
rate. The rigging-loft, or grid-iron, is high enough above the stage 
to lift the highest drops above the proscenium opening, and it 
carries eighty tons of miscellaneous apparatus: fly-galleries, scene 
bridges, a paint-frame, paint-bridge, property galleries, all with the 
necessary counter-weights and controlling cables. One of the most 
interesting innovations was a panoramic "horizon," an endless can- 
vas roll which ran on a steel-linked belt and track carried around 



THE AUDITORIUM 107 

the three sides of the stage, on which was painted in various sec- 
tions the sky of every season of the year in every weather condition. 
Thus a change of mood in the dramatic action could be easily re- 
flected in the sky of the background all moods, from sunny and 
cheerful to lowering and somber, were provided. This must have 
been a great asset to the Wagnerian operas. On the right side-stage 
is the electrical screen, bristling with polished brass levers con- 
trolling the 5,000 house lights, 150 footlights, 6 borders with 165 
lights each, and the artificial moon, stars, and lightning flashes used 
in conjunction with the panoramic horizon. There are also trans- 
parent moving clouds for use on the sky. On the same side are three 
levers controlling the hydraulic hoisting apparatus of the three 
curtains, which weigh sixteen tons. 

The intermediate basement below the stage is a perfect power- 
house of machinery: hydraulic engines for lifting all the drops, 
frames, galleries, bridges, curtains, border-drops, and the pano- 
rama; ventilating machinery; the twenty hydraulic rams of the 
stage floor; sewage ejector; pumps; levers, and other intricate me- 
chanical equipment. Along its south wall are iron racks for rolled 
scene drops. Other scenery and property storerooms are located 
at the back and sides, and over the top of the proscenium arch. 
When the Auditorium opened, the management possessed a stock of 
125 drops, 300 set pieces, and other complete equipment for the pro- 
duction of thirty different operas. 

Operatic production also requires suitable accommodations for 
the performers, and these were studiously considered. There is a 
musicians' room for a hundred-piece symphony orchestra, located 
back of the orchestra pit at the level of the intermediate basement; 
thirty dressing-rooms furnished with make-up tables, electric and 
gas light, and ventilating ducts, and connected with the prompter's 
box by electric bells; six large and handsomely appointed dressing- 



108 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

rooms for the principals, and a stage reception-room connecting 
with the box-corridor. In short, no provision for the comfort of the 
performers or the smooth functioning of the mechanics of a grand 
opera was omitted. The mechanical advantages at hand were so 
complete that only twenty-five stage-hands were required for the 
production of the heaviest operas. > 

The difficulty of designing the complete structural and n^echani- 
cal layout of such a building, involving as it did not mei^dy unprec- 
edented size but a large number of new principles jfnd practices, 
can be imagined. The responsibility for all of ilf fell on Adler's 
shoulders. Sullivan said, years later: "The problems that Mr. Ad- 
ler had to meet in that building were simply heart-breaking. In 
those days there were very few consulting Engineers, and these few 
were employed mostly by the railroads, iron companies, and mines. 
There was one man who gave some attention to sanitary and heat- 
ing matters, but that was almost all/the professional advice Mr. Ad- 
ler could call to his aid. He practically had to dig out his informa- 
tion for himself, and it was aytremendous proposition." 8 

The ceremonial dedication of the Auditorium Theatre took place 
on Monday evening, December 9, 1889. More than a thousand per- 
sons were seated on the stage, and the house was crowded to ca- 
pacity. Two temporary boxes were constructed at the sides of the 
stage ; one of them for Governor Fif er and his suite, the other for 
President Harrison and Mrs. Harrison, Vice-President Morton, and 
Commodore Peck. After several addresses of felicitation and the 
prolonged applause of the audience, the President made a few brief 
remarks. There followed a cantata composed by Frederick Grant 
Gleason with words by Harriet Monroe, sung by the chorus of the 
Apollo Club. Then came the piece de resistance of the evening, 
Adelina Patti, America's opera idol, singing "Home Sweet Home"! 
The success of this was so emphatic that she granted an encore, 



THE AUDITORIUM 109 

Eckert's "Swiss Echo Song." The evening closed amid general re- 
joicing. The next evening the opera season was inaugurated by the 
Abbey and Grau Opera Company singing "Romeo and Juliet," 
with Patti as prima donna. 

The opera was for years under the management of Milward 
Adams; then in 1910 the Chicago Civic Opera Company was 
formed. In 1928 this organization transferred its productions to 
the new Chicago Civic Opera House, much to the regret of a great 
many music-lovers who avowed a preference for the architectural 
beauty and the associations of the old building. For forty years it 
had served its purpose; it was more than a building, it was an in- 
stitution, and its passing was deplored. For four years it was used 
only for occasional plays, and was practically forgotten. Recently 
the Chicago Civic Opera Company was forced to abandon its new 
building, and hope for the return of the opera to its former home 
was revived. Late in 1932 the great theatre was once more restored 
to its original luster in a very careful and praiseworthy cleaning 
and restoration directed by Holabird & Root. Admirable discretion 
was used in attempting to regain as nearly as possible the original 
appearance. 

The Auditorium was the chief monument upon which the later 
success of Adler Y Sullivan was built. In point of cost, it was the 
largest building enterprise in the city of Chicago at that time, and 
ten times greater thm any previous commission of the firm. As an 
engineering achievement it was outstanding, being the heaviest 
structure yet carried ork floating foundations, and embodying ex- 
tremely ingenious solutions of many other complex problems of 
planning, construction, ancl mechanical equipment. Its historical 
importance as a turning-porat in Sullivan's style and as a great 
institution in the civic life of (Chicago, not to speak of its architec- 
tural excellence, make it a building which should be preserved to 



110 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

future generations as one of the great monuments of American 
architecture. 



1 Actually, Sullivan had a somewhat malformed hip which gave a slight 
limp to his walk. 

2 Autobiography., pp. 257, 288. 

3 Montgomery Schuyler : "A Critique of the Works of Adler & Sullivan," 
Architectural Record, Great American Architects Series, no. 2, Dec. 1895. 

4 Dankmar Adler: "The Chicago Auditorium," Architectural Record, 
vol. 1, no. 4, p. 415, April-June, 1892. 

5 This is not shown in the longitudinal section, Fig. 5, which was made 
early in 1888, before the banquet hall had been planned. 

6 Frank Lloyd Wright: Autobiography, pp. 105-106. 

7 For an admirable brief analysis see Dr. Paul E. Sabine : "The Acoustics 
of the Chicago Civic Opera House," Architectural Forum, vol. 52, no. 4, 
pp. 599-604, April, 1930. 

8 Sullivan: "Development of Construction," The Economist, vol. 56, no. 1, 
p. 39, July 1, 1916. 



IV. YEARS OF EXPANSION 



THE building of the Auditorium marked the beginning of the great 
era of the firm of Adler & Sullivan. From the time of its completion 
until the dissolution of the partnership in 1895 the firm was del- 
uged by commissions and its practice was one of the largest in the 
country. Office buildings, theatres, hotels, clubs, warehouses, rail- 
road stations, residences and numerous other structures were de- 
signed not only for Chicago and its suburbs, but for cities as far 
afield as Buffalo, St. Louis, New Orleans, Salt Lake City and 
Seattle. 

The long strain of the Auditorium work had wearied Sullivan, 
and for several weeks he was in poor health. As soon as it was com- 
pleted, he decided to leave the raw winter climate of Chicago for a 
trip to the West Coast, combining a necessary business visit to 
Pueblo and Salt Lake City with a rest in California. Since Adler 
disliked leaving home, Sullivan usually made the necessary trips 
to supervise out-of-town operations ; he enjoyed travel, and in time 
had visited almost every state in the Union. He spent most of Jan- 
uary and February, 1890, in San Francisco and San Diego, but was 
still in poor health and the climate did not suit him. From San 
Diego he went to New Orleans in February, and there met friends 
from Chicago, Mr. and Mrs. James Charnley, who persuaded him 
to go with them to Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Ocean Springs was 
at that time a small rustic hamlet, about eighty miles east of New 

Orleans on the eastern shore of Biloxi Bay. Sullivan fell in love 

ill 



112 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

with the place at once, and after two quiet weeks he was restored to 
good health. He decided to buy land and build a vacation cottage 
a few miles east on the shore of the bay. It was a stretch of utterly 
wild forest: "immense rugged short-leaved pines, sheer eighty feet 
to their stiff gnarled crowns, graceful swamp pines, very tall, deli- 
cately plumed; slender vertical Loblolly pines in dense masses; 
patriarchal sweet gums and black gums with their younger broods; 
maples, hickories, myrtles; in the undergrowth, dogwoods, hale- 
sias, sloe plums, buckeyes and azaleas, all in a riot of bloom; a 
giant magnolia and grandiflora near the front all grouped and 
arranged as though by the hand of an unseen poet." l There was 
one marvellous wistaria vine dropping in great waves from a tree. 
The owner of the property, Colonel Newcomb Clark, sold a large 
plot running a hundred yards along the beach and about a third 
of a mile inland, and Sullivan designed two bungalows, one for 
himself and one for the Charnleys, about a hundred yards apart, 
with stables and servants' quarters set far back in the woods. (Pis. 
22, 23) The design of all the buildings was very simple, Sullivan's 
aim being to make them as inconspicuous as possible in their forest 
surroundings. The construction was left to a local carpenter. The 
cottages at Ocean Springs became Sullivan's most-loved home, and 
for eighteen years he visited them frequently for recreation and the 
inspiration which he found in a close communion with nature. Dur- 
ing the years he cultivated over a hundred species of roses in his 
garden. In March, 1890, he returned to Chicago and set to work 
with renewed energy. 

From the beginning of the Auditorium to the end of the partner- 
ship in 1895 Adler & Sullivan designed about forty buildings. Only 
two of these, the Stock Exchange in Chicago and the Guaranty 
Building in Buffalo, were finished after 1893, as the panic of that 
year was reflected in an almost complete cessation of building activ- 



YEARS OF EXPANSION 113 

ity. Seven others were never constructed. The great achievements 
of these years were the skyscrapers erected in Chicago, St. Louis, 
and Buffalo, which are discussed in the following chapter. The 
other buildings erected between 1888 and 1893 form a miscellane- 
ous group which may well be discussed together. 

That Richardson exerted a strong influence on Sullivan in the 
late eighties is apparent not only in the Auditorium but in the 
Standard Club and the Heath residence, both built before the Audi- 
torium was finished. The Standard Club, one of Chicago's oldest 
Jewish organizations, commissioned a new building in the summer 
of 1887 which was virtually completed by the end of the following 
year, although the interiors were not finished and the building oc- 
cupied until February, 1889. The exterior (PL 24) was faced by 
rusticated limestone, the window sills and lintels being large single 
blocks. The division of the fagade into base, two stories grouped 
under arches, and top story with small rectangular windows recalls 
Richardson, as does also the general severity of treatment. The 
buff-colored terra cotta panels under the third-story windows are 
Richardsonian in disposition, but the detail is spikier and the curves 
of the foliage more brittle than in his work. Doubtless Richardson's 
ornament influenced Sullivan, as there is certainly an immense 
difference between this and Sullivan's earlier ornament otherwise 
difficult to account for, but Sullivan very readily developed it into 
a characteristic vocabulary of his own. The building as a whole 
seems adequate but not at all impressive, and we feel that although 
Sullivan is searching for a new architectural form he is not at 
home in the idiom of another man. An addition, somewhat higher 
than the main building, was built at the south in 1893. The inside of 
this, facing an inner court, is illustrated in PL 26. The Standard 
Club was demolished in 1931. 

The Ira Heath residence, built in 1889, is much more Richard- 



114 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

sonian and much better architecture, although totally unlike any 
other residence designed by Adler & Sullivan. (PL 25) Here the 
extravagant depth of voussoirs over doors and windows and the 
vibrant surface texture of random-coursed and quarry-face ma- 
sonry endow the fagade with much greater richness and force. Rich- 
ardson himself could not have done better in a similar program. 

The most interesting aspect of Richardson's influence on Sulli- 
van is the rapidity with which Sullivan assimilated it and developed 
it into something entirely new. It is hard to overestimate the impor- 
tance of the Walker Warehouse (PL 27) in this respect. Architec- 
turally, the Walker Warehouse is far more significant than the 
Auditorium, and it takes its place with the Wainwright Building 
as one of Sullivan's great achievements. Being a commercial struc- 
ture in the inner part of Chicago's Loop, it is not well known, and 
the present obliteration of the building by advertising signs pre- 
vents the casual observer from gaining an idea of its quality. It was 
built for Martin A. Ryerson, Jr., begun in July, 1888, and finished 
in October, 1889. Thus it was begun about a year and a half after 
the Auditorium, and finished nearly at the same time. Since the 
general design was obviously inspired by Richardson's Marshall 
Field Building (PL 28), and the programs of the two buildings 
were' very similar, they offer a more instructive comparison than 
do the Field Building and the Auditorium. 

Each building is a seven-story warehouse structure occupying a 
full block; the mass in both cases is cubic, with only a slightly 
projecting cornice and a clean-cut silhouette; ornamental detail is 
virtually omitted, so that the architectural effect depends almost 
solely on the plastic articulation of the larger* forms. The differ- 
ence between the two buildings lies in the arrangement and treat- 
ment of these forms. Richardson's building, although a great ad- 
vance over previous structures, represents the persistence in a slight 



YEARS OF EXPANSION 115 

degree of conventional design, in that, although grown away from 
the historical styles, it is not yet entirely free from them. The rusti- 
cation of the masonry and the emphasis of the voussoirs of the 
arches betray Richardson's insistence on traditional masonry con- 
struction. The division of the fagade into four groups of stories 
also reveals the conventional embarrassment, not acute in this in- 
stance, of the nineteenth-century architect faced with the design of 
a high building: its height appeared a liability rather than an asset, 
and he sought to divide it up into as many horizontal units of famil- 
iar size and proportion as were required. This accounts for the 
1 32 1 division of stories, and the dominance of the horizontals 
separating basement and attic stories from the intervening ones. 

The Walker Building goes beyond the Field Building in two 
essential respects: the greater freedom from historical or conven- 
tional forms, and the more precise statement of its elements of de- 
sign in a firmly articulated whole. It is a sort of pure architecture, 
using the fundamental elements of the pier, the lintel, and the arch 
in an abstract composition, dissociated from the expression of 
specifically masonry effects. The omission of heavy rustication on 
the arches signifies that Sullivan- is using a geometrical shape, not 
a traditional form. The use of smooth ashlar masonry instead of 
rustication signifies an emphasis on the wall plane rather than on 
the surface of the wall as solid mass. In every detail, Sullivan 
develops toward an abstract architecture. The individual elements 
are both more clearly stated and more simply organized than in 
Richardson's building. The corner masses of the piers rise un- 
broken from pavement to cornice ; the middle group of four stories 
is unchallenged by other and lesser groups. Every element is clean- 
cut, smooth, rectilinear, positive. In composition, the relationship 
of the two-story base to the main unit is happier than is the one- 
story base of the Field Building. Even the scale of the building 



116 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

is an abstract one, since the ground-story arches are larger than 
required for entrance doors and do not in fact serve for them ; they 
are determined by the size of the building as a whole, like the 
stylobate of the Parthenon which being scaled to the temple as a 
whole has steps too high for convenient human use. 

Another building demonstrating Sullivan's assimilation of Rich- 
ardson's influence and his development toward a more abstract 
form is the Dooly Block in Salt Lake City (PL 29), built in 1890- 
91. It is clearly allied to the Walker Warehouse in its use of the 
pier, the lintel, and the arch as an elementary vocabulary, and 
since its commercial purpose is similar to that of the Walker Build- 
ing, the form is also similar in general effect. The treatment of the 
four upper stories under arches is virtually identical, but the inclu- 
sion of stores in the ground story necessitated a reduction of wall 
area for the opening of display windows. The small windows in the 
attic open into a top floor of mechanical equipment lighted chiefly 
by skylights, so that they are not functionally necessary. The pro- 
jecting cornice faced by a band of rich decoration represents the 
first appearance of a characteristic feature which is discussed in 
connection with the Wainwright Building. 

If it is permissible for the critic to judge an architect by his best 
achievements, it is also incumbent on the historian to include such 
as are of admittedly inferior quality. Many of Sullivan's buildings 
between the Walker Warehouse and the Transportation Building 
of 1893 seem to fall within this latter group. Inspiration is a vari- 
able quality, and even a genius cannot always measure up to a uni- 
form standard of excellence, but it is nevertheless hard to account 
for the great discrepancy in style between the best and the worst 
buildings of this period. Doubtless since there were about forty 
jobs in the office within five years, some of them large, Sullivan 
was able to give less personal attention to detailing the ornament 



YEARS OF EXPANSION 117 

and minor features of some than of others, but on the other hand 
there can be no question that the general design of all of them was 
his. 

Ten of the buildings of this period were hotels and theatres, 
sometimes separate structures but often combined in one building 
as in the Auditorium. For this reason they will be discussed as a 
single group. Five of them were ill-fated projects destined never to 
be constructed, but since they existed as completed designs they 
are perhaps as significant as the executed structures in a considera- 
tion of Sullivan's stylistic development. 

The first of these, the Opera House Block in Pueblo, Colorado 
(PL 30), was designed while the Auditorium was under way and 
finished in 1890. The building was later somewhat remodelled, and 
finally destroyed by fire in 1922. It occupied a street corner and 
consisted of a theatre enclosed by a shell of offices on the two street 
fagades. The main entrance to the theatre consisted of recessed 
arches resting on short piers, with terra cotta decoration and por- 
trait medallions in the spandrels and a recessed loggia in a rich 
frame above. There were separate entrances to the office portion of 
the building. The form of the main entrance arch was repeated in 
thirteen smaller arches fronting the ground-story offices, forming 
an arcaded base for the wall. Four of these and the two corner 
entrances were later removed for the construction of a large corner 
store, but fortunately no other remodellings were made. The wall 
was of rusticated masonry, with simple rectangular windows. The 
top story had a long recessed balcony on both fagades, interrupted 
only by supporting colonets and the broad corner piers faced by 
terra cotta ornament. The roof was of low pitch and projected about 
six feet to form a protecting cornice for this balcony. The heavy 
square tower was open at the top to form an observation platform, 
and was also topped by an extravagantly projecting cornice. The 



118 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

roof was broken by two clerestory-like houses, carrying sharp- 
roofed lanterns, and a curious turret with a steep roof and stepped 
gables; these features were used for air exhaust vents. The general 
effect is as gay as the Italian quattrocento style indeed the loggias 
beneath the eaves recall those of Cronaca's Palazzo Guadagni. 

The Seattle Opera House Block was one of the office tragedies. 
The commission came in 1890 as a result of the Pueblo building, 
and complete designs and working drawings were prepared but the 
project failed of construction because of financial difficulties. The 
completed design (Fig. 6) shows a six-story structure dominated by 
a great tower twelve stories high. The twelfth story was evidently to 
be used as an observation platform, and has a richly ornamented 
balcony projecting on all four sides, surmounted by a steep-pitched 
roof. This overhanging balcony motive is found in two or three other 
designs of this period, with much the same picturesque but top- 
heavy effect. The Hotel Ontario at Salt Lake City was also designed 
in 1890, and although the office work was completely finished the 
construction was never carried above the foundations. 

The most famous of Adler & Sullivan's theatres after the Audi- 
torium was McVicker's in Chicago. Mention has already been made 
of their remodelling of this theatre in 1885. On August 26, 1890, 
it was largely destroyed by fire. Mr. McVicker engaged Adler & 
Sullivan to rebuild the interior, preserving the orchestra, balcony, 
and gallery pitches that had afforded such excellent sight-lines and 
acoustics in the old building, but redesigning the proscenium open- 
ing and. redecorating the entire interior. The cost of the remodelling 
was $106,000, and the theatre was reopened March 30, 1891. The 
new McVicker's was undoubtedly one of Sullivan's masterpieces, 
the proscenium in particular being in its architectural form and 
decorative enrichment perhaps the finest single feature in all his 
work. (PL 32) 




Figure 6. Design for Seattle Opera House. 1890. 



120 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

The semicircular proscenium arch formed a rich frame to the 
stage opening, and its broad unmoulded face was decorated by in- 
tricate plaster reliefs sheathed in gold leaf. The design consisted of 
overlapping shields or medallions, alternating a brittle star-shaped 
pattern with a free-flowing foliage pattern. The proscenium arch 
was framed by strictly rectangular panels successively wider and 
higher until the outermost one, over the middle of the floor, 
achieved the full width and height of the auditorium. The delicate 
and intricate surface ornament on these panels was colored in tones 
ranging from deep salmon to cream white, touched with gold, and 
softly illuminated by the diffused light of electric lamps set in 
foliage clusters on the front faces of the panels. The front faces 
were also perforated by grilles to permit the sound of the organ 
(the pipes of which were located above) to enter the theatre. The 
long rectangular relief panels over the boxes were by Johannes 
Gelert. The decoration of the house was carried out in colors rang- 
ing from dark brown and mahogany red to the salmon pink and 
cream of the proscenium, all given brilliance by gold leaf bands. 
In theatre architecture, more than in any other, an effect of joyful 
richness in decoration is desirable, and in the McVicker's Theatre 
the perfect harmonies of color and the exuberant efflorescence of 
Sullivan's foliate and geometric designs combined to effect an en- 
chanting beauty, controlled and balanced by the masculine posi- 
tiveness of the broad and simple architectural lines. Sullivan is at 
his best here, in a kind of design most appropriate to his tempera- 
ment, and at a time when he had achieved a consummate mastery of 
his art. 

The structural engineering in the McVicker's Theatre is also 
worthy of note. At Adler's suggestion, Mr. McVicker decided to 
have two stories of offices constructed over the auditorium of the 
theatre. These were carried by latticed steel columns resting on new 



YEARS OF EXPANSION 121 

foundations independent of the old walls, and six heavy steel 
trusses spanning the auditorium. This construction was fireproofed 
by encasing all steel in porous terra cotta tile, and by using fire- 
proof tile in all floors, ceilings, roofs, and partitions. Electric wiring 
was carried in conduits. Twenty-four new offices were added and 
connected with the older office building in front of the theatre, 
where an additional elevator was installed to serve them. The ar- 
rangements for heating, lighting, and ventilating were very com- 
plete, as was also the reconstruction of the stage. Many of the me- 
chanical devices introduced in the Auditorium were used here. 
This McVicker's Theatre lasted almost in its original state from 
1891 to 1925, when it was demolished and supplanted by a cinema 
theatre. 

Numerous hotels were projected in Chicago during the years just 
prior to the World's Fair. Adler & Sullivan designed three, but only 
one of these, the Victoria Hotel in Chicago Heights, was actually 
erected. The other two exist as designs only, dating from the year 
1891. One design (Fig. 7) is clearly allied to the Dooly Block and 
the Hotel Ontario in Salt Lake City. Two wings project in front of 
a recessed court in the middle, screened by an entrance arch, and 
an eleven-story tower of octagonal shape with a pyramidal roof 
dominates the whole. The design of the wings, with rectilinear 
ground-story openings and four stories above grouped under arches, 
and a top story of rectangular windows, is eminently simple and 
pleasing. The octagonal tower, although an interesting feature, 
seems impracticable for hotel rooms, and does not seem to justify 
its existence through connection with other features of the design. 

The St. Nicholas Hotel, St. Louis (PL 33), was built in 1892-93. 
Although it has many picturesque features and is graced with rich 
decoration, Montgomery Schuyler rated its success as "purely ar- 
chitectonic." There is a base of two stories, treated as a simple 



122 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

arcade in finely jointed brown sandstone ashlar. Above, the next 
five stories are of plain buff-colored brick. Four of these stories are 
enriched by projecting oriels, with buff terra cotta spandrels 
moulded in intricate designs. The entire top story of the front block 
of the building was given over to a dining hall with high trussed 
ceiling, which accounts for the long exterior balconies and the 
gabled roof. The balcony fronts are richly ornamented in terra 
cotta, and the great arched windows in the gable ends filled by 
stained glass. The kitchens and service rooms are in the top story 
of the rear wing. The steep-pitched roof is not only a picturesque 
feature, but it clearly defines the major axis of the building which 
might otherwise be doubtful. The break of the balconies revealing 
the corner pier is another device to secure architectonic clarity. 
Unfortunately the top story was destroyed by fire in 1903 and at 
that time the entire building was taken over for purely commercial 
purposes, three stories of offices being added above the line of the 
former balconies. The remodelling was done by a St. Louis firm, 
and although "Sullivanesque" ornament was employed, the present 
appearance with four severely plain stories above the oriels and a 
flat box-roof is curiously mixed, like a gentleman in full dress 
wearing a battered felt hat. 

The Victoria Hotel at Chicago Heights (PL 31) was built in 
1892-93 and opened for the World's Fair business. It was an inex- 
pensive building and of no great distinction. The two lower stories 
were of red brick, forming a series of large arches in the ground 
story, and the third story was faced by stucco in relief painted a 
buff-yellow. The stucco was protected by a widely projecting 
wooden cornice. The general effect is similar to that of the Pueblo 
Opera House. The building has since been twice remodelled, the 
arches of the ground story being obliterated by large store windows 
and signs, the main dining-room and the lobby altered. In the most 



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124 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

recent remodelling, however, some attempt was made to regain the 
original aspect. The Victoria Hotel was the last hotel building de- 
signed by Adler & Sullivan. 

At this time the firm was called on to do a synagogue for the 
Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv in Chicago. The building is of especial 
interest because of its close personal connection with Dankmar 
Adler. The Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv (Congregation of the Men of 
the West) was founded by Abraham Kohn, Adler's father-in-law, 
and his own father, Liebman Adler, became its first rabbi on his 
arrival in Chicago in 1861. Dankmar Adler was always a faithful 
member of the congregation, and on his death the funeral services 
were held in the synagogue. The building was begun in 1890 and 
dedicated on June 11, 1891. As originally contemplated, the struc- 
ture was to be entirely of ashlar masonry, far more monumental in 
appearance than the executed design. One of the early renderings, 
made in water color by Paul Lautrup, may be seen in PL 34. With 
battered walls, extremely heavy window mullions and transoms, 
large arches, and a dense mass pruned of picturesque projections, 
it has a lithic solidity and force far surpassing that of the finished 
building. Lack of funds prevented the execution of this impressive 
conception, and the reduction of cost through the use of cheaper 
Joliet stone and pressed sheet metal made the finished building a 
lamentable compromise. The south and east walls, since they faced 
inside the block, were made of brick, and the interior constructed 
as economically as possible of wood and terra cotta. 

The exterior of the present building (PL 35) has a rusticated 
wall three stories high, capped by a slight cornice. The use of 
arches is reminiscent of Richardson, but the effect is hard and cold. 
This rectangular block is covered by a flat roof, out of which arises 
a clerestory with steep-pitched roof. The transition from the lower 
mass to the upper is abrupt, and the steep-pitched roof loses its 



YEARS OF EXPANSION 125 

proper effect through the omission of the lower-pitched roof around 
the outside shown in the earlier design. The decorative treatment of 
the sheet metal walls of the clerestory, although by itself as beauti- 
ful as the pattern of an Oriental rug, is hard to reconcile with the 
bolder texture of the wall below. The decorated cornice and para- 
pet, made as cheaply as possible, are also poor substitutes for the 
masculine vigor and simplicity of these features in the early design. 
However, it must be recognized that in view of the limitations im- 
posed on the architects they achieved a reasonable success. 

The interior of the synagogue (PL 36) is considerably more ef- 
fective. The ground floor is used for school and social rooms, and 
the large hall for the congregation rises from the second floor to a 
high vaulted roof in the clerestory. The pews on the floor are ar- 
ranged in concentric segmental curves facing the pulpit, and there 
is a gallery curving around sides and back. Above the hall rises a 
species of tunnel vault, panelled in wood, with two large transverse 
ribs, toward which curved panels at the ends converge. The clere- 
story windows in groups of three arched lights penetrate the sides 
and back of this vault. At the east end is a semi-dome, and the curve 
of this is bordered by a broad and richly decorated arch above. The 
decorative designs in the bands of terra cotta facing the gallery and 
at the base of the clerestory are among the richest examples of Sul- 
livan's work. Although the structure of this auditorium is com- 
pletely different from that of the theatres, the acoustic properties, 
are outstanding another evidence of Adler's mastery of the sci-. 
ence. Altogether the interior is admirably suited to its purpose^ 
novel, and quite effective, although the gold of the decoration and 
the rich colors of the woods are necessary to a full realization of its 
beauty. 

Adler & Sullivan designed several factory and warehouse struc- 
tures during this period, but all of them have since been demolished. ^ 



126 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

By far the largest and most impressive of these was the great ware- 
house built for the Chicago Cold Storage Exchange in 1891, cover- 
ing a whole block in the industrial section along the Chicago River. 
(PL 37) It consisted of two eight-story buildings, connected by 
arcades and bridges, and served by both rail and water traffic from 
the basement and sub-basement. The first two stories above the 
street level were used for stores and offices, having large windows. 
The upper floors, used for storage purposes, have very small win- 
dows grouped vertically to give the effect of narrow slits. The for- 
tress-like appearance created by the solid walls and narrow windows 
is further enhanced by a machicolated cornice. But the building 
does not pretend to be medieval; there are no medieval decorative 
details, nor does the wall-surface suggest a massive thickness. It is 
in reality architecture reduced to the most elemental terms of 
volumes and plane surfaces, and suggests, a generation ahead of 
its time, "Die neue Sachlichkeit" of modern German architecture. 
The warehouse was demolished in 1902. Another more or less plain 
and utilitarian structure was the New Orleans Passenger Station of 
the Illinois Central Railroad, built in 1892. (Fig. 8) It is a long, 
low, two-story structure built on an L-shaped plan with baggage and 
express rooms in one wing and the waiting rooms, ticket-offices, etc., 
in the other. A colonnade carries a projecting roof to form a cov- 
ered platform across the front, and the corners are emphasized by 
round-arched structures like porte-cocheres. The building is of 
brick, and practically devoid of decoration. 

To turn from the utilitarian to the purely monumental, three 
tombs designed by Sullivan during these years are among the finest 
of all his works. Sepulchral architecture in America has been in 
general a field of conspicuous failure. Such monuments as pretend 
to architectural distinction too often achieve merely an expensive 
notoriety the pretension without the distinction. The word "fash- 




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128 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

ionable" is nowhere better applied: evidences of the Gothic fashion, 
the Romanesque fashion, the Egyptian fashion, the Classic fashion, 
and all other fashions, abound, as if the architects hoped to cele- 
brate the permanence of death through borrowing styles that have 
been dead for many hundreds of years. Worse, they have not been 
able to borrow styles, but merely fragments and tags of styles, so 
that sepulchral monuments are disjecta membra a Gothic pinna- 
cle here, a detached colonnade there a cemetery resembles a kind 
of architectural morgue. The sentiment expressed in the majority 
of monuments is the preoccupation with death, its awfulness, its in- 
evitability, its utter permanence. 

A different spirit animates Sullivan's tombs. They celebrate, not 
the permanence of death, but the permanence of life ; they express 
in terms of lyric beauty that a man or a woman has lived,, not 
merely that he or she has died. They are individual in form and 
they speak unmistakably of a personality, a personality that is im- 
mortal if only because it is enshrined in a living architecture. 

Sullivan's first tomb was the monument to Martin Ryerson in 
Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, completed in 1889. (PL 38) Mas- 
sively constructed of huge blocks of polished blue-black Quincy 
granite, this has a compact density and force which is arresting. 
The form is Egyptian in feeling, with battered walls and a severely 
rectangular entrance recalling a mastaba door; but the detail is 
entirely original. The prime purpose of a tomb, duration, is thor- 
oughly expressed in the form and treatment of the architectural 
composition. But the feeling is far from the somberness of death. 
The battered walls flare out at the base in a graceful and springing 
curve instinct with life, and on a clear day the polished black walls 
form a dark mirror in which one sees ethereal reflections of green 
trees, blue sky, and moving clouds. 

The Getty Tomb (Pis. 39, 40), near the Ryerson Tomb in Grace- 



YEARS OF EXPANSION 129 

land Cemetery, was built as a monument to Carrie Eliza Getty in 
1890. It is appropriately more graceful and feminine than the 
Ryerson Tomb, and enriched with delicately carved decoration. 
The construction is of blocks of gray Bedford limestone, with 
bronze gates and inner door. The rectangular block of the monu- 
ment rests on a stylobate of four single stones, and the lower half of 
the wall is of smooth ashlar masonry. The upper half of the wall 
has an all-over incised pattern of octagonal panels enclosing eight- 
pointed stars, and above this is an enriched cornice with three scal- 
lops on the sides indicating the divisions between the large stone 
slabs constituting the roof. On the front and two sides are large 
arches springing from the ashlar base to cover the door and the 
side lunettes. The wedge-shaped voussoirs extend through the whole 
depth of these arches, but the faces are incised with four bands and 
lines of ornament alternating with plain surfaces. This treatment 
recalls Richardson's entrances to the Austin Law School at Har- 
vard, but is flatter and more delicate. The outer gates and the en- 
trance door have superb designs, one in pierced bronze and the 
other in low relief. 

, The Wainwright Tomb (PL 41) in Belief ontaine Cemetery, St. 
Louis, is the monument of Charlotte Dickson Wainwright, and was 
completed in 1892. A memorial to a very beautiful woman, it is 
the most sensitive and the most graceful of Sullivan's tombs, dis- 
tinguished alike in its architectural form and its decorative enrich- 
ment. In the writer's opinion, at least, it is unmatched in quality by 
any other known tomb. The construction is of gray limestone, finely 
jointed. The four sides are decorated by bands of rich and delicate 
carving, beautifully precise and clear, following the top and side 
borders and carried across the wall at the level of the projecting 
parapet. The ornamental motives are varied on each of the four 
sides. Above the main rectangular block rises a stepped circular 



130 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

base for the low dome. The interior of this dome is faced by a very 
dark blue mosaic with a gold star at the crown. On the floor are two 
tomb slabs, with inscriptions to Charlotte A. Dickson, who died 
April 15, 1891, and her husband Ellis Wainwright, who died No- 
vember 6, 1924. There is an unmistakable Oriental quality in this 
tomb, but it resides more in the contrast of rich bands of ornament 
with plane surfaces than in the adoption of any specific forms or 
decorative motives. Altogether it is one of Sullivan's masterpieces. 
Adler & Sullivan did ordy a few residences during these years. 
Some were imperative due to social obligations or the desires of 
clients of larger buildings, but in general the firm busied itself 
only with larger commissions. The Heath residence of 1889 has 
already been mentioned, and in the same year the firm made a large 
addition to the residence of Mr. Wirt Dexter, owner of the Dexter 
Building on Wabash Avenue. The cottages for the Charnleys and 
Sullivan at Ocean Springs, mentioned above, were built in 1890. 
In the same year Mr. Victor Falkenau commissioned a block of 
three houses, still standing on Wabash Avenue. An office rendering 
of this building (Fig. 9) bears the legend "F.L.W. del.," and 
Wright tells us in his Autobiography 2 that he made drawings for 
some of the houses at his own home evenings and Sundays. It seems 
likely, however, that his work was confined to detailing Sullivan's 
sketches for all of the houses except the Charnley residence, which 
is the finest of the group and shows evidence of Wright's own per- 
sonal conception. The Falkenau houses are far removed from the 
style of Sullivan's residences of the late eighties, but the changes 
are of the same kind that we have observed in the Auditorium 
and the Walker Warehouse, and are easily explicable as due to 
Richardson's influence. The use of heavy transoms in the lower 
windows, the round-arched windows, the grouping of small rec- 
tangular windows in the top story, and the almost entire omission 




Figure 9. Three residences built for Victor Falkenau, Chicago. 1890. 



132 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

of the cornice, are all Richardsonian in derivation ; but the smooth 
ashlar masonry and the clear separation and articulation of the 
parts display Sullivan's characteristic development out of Richard- 
son as already seen in the Walker Warehouse. The use of project- 
ing oriel windows and the cessation of the upper string-course and 
applied cornice inside the corners seem to be inappropriate, and it 
must be admitted that the design as a whole lacks distinction. 

The James Charnley residence (PL 42), at the corner of Astor 
and Schiller Streets, Chicago, was built in 1892. Frank Lloyd 
Wright is probably responsible for the general form, and certainly 
for detailing the working drawings, although the latter were traced 
and printed in the office of Adler & Sullivan. It is broader in con- 
ception than any of Sullivan's other residences, with more feeling 
for the organization of plane surfaces, skilfully punctuated by the 
window voids. The severely cubic volumes suggest the beginnings 
of Wright's later horizontalism. Certain features, such as the bal- 
cony and the cornice, are indeed Sullivanesque, but although Wright 
had completely mastered Sullivan's ornament, he tended when left 
free to organize it in a tighter geometric fashion, eliminating much 
of the free-flowing efflorescence of Sullivan's leaf ornament and 
reducing it to a flatter plane; the difference between the detail of 
this balcony and Sullivan's own work is striking. The base of the 
building is of limestone ashlar, extending upward to form a hori- 
zontal panel around the door and two flanking windows. This is a 
composition of great simplicity and distinction. The walls are of 
long, narrow ("Roman") brick, yellow in color, the balcony is 
stained wood, and the cornices are a light green copper. Students 
familiar with Wright's developed "prairie style" of the early 1900's 
find it hard to believe that this is one of his designs, since it has so 
many qualities of formal symmetry, monumentality, and sheer 
height that are completely lacking in his later work, together with 



YEARS OF EXPANSION 133 

certain undeniable Sullivanesque features. But a comparison of the 
entrance bay with that of the Winslow residence in River Forest 
(1893), or better, of the whole building with the unpublished and 
little known Francis Apartments, at 43rd Street and Forestville 
Avenue, Chicago (1896), leaves little doubt that the Charnley 
residence may be considered as essentially a very early work of 
Frank Lloyd Wright. 

The Albert Sullivan residence, Chicago (PL 43), was also built 
in 1892. This was commissioned by Louis' older brother, Albert 
W. Sullivan, who was for several years connected with the Illinois 
Central Railroad offices in Chicago. Louis himself lived in it from 
1892 to 1896, after which his older brother occupied it until 1905, 
when it passed into other hands. Wright also mentions having 
worked on this house/ but his original designing must have been 
confined to certain details, as the general conception seems to be 
Sullivan's. It is perhaps the best small urban residence designed 
by the firm. 

Many millions of persons who never even beard of Sullivan saw 
and remembered the Transportation Buiktmg of the World's Co- 
lumbian Exposition in 1893. (Pis. 44, 46) And every student and 
critic of American architecture todav/faiows of this building, if of 
few others by Sullivan. It has thro/gh this familiarity achieved a 
somewhat spurious reputation as/his masterpiece and as a turning- 
point in his career. It came only a few years before the break-up 
of the partnership of Adler &/Sullivan, and lent itself conveniently 
to the romantic notion that/'Sullivan's sun set in the golden glow 
of the door of the Transportation Building." It was in truth an 
achievement, and in a sense it marked the end of an era; but it was 
by no means Sullivan's greatest work, nor did it indicate the pass- 
ing of his greatness as an architect. In the same year that this was 
built at least one more significant monument was under erection 



134 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

and two other great skyscrapers followed it before Adler & Sullivan 
parted; and even after that occurred, the twenty-odd buildings de- 
signed by Sullivan independently constitute a record of superb 
achievement. Thus the Transportation Building is not of such great 
import as the widespread familiarity with it and the popular notions 
of its place in Sullivan's career would suggest. 

The story of the World's Fair has been told too often to need 
repetition here. 4 Suffice it to say that Adler & Sullivan were among 
the six firms of Chicago architects represented by buildings at the 
Fair, and were given the largest single commission of any of these 
^ with the exception of the Fine Arts Palace, which Charles B. Atwood 
designed for D. H. Burnham & Company. The Transportation Build- 
ing was located not far from the Administration Building, which 
was at the west end of the Court of Honor and in a direction south- 
east from it. The main fagade looked east along the lagoon sur- 
rounding the informal "Wooded Island," and was on a line with 
the Horticultural Building, the next building adjacent to it at the 
north. It was one of the largest buildings: the front block covered 
five and a half acres, and four great train-sheds forming an annex 
at the back extending westward to Stony Island Avenue covered 
nine acres; a total of fourteen and a half acres. 

The height of the main cornice line on/all the major buildings 
of the Fair was arbitrarily fixed at sixty feet. Of course the build- 
ing had to be as cheap as possible anckcapable of rapid construction 
and decoration. In view of these conditions, it demands a different 
kind of critical consideration firom that applied to more familiar 
types. It was essentially a pi^ce of show architecture. It needed to 
cover a certain area and to enclose a vast amount of space, and it 
needed to be impressive to look at. With definite limitations as to 
area, cornice height, and cost, it did not offer perfect freedom in 
plastic treatment. On the other hand, its purpose of housing dis- 



YEARS OF EXPANSION 135 

plays was so simply satisfied by the form of a huge shed that the 
function was not sufficiently complex, anomalous as this sounds, to 
serve as a controlling force in the disposition and articulation of 
the architectural forms. Thus at neither end of the scale did the 
building problem "contain and suggest" its architectural solution, 
and it was a thing utterly foreign to Sullivan's creative method. 
This may explain both its good and its bad features. 

It was, in fact, a great shed, attempting to atone for its lack of 
architectural variety through rather brilliantly painted walls. The 
cornice line was fixed; the rhythm of the openings was determined 
by the Roman arcades of all the/5iher great buildings at the Fair: 
thus the essential form of theWall was set. Within this formula, the 
building differs from the flier buildings of the Fair simply in an 
honest recognition of tWtemporary nature of its materials it does 
not attempt to look like a white marble building and in its effort 
to create new fornrfs to fit within an established rhythm rather than 
to copy old one^. Even with the indifferent success of these efforts, 
the building^nust be recognized as the nearest approach to architec- 
ture in th# Fair. The material of the wall was plaster. Instead of 
attempting to give it architectural authority by moulding it into 
the traditional forms of a masonry style of the past, Sullivan de- 
cided to leave it in the form in which it was most cheaply used, 
that is, the flat surface, and to enliven this necessarily dead surface 
by ornament moulded in low relief or by color, or both. Either tech- 
nique was economical, effective, and appropriate to the material. 
The polychrome decoration of the long walls was brilliant in ultra- 
marine blue, red, orange, yellow, and dark green, and satisfactory 
enough with the exception of the glaring white figures of exhibition 
angels in alternate spandrels, each bearing a scroll with the name 
of a famous inventor. The modification of the Roman forms is 
illuminating. TheS^ain arches are simply half circles; they lack 



136 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

the Roman mouldings and keystones, and their soffits are aggres- 
sively brilliant in color. The Ropdm screen colonnades and en- 
tablatures under the arches become simplified to such a point that 
they are no longer Roman. Th/ main cornice lacks the traditional 
elements of the classical entablature and is simply a projecting 
band. It is the same kind of/reduction to abstract elements which we 
have seen in the Walker ^jfarehouse ; except that here Sullivan was 
bound to a somewhat more traditional disposition. 

The sculpture adorning the building was done by John L. Boyle, 
of Philadelphia, and consisted of four pairs of groups against the 
base of the fagade representing (in toto] the "Ship of State"; five 
bas-reliefs around the base and in the tympanum of the main en- 
trance, representing the Progress of Transportation; and three 
figures on the cowcatcher of a locomotive, the location and signifi- 
cance of which the writer, to his regret, has not been able to dis- 
cover. 

Undoubtedly the most successful feature of the building was 
the "Golden Door." Although an isolated fragment, entirely un- 
related to the general scheme, it was a majestic conception. It 
projected boldly to form a large flat panel within which five reced- 
ing orders spanned the main entrance. A simple block cornice force- 
fully topped the whole. There is here the same combination of large 
and simple architectural form and intricate detail which may be 
seen in the Auditorium, and the adjustment of the one to the other 
is perfect. The detail itself is admirable in its spirit and inventive- 
ness, unmistakably a moulded and colored plaster technique with 
no attempt at masonry forms, used in broad flat surfaces. There 
was much gold leaf, and colors in warm shades of red, orange, and 
yellow. The zigzag scrolls in the spandrels detract considerably 
from the repose of the whole; they were required in the program 
for inscriptions on the subject of transportation taken from resound- 



YEARS OF EXPANSION 137 

ing sentences of Bacon and Macaulay. The decoration of the Golden 
Door was certainly the finest in the Fair, and it is interesting to 
note that of all the great architects who designed its buildings, Sulli- 
van was the only one who received a foreign testimonial: he was 
awarded three medals by the Union Centrale des Arts Decor atifs 
in 1894. 

Because of the unexampled richness of his decoration, Sullivan 
was immediately recognized as a great ornamentalist, but along 
with this went a superstition, alive in many minds today, that he 
was more of a decorator than an architect. This is patently untrue 
when one calls to mind the Auditorium, the Walker Warehouse, the 
McVicker's Theatre, the Wainwright Building, the three tombs, or 
the Golden Door; yet it may be well to attest the opinion of Mont- 
gomery Schuyler, who in an essay in 1895 criticized this attitude so 
justly and so forcefully that the passage bears repeating: "I have 
already protested against the narrowness of the appreciation which 
finds Mr. Sullivan only the first of our decorators, though that he 
so clearly is. This limitation ignores the structural instinct, or the 
reasoned engineering knowledge of mechanical relations, which- 
ever you please, which presides over the placing, the magnitude, 
and the forms of his masses. I should be at a loss to name any 
other American architect whose perception of these things is more 
unerring. And surely it is this perception of the importance of the 
masses, this appreciation of the essential facts of structure, that 
makes the architect in contradistinction to the architectural decora- 
tor. No other buildings are more effectively blocked out on the one 
hand, none so admirably decorated on the other; and, as has been 
said already, the placing and adjustment, if not also the design 
of ornament itself, requires the faculty of the designer who is first 
of all a builder. Thus at each end of the scale Mr. Sullivan's work 
stands the strictest test. ... He has a power of design that makes 



138 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

him one of the most striking and interesting individualities among 
living architects." 5 

The interior of the Transportation Building consisted of a central 
hall, rising into an arcaded clerestory, and $e"parated from side 
aisles by rich colonnades. The central cupola rose to a height of 
165 feet, and was reached by eight el^ators, which themselves 
formed a part of the transportation e^rfiibit. These elevators made 
access to the galleries over the side aisles easy. The exhibits in- 
cluded everything connected with transportation, as one account puts 
it, "ranging from a baby carriage to a mogul engine, from a cash 
conveyor to a carrier pigeon." The main hall was lined by scores of 
locomotives facing each other to form a long and novel vista; there 
was a balloon (but no airplane) ; and the four immense sheds at 
the back had whole trains drawn up for inspection. Especially 
interesting was the Pullman Palace Car exhibit, with examples just 
growing out of the gasolier and early-Pullman-plush period into 
the Louis XIV salon cars of a more sophisticated era. 

The Transportation Building did re^Sresent the end of an era 
for Adler & Sullivan, insofar as the Papic of 1893 led to the almost \ 
complete cessation of building activity during the middle nineties. 
The firm had built over thirty structures between 1888 and 1893; 
from this time until 1895 it completed only two buildings, and 
afl^Jj89S~~StrH^ only two others before 1900. This 

paucity of commissions was the^cEief factor leading to the dissolu- 
tion of the partnership, as wiN be brought out later. But in the 
meantime we must turn to the /ight great skyscraper designs done 
between 1890 and 1895, representing Sullivan's greatest contribu- 
tion to American architecture. 



1 Autobiography, p. 297. 

2 Wright: Autobiography, p. 106. 



YEARS OF EXPANSION 139 

3 Wright: Autobiography, p. 106. 

4 The reader is referred to the chapter on the World's Columbian Ex- 
position in T. E. Tallmadge's The Story of Architecture in America for a 
brief and readable account, and to Charles H. Moore's two-volume biog- 
raphy of Daniel H. Burnham for a more detailed history. 

5 Montgomery Schuyler : "A Critique of the Works of Adler & Sullivan," 
Architectural Record, Great American Architects Series, no. 2, Decem- 
ber, 1895. 



V. GIVING FORM TO THE 
SKYSCRAPER 



IN the foreword to The Autobiography of an Idea Claude Bragdon 
says: "Louis Sullivan has the distinction of having been, perhaps, 
the first squarely to face the expressional problem of the steel-framed 
skyscraper and to deal with it honestly and logically." Avoiding for 
the time being the controversial element in this statement as to what 
constitutes honesty and logic in expressing a steel frame, it does 
set forth with fundamental truth Sullivan's greatest achievement in 
architectural practice. He gave definitive artistic form, for the first 
time, to the high building. 

The high building was a comparatively new arrival in American 
architecture. It may be said to date from 1874, when Richard 
Morris Hunt erected the ten-story New York Tribune Building, one 
of the first of the "elevator buildings." Prior to that time six stories 
was the general height limit, due to a universal human disinclina- 
tion to walk up more than five flights of stairs. The steam passenger 
elevator had been gradually developed from 1850 on, but was not 
used in an office building until 1871, and the hydraulic elevator was 
not patented until 1872. 1 During the decades of the seventies and 
eighties the height of the tallest commercial structures did not in 
general exceed twelve stories. The skyscraper in the technical sense 
of skeleton construction was an even more recent development, dat- 
ing from 1884. The principle of supporting the exterior wall on 
a metal frame was first used by William LeBaron Jenney in the 
Home Insurance Building in Chicago, built in 1884-85. The second 

140 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 141 

skyscraper was the Tacoma Building in Chicago, designed by Hola- 
bird & Roche and built in 1887-88. The Tower Building, by Brad- 
ford Gilbert, built in 1889, was the first skyscraper in New York. 
Steel was first consistently used in skyscraper frames in 1889, in 
the Leiter and Rand McNally Buildings in Chicago by Jenney and 
Burnham & Root, respectively. In spite of these advances, the logic 
of skyscraper construction was not immediately recognized. So far 
as is known no other skyscrapers than the Home Insurance and 
Tacoma Buildings had been erected by 1888, and in the year 1889 
the number was probably less than half a dozen, most of which 
were in Chicago. The Wainwright Building, Adler & Sullivan's 
first skyscraper, was begun in 1890, and was thus one of the early 
examples. In the year 1890, to be sure, the number increased by 
leaps and bounds, the demand for structural steel in that year ex- 
ceeding the ready supply. At that time the new building method 
became generally known as the "Chicago construction." Solid 
masonry-walled buildings continued to be built into the middle 
nineties, and iron for frames was not entirely abandoned until 1904. 
From this brief review it may be seen that in 1890 the high 
building of "masonry" construction was about fifteen years old, 
and that the skyscraper was still in an experimental stage, although > 
the fundamental structural principle had been, applied. Whit was 
the nature of the architectural treatment of the high building at 
that time? The problem had not yet been solved successfully, even 
by the country's greatest architects. To realize the tremendous 
advance achieved by Sullivan in the Wainwright Building some 
familiarity with the appearance of other high buildings of that 
time is necessary. The Wainwright Building is a fine building even 
in comparison with the best structures of today, but it becomes 
far more impressive when placed beside its contemporaries. One 
may fairly suggest comparison with works by the most highly 



142 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

reputed firms designing high buildings in those years: McKim, 
Mead & White and George B. Post in New York, and Burnham & 
Root in Chicago. I have chosen three examples for illustration: the 
Pulitzer (New York World) Building in New York by George B. 
Post (PL 46); the New York Life Insurance Building in Kansas 
City by McKim, Mead & White (PL 47) ; and the Woman's Temple 
in Chicago by Burnham & Root. (PL 48) All three were built in 
1890 and 1891, the years during which the Wainwright Building 
was under construction. 

The primary characteristics of these large office buildings, in 
contrast to the other architectural types of the day, were their com- 
mercial purpose, their height, their volume, and the uniformity of 
their plan, story by story. These characteristics might logically be 
expected to have determined their architectural treatment. Actually, 
they did not. Utilitarianism was not yet accepted as a valid source 
of artistic inspiration; great height and great volume were con- 
sidered artistic liabilities rather than assets; and uniformity was 
considered monotony. Critical writings in the architectural journals 
of the time are full of discussions as to what might be done to the 
new giants to make them architecturally respectable, and the gen- 
eral conclusion arrived at was a confession of failure : that the sky- 
scraper was an artistically intractable problem which could best 
be solved by a series of compromises endeavoring to make it look 
like something else. The following devices were almost universally 
resorted to : the use of elaborate decoration to exalt the mere office 
building into a "mercantile palace"; the use of single stories or 
groups of stories as units of design, dividing the building horizon- 
tally so that through suggesting traditional modes of composition 
in lower buildings the effect of height might be diminished; the 
division of fagades vertically by oriels, projecting or receding bays, 
pilaster strips, or other means, to disrupt the continuity of the 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 143 
bounding surfaces and thereby reduce the effect of great volume. 
In common with all other buildings of the time, skyscrapers were 
decorated by ornamental details derived from past styles, gener- 
ally accenting the picturesque and romantic qualities conceived 
as attributes of the "mercantile palace." These ornamental details 
were greatly enlarged in scale to conform to the size of the building, 
and since they had been traditionally limited to a certain size, the 
effect was to dimmish the apparent size of the whole building. 
Finally, no architectural distinction was made between tall build- 
ings of skyscraper structure and of solid masonry structure; both 
types were treated with the time-honored masonry aesthetic. This 
summary of style applies to all high buildings from the time of 
their appearance down to 1890, and, of course, to many buildings 
erected after that date. 

Specifically, the Pulitzer Building demonstrates these character- 
istics very clearly. It is obviously adorned in such a fashion as to 
belie its primary commercial purpose; it is divided vertically into 
three bays by a projecting pavilion in the middle of the fagade; it 
is divided horizontally into groups of two stories under classic 
entablatures so that although its real height, exclusive of the dome, 
is thirteen stories, its architectural height is seven stories; and it 
employs Italian Renaissance decorative detail columns and en- 
tablatures, Palladian motives, a pediment, and an elevated dome. 
It differs from the other two in being a masonry-walled structure, 
the great height (375 feet) necessitating a wall nine feet thick at 
the base. Although this distinguishes it practically, it does not dis- 
tinguish it aesthetically from the others, since they are also con- 
ceived in terms of masonry construction. 

The New York Life Insurance Building in Kansas City affords 
a more specific comparison with the Wainwright Building, since 
it has the same number of stories and almost the same plan. More- 



144 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

over its architects, like Sullivan, had come under Richardson's in- 
fluence and in this building used a Richardsonian composition of 
the wall. But instead of progressing from Richardson's example 
toward a more modern form, they retreated into an academic for- 
malism lacking even Richardson's vigor. Dressed in Italian Renais- 
sance detail and evading every essential problem, the building is 
merely a polite pretense of architecture. 

The Woman's Temple in Chicago, demolished several years ago, 
was undoubtedly a more dignified monument than the other two, 
but the same mode of design is evident. The recessed court in the 
middle of the fagade broke up the volume in the desired manner, 
and the reduction of apparent height was achieved by the 2-2-5-1 
grouping of the stories in the fagade and the inclusion of three 
stories in the roof. One would not think of this, on a cursory glance, 
as three stories higher than the Wainwright Building. The persist- 
ence of the feeling of a solid masonry wall is indicated in the mas- 
siveness of the two lower stories and the depth of the reveals in the 
tall embracing arches ; the structure looked heavy, although it was 
in reality a steel-framed building. The ornamental detail was a 
melange of Romanesque and Queen Anne, while the steep-pitched 
roof with its small dormers was Gothic, and it is interesting to 
know that a tall fleche which John Root contemplated for the middle 
of the roof was omitted only for financial reasons. The Woman's 
Temple was hailed on its completion as the finest of Burnham & 
Root's buildings, but in justice to the firm it may be recorded that 
both the Mills Building in San Francisco (1890) and the Mo- 
nadnock Building in Chicago (1891) are now considered superior 
to it. 

After this cursory survey of contemporary architectural style in 
high buildings, we may now more profitably examine the Wain- 
wright Building. (PL 49) It was the first true skyscraper built by 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 145 
Adler & Sullivan, and the surety, the justness, the completeness of 
this first attempt at solving a new architectural problem are astound- 
ing evidences of Sullivan's creative imagination and power of 
design. In the architectural world it was like an Athena sprung 
full-fledged from the brow of Zeus; the problem had been solved, a 
new need had called forth a new form. 

The Wainwright Building was designed in 1890, and construc- 
tion completed in 1891. It is still standing today. The exterior is 
faced by materials which give a rich harmony of re<Js and browns. 
The base of the building to a height of two feet ab$^e the sidewalk 
is of red Missouri granite; the lower two stories a^e of finely-jointed 
brown sandstone ashlar; the continuous piers /rom the third to the 
tenth floor are of red brick; the spandrel panels set back between 
the piers and the top story and cornice ar/of red terra cotta. The 
architectural design of the exterior displays the same combination 
of simplicity in the major lines with pchness of detail which we 
have observed in the Auditorium and/the McVicker's Theatre. The 
two lower stories form a simple and substantial base, penetrated 
by severely rectangular and unadorned openings. The only touches 
of ornament in this base are the narrow carved bands framing the 
main doors entering the building. Above the second story is an 
emphatic string-course clearly separating the base of the building 
from the shaft. This string-course is broken at the corners, how- 
ever, to permit the uninterrupted sweep of the vertical masses of 
the corner piers from sj&ewalk to top story. 

The treatment of the main grou^> of stories is emphatically verti- 
cal. At the corners are broad pierk over seven feet wide; and on 
the sides narrow piers two and a halmeet wide, each alternate pier 
enclosing a steel column. The narrow piers rest on a very small base 
and have a slight face ornament at the Bottom and a terminal of 
terra cotta ornament some four feet high ah|he top. Thus the piers 



146 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

resemble pilasters, although the proportions and detail are entirely 
non-traditional. The "capitals" are similar in form to those em- 
ployed by Frank Lloyd Wright on the tall piers of the interior 
light-court in the Larkin Building in Buffalo (1903). Apart from 
the slender brick piers, the only solids of the wall surface are the 
spandrel panels between the windows. Since these are carried on 
the steel spandrel beams they serve no other structural purpose than 
that of thin screens to keep out the elements, and are thus sub- 
ordinated to the piers by being recessed behind them, and serve 
as appropriate fields for decoration. They have rich decorative 
patterns in low relief, varying in design and scale with each story. 

The top story and cornice division is marked off from the shaft 
by a string-course carried all the way around the building, even 
across the corner piers. The mc^t striking enrichment of the exterior 
occurs in the opulent foliate/designs facing the entire tenth story. 
This forms a luxuriant frieze penetrated by small round windows. 
Above it a simple blockyCornice with a wide face and considerable 
projection terminates/the fagade in a decisive fashion. Such a 
cornice is manifestly useless, but it expresses vigorously the upper 
termination of the composition. 

The construction of the building embodied the most advanced 
practice of the day. The foundations were of the isolated footing 
type, made of reinforced concrete, and carried to a depth of sixteen 
feet. The framework was entirely of steel, with riveted columns and 
girders, and spandrel beams carrying the exterior wall on shelves 
at every floor. All steel work was encased in fireproof tile, and all 
interior partitions were constructed of fireproof material. Interior 
partitions on the office floors were so constructed that any or all 
of them might be moved or eliminated, according to the needs of 
the clients. The ten stories total 135 feet in height, and the cost of 
the building was $561,255 slightly over thirty cents a cubic foot. 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 147 

The plan and arrangement of the interior are of particular in- 
terest in attempting to interpret the exterior design as an expression 
of the interior functions. The basement floor, containing boiler, 
pump, and dynamo rooms, lavatories, and storage space, utilizes 
the entire plot. From the ground story up the plan is U-shaped, with 
an open light-court to the north, assuring outside light to every 
office; this light-court occupies almost 20 per cent of the total lot 
area. (See plan Fig. 10) The ground floor has nine stores of dif- 
ferent sizes on the street fronts, and a large office in the northwest 
corner. The second floor is divided up into twenty-five offices and 
the necessary corridors. This is exactly the same as the typical plan 
of the office floors from the third to the ninth. (See plan Fig. 10) 
In the typical office floor the alternate wall piers (the ones contain- 
ing no steel columns) serve no structural purpose other than the 
support of window frames, since in no case do they serve even as 
the terminus of interior office partitions. All told, there are two 
hundred offices, and the net rental area of the typical office floor 
amounts to 53 per cent of the total lot area, representing an ef- 
ficiency in planning which is seldom exceeded today. The tenth 
story is used for large lavatories and a barber shop, lighted by 
skylights, but chiefly for the great steam mains employed in an 
overhead heating system and for other mechanical utilities. Its 
function is thus quite distinct from that of the floors below. 

Returning to the exterior, how may we account for the radical 
innovation in architectural form which the Wainwright Building 
represents? Here we have a very illuminating explanation from 
Sullivan himself, in an article entitled "The Tall Office Building 
Artistically Considered." This was first published in March, 1896, 2 
and Sullivan probably wrote it with the recently completed Guar- 
anty Building in Buffalo more directly in mind than the Wainwright 
Building, but it presents so lucidly his method of approach to the 



148 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

general problem of the tall office building that it is of special in- 
terest in connection with his first attempt to solve it. The article 
formulates briefly and clearly his whole philosophy of art, but we 
may concern ourselves for the moment only with those parts of it 
which deal specifically with the tall office building. 

In a brief introduction Sullivan proposes, with far more than 
ordinary perception, the baffling architectural problem which the 
tall building presents, and then says: u lj is my belief that it is of 
the very essence of every problem that it contains and suggests its 
own solution. This I believe to be natural law. Let us examine, then, 
carefully the elements, let us search out this contained suggestion, 
this essence of the problem. 

"The practical conditions are, broadly speaking, these: 
"Wanted : first, a story below ground, containing boilers, engines 
of various sorts, etc., in short, the plant for power, heating, light- 
ing, etc.; second, a ground floor, so called, devoted to stores, banks, 
or other establishments requiring large areas, ample spacing, ample 
light, and great freedom of access; third, a second story readily 
accessible by stairways, this space usually in large subdivisions, 
with corresponding liberality in structural spacing and expanse of 
glass and breadth of external openings; fourth, above this an in- 
definite number of stories of offices piled tier upon tier, one tier 
just like another tier, one office just like all the other offices, an 
office being similar to a cell in a honeycomb, merely a compart- 
ment, nothing more; fifth and last, at the top of this pile is placed 
a space or story that, as related to the life and usefulness of the 
structure, is purely physiological in its nature, namely the attic. 
In this the circulatory system completes itself and makes its grand 
turn, ascending and descending. The space is filled with tanks, pipes, 
valves, sheaves, and mechanical etcetera that supplement and com- 
plement the force-originating plant hidden below-ground in the 




SIXTH FLOOR PLA/< 




FIRST FLOOR PLAAT 



Figure 10. Wainwright Building, St. Louis, Plans 
of the first and sixth floors. 



150 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

cellar. Finally, or at the beginning, rather, there must be on the 
ground floor a main aperture or entrance common to all the oc- 
cupants or patrons of the building. 

"The practical horizontal and vertical division or office unit is 
naturally based on a room of comfortable area and height, and the 
size of this standard office room as naturally predetermines the 
standard structural unit, and, approximately, the size of window 
openings. In turn, these purely arbitrary units of structure form in 
an equally natural way the true basis of the artistic development of 
the exterior. Of course the structural spacings and openings of the 
first or mercantile story are required to be the largest of all ; those 
in the second or quasi-mercantile story are of a somewhat similar 
nature. The spacings and openings in the attic are of no importance 
whatsoever (the windows have no actual value), for light may be 
taken from the top, and no recognition of a cellular division is 
necessary in the structural spacing. 

"Hence it follows inevitably, and in the simplest possible way, 
that ... we will in the following manner design the exterior of 
our tall office building, to wit: 

"Beginning with the first story, we give this a main entrance that 
attracts the eye to its location, and the remainder of the story we 
treat in a more or less liberal, expansive, sumptuous way a way 
based exactly on the practical necessities, but expressed with a 
sentiment of largeness and freedom. The second story we treat in 
a similar way, but usually with milder pretension. Above this, 
throughout the indefinite number of typical office tiers, we take 
our cue from the individual cell, which requires a window with its 
separating pier, its sill and lintel, and we, without more ado, make 
them all look alike because they all are alike. This brings us to the 
attic, which, having no division into office cells, and no special re- 
quirement for lighting, gives us the power to show by means of its 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 151 

broad expanse of wall, and its dominating weight and character, 
that which is the fact, namely that the series of office tiers has come 
definitely to an end ... the attic, specific and conclusive as it is 
in its very nature, its function shall equally be so in force, in signifi- 
cance, in continuity, in conclusiveness of outward expression. 

"This may seem a bald result . . . but even so we certainly have 
advanced a most characteristic stage beyond the building of the 
speculator-engineer-builder. For the hand of the architect is now 
definitely felt in the decisive position at once taken, and the sug- 
gestion of a thoroughly sound, logical, coherent expression of the 
conditions is becoming apparent. 

"However, thus far the results are only partial and tentative at 
best; . . . our building may have all this in a considerable degree 
and yet be far fit>m that adequate solutidn of the problem I am 
attempting to define. We must now heed the imperative voice of 
emotion. 

"It demands of us. What is the chief characteristic of the tall 
office building? And at once we answer, it is lofty. This loftinessf 
is to the artist-nature its thrilling aspect. It is the very open organ- 
tone of its appeal. It must be in turn the dominant chord in his ex- 
pression of it, the true excitant of his imagination. It must be tall. 
The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and pride 
of exaltation must be in it. It must be every inch a proud and soar- i 
ing thing, rising in sheer exultation that from bottom to top it is a 
unit without a single dissenting line. . . ." 

It is clear that a new spirit animated Sullivan's approach to the 
design of the tall office building. He saw it as a new problem in 
architectural design, a problem which contained and suggested its j 
own solution, and therefore one which could not possibly be solved 
by established architectural rules, conventions, or habits. In facing 
this new problem, he attempted to eliminate all artificial precon- 



152 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

ceptions and to think through to fundamentals. Having stated the 
essential elements of a "true normal type," the first step in the 
solution of the problem was to accept the practical conditions and 
make these the basis of the design. But he went beyond the merely 
practical. He conceived it as the task of the architect, through the 
working of his creative imagination, to make beauty a part of 
practicality, depending on it and growing out of it as the originat- 
ing impulse. To accomplish this, the emotional force of the prob- 
lem itself had first to be found which in the case of the isolated 
tall office building was its height in relation to surrounding build- 
ings and satisfactory expression be given to it. It is through ex- 
pression that the diversity of practical facts is given unity and mean- 
ing; in fact, one sense of the word "expression" is "That which 
expresses or symbolizes a thought, feeling, or quality." Sullivan in- 
sisted on architecture as an "art of expression" he wrote a whole 
essay by that title in the Kindergarten Chats and indeed insofar 
as it is art rather than engineering, it must be accepted as such. The 
importance of the "emotional" element in Sullivan's mode of design 
cannot be overstressed, as it completely dissociates him from the 
mere mechanical and utilitarian functionalism with which he is so 
often connected. "Functionalism" may mean merely the honest, 
direct, and detailed recognition of the practical facts of a building ; 
in short, the revelation of function and structure. To Sullivan it 
meant the expression of an emotional synthesis of practical con- 
ditions. 

From the point of view of mechanical and utilitarian functional- 
ism, the Wainwright Building offers many anomalies of design. 
Does it, for instance, strictly reveal its structure? In detail it does 
not. The structure of the lower two stories is similar to that of the 
office floors above as far as the steel frame goes ; why should there 
be a thickening and strengthening of the wall of these lower stories, 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 153 

as if it afforded a base for the support of the superstructure? The 
corner column in the steel frame does not carry as much weight as 
the adjacent lateral columns (in modern construction it is often 
lighter and sometimes eliminated entirely) ; why should the corners 
of the building be emphasized by broad masonry walls? The alter- 
nate piers of the fagades enclose no steel columns and do not serve 
as the abutment of permanent interior partitions ; why should they 
be the same in size and exterior treatment as the steel-bearing piers? 
The piers themselves are markedly vertical in emphasis, whereas the 
steel frame inside is a recticulated cage in which neither verticals 
nor horizontals particularly dominate. Is, then, the vertical em- 
phasis in the design a revelation of structure? The projecting 
cornice does not serve either to shelter the sides of the building 
from rain, or to convey roof water beyond the line of the fagade 
and discharge it by means of gutter scuppers; can it be said to 
have any structural purpose at all? 

Or does the design reveal the functional articulation of the build- 
ing? Again, no. For instance, the second story is an office floor 
identical in plan and arrangement and purpose to the superior 
stories; why should it be included, aesthetically, in the base? The 
top story is strictly utilitarian and mechanical in purpose ; is there 
any reason why it should receive the most luxuriant and sumptuous 
adornment of the whole building if this purpose be revealed? 

The answers to these questions are inherent in Sullivan's whole 
conception of architectural design as the symbolic expression of an 
emotion aroused by practical conditions. Such a theory rests on 
no purely mechanical basis. The judgment of the success of a work 
of architecture, according to Sullivan, should be made subjectively 
and synthetically rather than objectively and analytically. The in- 
terpretation of the specific features of a design need not depend on 
the intimacy of their correlation with specific constructive or func- 



154 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

tional facts, but on the intimacy of their correlation with the ex- 
pressional quality of the whole. With this in mind, we can readily 
accept that as a whole the Wainwright Building expresses positively 
and successfully the feeling of its commercial purpose, its light 
steel frame, its height and its volume; every detail is a necessary 
and integral part of the unity of the whole, and the whole is eloquent 
of the physical and spiritual facts of its existence. In detail, the 
proper interpretation of the continuous vertical piers might be, 
not that they reveal the nature of the steel skeleton, which they do 
not, but that they contribute to the effect of height which Sullivan 
so eloquently sets forth as the primary quality of the building a 
quality made possible by that particular type of construction. Or, 
in the case of the uniformity of the vertical piers, here the evident 
failure to reveal the steel structure (since only alternate piers con- 
tain steel) is of no necessary consequence; the primary aim is to 
express the volume of the whole, and this is most effectively 
achieved by a uniform rhythm along the fagades. The matter is 
essentially one of creative expression, and this rests in turn on 
emotional validity and practical validity together. 

The Wainwright Building was the first successful solution of the 
architectural problem of the high building. Sullivan himself wrote 
in the Autobiography with pardonable pride: "The steel-frame form 
of construction had come intb use ... it was first given authentic 
recognition and expression in the exterior of the Wainwright Build- 
ing, a nine-story office structurevby Louis Sullivan's own hand. He 
felt at once that the new form of engineering was revolutionary, 
demanding an equally revolutionary architectural mode. That 
masonry construction, insofar as tall Wildings were concerned, was 
a thing of the past, to be forgotten, that the mind might be free to 
face and solve new problems in new functional forms. That the 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 155 

old ideas of superimposition must give way before the sense of 
vertical continuity." 3 

The influence of the Wainwright Building on contemporary archi- 
tecture was immediate and extensive. Almost without exception, tall 
buildings for the next twenty-five years followed its scheme of 
accenting vertical lines, of recognizing volume through undifferenti- 
ated fagades, of leaving the shaft of the building between a base 
and an enriched top sheer and uninterrupted. To be sure, architects 
crystallized the example of the Wainwright Building into a formula, 
considering the tall building as an analogue of the classic column, 
with base, shaft, and capital, and employing almost any form of 
historical ornament; so that Sullivan's creative method of approach 
was completely lost while the superficials of his results were being 
most widely copied. 

Sullivan's own criticism of the old-fashioned method is of in- 
terest: "All of these critics and theorists agree, however, positively, 
unequivocally, in this : that the tall office building should not, must 
not, be made a field for the display of architectural knowledge in 
the encyclopaedic sense; that too much learning in this instance is 
fully as dangerous, as obnoxious, as too little learning; that miscel- 
lany is abhorrent to their sense ; that the sixteen-story building must 
not consist of sixteen separate, distinct and unrelated buildings 
piled one upon the other until the top of the pile is reached. To this 
latter folly I would not refer were it not the fact that nine out of 
every ten tall office buildings are designed in precisely this way in 
effect, not by the ignorant but by the educated. It would seem indeed 
as though the 'trained' architect, when facing this problem, were 
beset at every story, or at most, every third or fourth story, by the 
hysterical dread lest he be in *bad form' ; lest he be not bedecking 
his building with sufficiency of quotation from this, that or the other 



156 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

'correct' building in some other land and some other time; lest he 
be not copious enough in the display of his wares ; lest he betray, in 
short, a lack of resource. To loosen up the touch of this cramped and 
fidgety hand, to allow the nerves to calm, the brain to cool, to reflect 
equably, to reason naturally, seems beyond him; he lives, as it 
were, in a waking nightmare filled with the disjecta membra of 
architecture. The spectacle is not inspiriting." 4 

Sullivan's second skyscraper was the Schiller Building, in Chi- 
cago, a larger building than the Wainwright, containing a theatre, 
342 offices, and club rooms. The impetus for the undertaking came 
from A. C. Hesing, owner of the Illinois Staatszeitung, who enlisted 
the aid of a large number of German-Americans in Chicago in the 
formation of a German opera company. The office portion of the 
building was added to the theatre as a means of giving the latter 
financial support. The commission for the design of the building 
was given to Adler & Sullivan early in 1891, and contracts for con- 
struction were awarded in June of that year. The theatre was opened 
on October 17, 1892, and the offices were completed and ready 
for occupancy on January 2, 1893. 

The construction of the Schiller Building offers little of novelty 
except in the matter of the foundations. The construction of these 
was made especially difficult by the concentration of the heavy loads 
of a high building on a relatively small lot, and by the fact that the 
party walls of the adjacent building rested on foundations of in- 
sufficient strength to carry an additional load. Cantilevered founda- 
tions for the independent support of walls adjacent to existing walls 
had been used before, and Adler adopted this method. Isolated 
spread footings had given some dissatisfaction on Chicago soils, and 
Adler decided to try the experiment of reverting to old-fashioned 
pile foundations. Nearly eight hundred fifty-foot piles were used, 
and on them were placed two layers of heavy oak timbers, forming 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 157 

a criss-cross grille bolted into the piles. This formed a base for a 
mattress foundation of concrete reinforced by steel I-beams which 
was cantilevered out around the edges to support the enclosing wall 
of the building. The outer wall was thus erected in immediate con- 
tact with the older party walls of the adjacent buildings without 
exerting any weight on their foundations. This method proved to 
be entirely successful. The remainder of the construction was, by 
this time, standard practice. The columns, girders, and floor-beams 
were of riveted steel structural forms encased in fireproof tile; 
floors were of flat-arched hollow tile construction; partitions of 
hollow tile; stairways of steel with marble treads. Mechanical 
equipment included five passenger elevators and one freight eleva- 
tor, all of the fastest hydraulic type. 

The exterior of the Schiller Building (PL 50) differs considera-^ 
bly in effect from that of the Wainwright Building. Although de- 
signed in fundamentally the same manner, the difference in the size 
and shape of the plot, together with the necessity of signalizing the 
theatre entrance by appropriate architectural features, accounts for 
the novelty of the form as a whole. The exterior is faced by a light 
brown terra cotta, with a darker reddish brown terra cotta in the 
decorative trim. The ground story on the street is taken up by en- 
trances to the building, shielded by a projecting canopy of orna- 
mental iron. Above this is a very rich balcony across the whole 
front of the second story, slightly curved out and treated with a light 
arcade in terra cotta, embellished by busts of German poets, artists, 
and philosophers. This balcony is patently an ornamental feature, 
as the strong vertical fagade piers may be seen back of the arches. 
Since it is largely concealed from the sidewalk by the canopy, and 
its curved open-work does not suggest a strong architectonic sup- 
port for the fagade piers, its value in the composition, whether seen 
from below or above, is somewhat dubious. Above the second story, 



158 LOUIS 'SULLIVAN 

however, the composition is "cast in one jet," clear, soaring, beauti- 
fully integrated. The chief motive in the design is the seventeen- 
story tower, which is positively expressed in the lower stories by 
the strong relief of the vertical piers carried upward throughout 
its whole height "without a single dissenting line." The window 
spandrels are subordinated to these verticals, as in the Wainwright 
Building, but are here left undecorated. 

Of particular interest, considering the later development of 
zoning-laws, is the set-back system employed in the Schiller Build- 
ing to obtain the necessary light. Built on a long, narrow plot, with 
the six-story Borden Block on one side and an old five-story struc- 
ture on the other, the problem of admitting outside light to all the 
offices was a difficult one. The full width of the plot is utilized in 
front by a block nine stories high but only thirty-five feet in depth, 
and at the back by the stage building and offices over it. Between 
front and back is a narrow connecting wing, set in from the lot line 
about eighteen feet on each side, forming long lateral light-courts. 
(This treatment does not occur in the lower six stories, occupied 
by the theatre, which needed no outside light.) Thus the offices in 
the long wing were assured adequate side light, and the offices in 
the nine-story front block were lighted both by windows in the 
front fagade and others on the light-courts. Above the ninth story, 
the fagade is set back to the line of the connecting wing, assuring 
an ample amount of light for the upper part of the tower. 

The nine-story wings of the fagade are treated with continuous 
oriels running from the third to the eighth story, topped by deco- 
rated panels, and these in turn serve as parapets for little loggias 
fronting the ninth-story windows. The ninth story is capped by a 
rich terra cotta frieze and projecting cornice. The treatment of these 
wings is clearly detached from the tower in the middle of the fagade, 
and at first glance they do not seem to be parts of the building. 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 159 

Iii the tower itself the spandrels between the fifteenth- and 
sixteenth-story windows are ornamented by terra cotta panels with 
heads of the heroes of Germanic folklore. The vertical piers are 
connected by round arches at the top, instead of the simple recti- 
linear scheme of the Wainwright Building. The seventeenth story 
serves as a rich frieze, decorated by rectangular panels of orna- 
ment enclosing little arcades. The tower is concluded by a strong 
block cornice with a decorated face, and since it served as an ob- 
servation platform, it is surmounted by an ornate little belvedere 
giving access to the roof. The building is the highest of Adler & 
Sullivan's skyscrapers. 

The interior arrangement is quite complex, involving as it does 
the inclusion of a theatre with 1,300 seats, a large stage, two whole 
floors of club rooms with dining-room, kitchen, 342 offices, and the 
necessary lobbies, foyers, cloak-rooms, corridors, elevators, stair- 
ways, etc. The entire ground floor, except for two stores, is given 
to the entrance halls and theatre. (Fig. 11) The theatre occupies a 
solid block in the middle of the building, fifty-five feet wide and 
eighty feet long exclusive of the stage, and six stories in height. 
It is entirely surrounded by a thick fireproof wall, and there are 
no connections between it and the office portion. The parquet is 
reached by tunnel entrances on the ground-floor level leading to 
the dress circle, and by broad stairs leading to a foyer on the second 
floor which communicates with the rear seats an arrangement 
similar to that of the Auditorium. Corridors running outside of 
the fire walls connect with the stage on the ground floor and with 
the proscenium boxes on the second floor. The balcony is also 
reached from foyers on two floors, the third floor being attained 
by stairways within the theatre, and the fourth by an entrance from 
the gallery stairs. The gallery is reached by a separate stairway to 
the fifth-floor level. 



160 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

The theatre, being relatively narrow, has the advantage of re- 
quiring no intermediate structural supports, and there are no 
columns to obstruct the view of the stage from either parquet, 
balcony, or gallery. The proscenium opening is spanned by a series 
of eight large arches, arranged in steps expanding upward and 
outward from the curtain, extending some twenty feet over the 
floor, These arches are semicircular, rather than elliptical as in the 
Auditorium. Their surfaces are covered with rich and delicate orna- 
ment, similar to that employed in the McVicker's Theatre, in a color 
scheme of green and gold. The three proscenium boxes on each 
side are framed by large arches with sculptured lunettes by Richard 
Bock, depicting incidents from Schiller's poems. Although a smaller 
theatre than the McVicker's, the Schiller is nearly its equal in the 
beauty of its architectural form and decoration. Its acoustic proper- 
ties maintained the standard previously set by Adler & Sullivan. 

The seventh story is used for offices, except over the stage where 
the height of the rigging loft demands an extra story, and the eighth 
to the twelfth floors (Fig. 11) are devoted entirely to offices. The 
thirteenth and fourteenth stories were designed for a German down- 
town club of large membership, and have several large club rooms, 
an assembly hall with a small stage, a restaurant and kitchen, and 
several storerooms. All of these eight upper stories are carried over 
the theatre by heavy steel trusses, carrying a load of three hundred 
tons each. The fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth stories are in the 
tower, and contain eighteen offices. 

The Schiller Theatre became the "Dearborn" in 1898, and in the 
early 1900's it was secured by the Shuberts and renamed the "Gar- 
rick." For years it was the leading Shubert house in Chicago, but 
was abandoned by the drama in 1928. Except for a few minor 
changes in the shop-fronts and theatre entrances and exits, to con- 




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Figure 11. Schiller Building, Chicago. Plans of the first and ninth 
floors. 



162 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

form with changing ordinances, it is still today as it was originally 

built. 

The most striking skyscraper design of a whole generation came 
from Adler Sullivan's office at the time when the Schiller Build- 
ing was under erection. It was to be a "Fraternity Temple," built 
by the Independent Order of Odd Fellows on a site in the heart of 
downtown Chicago. The project called for a skyscraper of tremen- 
dous dimensions, far larger and higher than any contemplated up 
to that time. Just how far the project developed before its untimely 
death is difficult to ascertain; it may have been merely some ambiti- 
ous realtor's dream, but on the other hand the facts and figures 
prepared by its sponsors for submission to the I.O.O.F. have a 
concreteness which suggests that the scheme may have been near to 
realization. The project was made public in September, 1891, in 
a brochure containing detailed descriptions of the proposed build- 
ing, the financing scheme, and several plans and a rendering of the 
exterior by Adler & Sullivan. A site of nearly 43,000 square feet 
in area had been purchased, but its location, for reasons of "policy," 
was not stated. Montgomery Schuyler, in his review of the work 
of Adler & Sullivan published in 1895, stated that the project was 
"very seriously meant, and it came near being executed before the 
law intervened to limit the height of buildings." 6 This is the only 
hint as to the ultimate fate of the project which has come to light. 

At any rate, the rendering of the exterior (PL 51) is an archi- 
tectural document of no little importance. Its peculiar interest, of 
course, lies in its anticipation of the modern set-back style familiar 
since the passage of the New York City Zoning Law of 1916. No 
other large skyscraper building or design before 1908 shows so 
completely developed a system of set-backs. In the latter year Irving 
K. Pond published drawings in the Brickbuilder demonstrating the 
effect of high buildings on available light in city streets, and rec- 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 163 

ommended means of control substantially the same as those later 
embodied in the New York zoning ordinances. Undoubtedly the 
system of set-backs in the design of the Fraternity Temple was 
devised primarily as a means of admitting outside light to the 
inner offices of an unprecedentedly large building block. But that 
the larger implications inherent in this system were recognized by 
Adler & Sullivan at the time seems entirely probable. For one thing, 
having just finished the design of the Schiller Building, they must 
have been acutely conscious of the difficulties in obtaining proper 
light for a building under the crowded conditions of building sites 
then available. Their own building, the Borden Block, considerably 
aggravated the problem of obtaining light for the Schiller Building, 
and they must have realized that the short-sighted demands of real 
estate operators in insisting on a maximum amount of floor space 
over a given area must inevitably lead to difficulties of this kind. 
Sullivan wrote in the Autobiography: "The tall steel-frame struc- 
ture may have its aspects of beneficence; but so long as man may 
say: 'I shall do as I please with my own/ it presents opposite aspects 
of social menace and danger . . . the tall office building loses its 
validity when the surroundings are uncongenial to its nature; and 
when such buildings are crowded together upon narrow streets or 
lanes they become mutually destructive. The social significance of 
the tall building is in finality its most important phase." 7 Certainly 
Montgomery Schuyler realized the implications of the Fraternity 
Temple design. Speaking of it, he said : "The scheme ... is evi- 
dently that which promises the most abundant supply of air and 
light to its own tenants ? and also that which threatens the least in- 
terference with the easements in these respects of neighboring 
owners. Given a detachment complete enough, indeed, and absolute 
protection against fire, there is no reason why a thirty-five story 
building should be any more an example of 'incivism' than one of 



164 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

ten stories. One can imagine a building of the dimensions of the 
'Fraternity Temple' at the center of each square mile, or even less, 
of a crowded city. . . ." 8 (This latter fancy calls to mind the 
numerous recent schemes of LeCorbusier, Corbett, and others, for 
isolated tower cities.) 

The design shows a building occupying an entire block, with 
various masses terminating in set-backs above the tenth and twenty- 
second stories, and a central tower thirty-six stories high capped 
by a pyramidal roof. The projecting balcony around the tower at 
the thirty-fourth floor is presumably an observation platform. The 
building was to have been four hundred and fifty feet high. The 
lower two stories form a base, penetrated by two large entrance 
arches, and above this the design is similar to that of the Wainwright 
Building, with vertical piers and an enriched frieze. The omission 
of the projecting cornice at the tenth story is worthy of note ; if the 
one over the twenty-second story and the projecting balcony and 
pyramidal roof on the tower had also been omitted one could im- 
agine it as a skyscraper of the late twenties. 

The interior plans and construction of the building are described 
fully in the brochure above-mentioned, and only a few of the more 
interesting items need concern us here. The foundations contem- 
plated were evidently to be caisson foundations reaching down to 
bed-rock; this is the first suggestion of the kind in Chicago archi- 
tecture, and of interest in connection with the Stock Exchange Build- 
ing erected two years later. The main lobby in the center of the 
building was to have eighteen elevators and four main stairways. 
The fraternity club rooms were to be located on the third, fourth, 
fifth, sixth, and tenth stories, and the remainder of the building 
was to contain 1,110 offices. The construction was to employ a 
riveted steel frame with extensive diagonal bracing against the 
wind-pressures on so tall a structure; fireproof tile insulation; steel 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 165 
stairs, mosaic floors, etc. If the Fraternity Temple had been built 
it would not only have been by far the largest and highest skyscraper 
in the world, but an inescapable demonstration of sound construc- 
tion and good design; it might conceivably have stemmed the wave 
of classicism after the Fair and advanced the development of mod- 
ern style in the high building by a generation. 

The Union Trust Building in St. Louis (Fig. 12) was the third 
skyscraper built by Adler & Sullivan. As in the Wainwright Build- 
ing, Charles K. Ramsey of St. Louis was an associate. It was de- 
signed in 1892, and construction completed on November 1, 1893. 
The plan is much the same as that of the Wainwright Building ex- 
cept that it is reversed, the open court facing south instead of north; 
this divides the main fagade into separate blocks with a recessed 
court between them. The base of two stories differs considerably 
from the restrained simplicity of treatment of the Wainwright 
Building. To be sure the ground story is extremely plain, consisting 
of plate glass windows and rather slender piers, but the second 
story with its series of round windows is teeming with ornament. 
The heraldic lions in terra cotta are done with considerable gusto, 
but their value as architectural decoration is perhaps open to ques- 
tion. This base would seem to satisfy Sullivan's description in "The 
Tall Office Building" more closely than does that of the Wainwright 
Building: "Beginning with the first story, we give this a main en- 
trance that attracts the eye to its location, and the remainder of 
the story we treat in a more or less liberal, expansive, sumptuous 
way. . . ." The base is topped by a cavetto cornice, richly orna- 
mented. 

The shaft of the building occupies ten stories, the projecting 
vertical piers being topped by arches as in the Schiller Building. 
The windows are grouped in pairs in each bay, separated by inter- 
mediate posts or mullions. The two top stories and cornice form an 



166 LOU IS SULLIVAN 

enriched capital for the building, defined from the shaft by string- 
courses terminating in most lively and entertaining animals de- 
scribed in the building prospectus as "bearcats." The rich cavetto 
cornice, although graceful in shape, does not seem so appropriate 
in its place as does the strong block cornice of the Wainwright 
Building. There is a fifteenth story under the roof, used for mechani- 
cal utilities, but this appears nowhere in the exterior design. 

It is quite apparent that the Union Trust Building departs in 
many respects from the mode of design set forth by Sullivan in his 
article on "The Tall Office Building." It certainly cannot be termed 
a strictly "functionalist" skyscraper, nor on the other hand can it 
lay claim to the clean-cut perfection of form of the Wainwright 
Building. Yet in one respect it may satisfy the structuralist more 
than does the latter: each vertical pier contains a steel column. In 
1903 three bays were added to the north side of the building; and 
in 1924 the base was completely remodelled. 

One other skyscraper in St. Louis was projected during the years 
in which the Union Trust Building was built. This was to have been 
a Trust and Savings Bank building, just across the street from the 
Union Trust Building. The building was never erected, but there 
are two renderings of the projected exterior. The first of these was 
probably done in 1892, the second (PL 52) in 1893, The earlier 
design is for a twelve-story building, with four large arches form- 
ing the base, richly decorated with reliefs about the main entrance. 
The later design is for a sixteen-story building, the base being 
reduced in height and treated almost exactly in the manner of the 
Guaranty Building in Buffalo with columns under the piers and 
the display windows slanted back around the shafts to reveal the 
capitals. The treatment of the main groups of stories is almost 
identical in the two designs. The grouping of the windows in pairs 
under arches is perhaps the most satisfactory treatment of the wall 




Figure 12. Union Trust Building, St. Louis. 1892-93. 



168 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

which Adler & Sullivan achieved. The enriched attic and projecting 
cornice vary in detail in the two designs, but neither is especially 
effective. 

These two designs, combined with the Wainwright, Schiller, and 
Union Trust Buildings, suggest that Adler & Sullivan had arrived 
at a more or less standard treatment of the skyscraper, since there 
is a fundamental similarity in all five designs. It was a treatment 
far better suited to the tall commercial building than any other 
that had been achieved up to that time: coherent, direct, suitable 
in its expression of the general structural and functional nature of 
the skyscraper, and entirely modern. 

In view of this apparent crystallization, the Meyer Building in 
Chicago (PL 53) is of very great interest. It is the only skyscraper 
to Adler & Sullivan which has never heretofore been published, and 
this seems the more extraordinary since it is quite unique and seems 
to anticipate by a full generation one of the most general character- 
istics of recent architectural style. The Meyer Building was built in 
1893 as a wholesale store building. It was a very inexpensive seven- 
story structure, practically devoid of ornament. The construction 
employed a steel frame and exterior wall of brick. 

The striking feature of the architectural design is the continuity 
of the broad horizontal bands of wall between the rows of windows, 
with all verticals subordinate to them. The vertical piers, although 
on the same plane as the horizontal bands, are crossed by narrow 
bands of ornament at the levels of the window sills, and, except at 
the corners, by projecting mouldings at the level of the lintels. 
These details, slight as they are, suffice to emphasize the horizontals 
of the design. The building originally had a top cornice of slight 
projection and some ornament, similar to that of the Walker Ware- 
house, but this has since been removed and the wall concluded by 
an absolutely plain brick parapet. Except for the heaviness of its 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 169 

construction and the lack of long strip-windows of plate glass at 
the surface plane, the Meyer Building might easily be taken as 
an example of the "International Style" current in Europe and 
America today. This is not to suggest that it was a direct influence 
in the development of that style, as it seems always to have been 
an obscure building, and was entirely unknown in Europe where 
the International Style first developed. But it does demonstrate that 
the verticalism or the horizontalism of Sullivan's skyscrapers can- 
not reasonably be interpreted merely as an expression of the steel 
construction, since the construction is essentially the same in both 
types of design. As in the Wainwright Building, we are forced to 
conclude that the details of the design depend entirely on the form 
of the whole, and that this form, although a general expression of 
the function and structure, differs considerably in different build- 
ings according to their expressional qualities. 

The largest of Adler & Sullivan's skyscrapers was the Chicago 
Stock Exchange Building, built mXf893--94. (PL 54) The con- 
struction was the standard fireproofed steel-frame skyscraper type, 
and offers little of interest #cept in the foundations. The west wall 
adjoined the Chicago Herald Building, built a few years previously 
by Burnham & Root. Following the successful use of pile founda- 
tions in the Schiller Building, Adler determined to employ them 
again in the Stock Exchange Building. But it was deemed inadvisa- 
ble to subject the foundations on the west to the heavy impact of a 
pile-driver since the Chicago Herald presses were running night 
and day and the delicate machinery might be damaged and incur a 
lawsuit for the clients. Adler discussed the problem with General 
William Sooy Smith, who had acted as consultant on foundations 
on previous occasions. The General had advised carrying founda- 
tions to rock bottom for the Fraternity Temple, and he again recom- 
mended this procedure for the Stock Exchange Building, although 



170 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

he would not himself undertake the responsibility of designing 
them. Adler decided to follow his advice. Bed-rock is about seventy- 
five feet below the surface in that locality, and in order to excavate 
to such a depth the shafts had to be water-proofed to prevent seepage 
of ground water into the excavations. 9 These were the first caisson 
foundations used for building in Chicago, and apparently the first 
anywhere. Reinforced concrete piers were built up in these shafts 
to form the foundations for the west wall of the building. 

The exterior of the Stock Exchange Building is quite unlike that 
of the Wainwright Buildingland the others in its group, and at first 
glance seems a reversion to the earlier and more picturesque style 
of the buildings prior to the Wainwright. It may be argued that the 
design actually dates from early in 1891, or before, since mention 
of the projected building, naming Adler & Sullivan as the architects, 
appeared as early as July of that year. 10 Apart from the fact, how- 
ever, that any designs of that date would almost certainly have been 
redrawn shortly before the beginning of construction in 1893, the 
executed building itself displays a stylistic character which dis- 
tinguishes it from the earlier buildings. This resides chiefly in the 
conception of the wall as a plane rather than as the plastic surface 
of a mass or volume. The Walker Warehouse, the Wainwright 
Building, and other skyscrapers except the Meyer Building, have 
pronounced relief: the elements employed have projection and 
clarity. The Stock Exchange approaches the conception of the wall 
as a flat plane surface, a conception more clearly seen in the Carson 
Pirie Scott Store, designed several years later. 

The application of the term "plane surface" to a wall which is 
corrugated by nine-story projecting oriels, three on one fagade and 
six on another, needs some explanation, to be sure. But it may be 
submitted that these oriels bear no essential relation to the form of 
the whole. Whereas the oriels on the St. Nicholas Hotel, with which 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 171 

these may be compared, are essential to the whole composition, 
these oriels are certainly not decoratively conceived, nor do their 
verticals, which stop above and below in the air, suggest a struc- 
tural articulation. They obviously have nothing to do with the steel 
frame and they do not give a dominantly vertical expression to the 
composition as a whole. Although they have a single window sill at 
each story, their diagonal projections prevent any continuous move- 
ment in a horizontal direction. They certainly do not dissolve the 
surface in that flickering granulation which is characteristic of the 
earlier "impressionistic" style. In short, prominent as they are at 
first glance, the oriels are not especially significant in the architec- 
tural scheme. Their presence is, perhaps, on the whole unfortunate; 
possibly they were demanded by the clients, but they may represent 
a choice of the architects. 

Regarding the wall surface between these oriels, one sees a per- 
fectly flat plane penetrated by simple rectangular window openings 
bounded by slight mouldings. There is no attempt at either struc- 
tural symbolism or decorative adornment; there is not even an ef- 
fect of dominant verticalism or horizontalism. The wall is simply 
a surface plane, the thinness of which is emphasized by the slight 
reveals of the windows. 

The base of the exterior is three stories high perhaps too high 
in proportion to the total height. The main story is the second, ap- 
proached directly from the La Salle Street entrance by a wide stair- 
way. This main entrance, with its ample arch and lace-like low- 
relief ornament in terra cotta, is one of the most beautiful single 
features in all Sullivan's work. The exchange room occupies two 
stories in the middle of the building, and although it nowhere pene- 
trates to the street fronts, it is signalized in the exterior design by 
the two-story arches and rich terra cotta ornament. The building is 
thirteen stories high, and contains a total of 480 offices. The cost of 



172 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

the building was $1,131,555 Adler & Sullivan's largest commis- 
sion after the Auditorium. The most convincing evidence of the 
functional efficiency of the building rests in its rental records: dur- 
ing the forty years of its history it has had one of the best records 
of all downtown buildings in Chicago, and has remained on the 
average 95 per cent rented during the recent depression. 

The last work of the firm was the Guaranty Building in Buffalo, 
(PL 55) begun in 1894 and finished in 1895. The Guaranty Build- 
ing, last of the skyscrapers, is closest in style to the first, the Wain- 
wright Building. The programs of the two buildings were essen- 
tially similar, the same logic of design obtained, and with the 
exception of minor details, the buildings are twins. As remarked 
before, Sullivan's article on "The Tall Office Building Artistically 
Considered," published in Lippincotfs Magazine in 1896, applies 
more directly to the Guaranty Building than to the Wainwright; 
the former, indeed, being more immediately in mind, doubtless 
served as the starting-point for the argument. 

The chief differences between the two buildings are results of 
variations in the programs. The Guaranty Building is erected on a 
smaller lot but has more offices, and is accordingly higher. The 
exterior wall is entirely of terra cotta, instead of stone for the base 
and brick for the piers. The second story is not subdivided by office 
partitions, but is attained by wide staircases and has the large open 
floor areas demanded for mercantile use. Otherwise the conditions 
were practically the same. Both buildings occupy corner sites ; both 
have open light-courts at the back; approximately the same floor 
heights; the same number of elevators; top stories devoted largely 
to mechanical utilities; and the two represent an equal degree of 
efficiency in planning, the net rental area per typical floor being 53 
per cent of the lot area. 

The exterior of the Guaranty Building combines a fundamental 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 173 

simplicity of form with very great richness in detail. The color of 
the walls is a warm terra cotta red which distinguishes the building 
sharply from its neighbors and demonstrates that at a time when 
most architects were content to work in the "chaste white^' of the 
Renaissance tradition (actually ranging from the glaring bathroom 
white of glazed terra cotta to the grays of various building stones) 
Sullivan was conceiving of modern architecture as a thing of rich 
color. The two lower stories form a base clearly defined from the 
shaft by a strong horizontal moulding, and treated with broad sur- 
faces and ample openings in a simple rectilinear scheme. The 
height of the building is emphasized by the unbroken continuity of 
the vertical piers, and by their close spacing between every window, 
two windows to each interior office. The top story forms a richly 
ornamented frieze, penetrated by round windows, each of which is 
the center of development of an intricate decorative pattern. This 
treatment is effective in itself but with the piers terminating in an 
arcade, instead of a flat line, the frieze is insufficiently bounded and 
lacks the positiveness of the broad and definite belt around the 
tenth story of the Wainwright Building. The cornice, too, is thinner, 
and the immense masses of decorative foliage spreading upward 
from the corner piers to overflow the face of the cornice are not 
architectural in conception. 

From close at hand the most striking feature is the rich play of 
surface ornament. (PL 56) Sullivan expresses the fact that the 
terra cotta sheathing which gives fire-protection and keeps out the 
elements is not self-supporting masonry, but merely a casing. The 
system of piers and spandrels is patently thin, and their flat sur- 
faces are delicately enriched. It is axiomatic that ornament should 
be confined to non-structural parts of an architectural composition, 
such features as bases and supporting piers to be left undecorated. 
Although Sullivan transgresses this rule, he does so in a manner 



174 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

which does not vitiate the structural integrity of the design. The 
reticulation of the surface ornament varies considerably with the 
part ornamented, and although from near at hand the ornament 
takes its place as such and is unsurpassed of its kind, from a dis- 
tance the effect is merely that of a rich texture on plane surfaces 
which are broad, simple, and essentially architectonic; the wall is 
not disturbed by the detail with which it is enriched, and the effect 
is one of stability and repose. 

All of the exterior ornament, with the exception of the capitals 
of the columns, was detailed by Elmslie, while the interior orna- 
ment was detailed by Sullivan himself. The forward projection of 
the plate glass windows of the ground floor at a point about two- 
thirds the height of the columns seems to be an unsatisfactory com- 
promise between the practical and the aesthetic, attempting to 
reveal the detail of the capitals and at the same time to enlarge 
the display-window space. The main entrances are sumptuously 
treated but the arched lunettes serving to accent them do not suit the 
rectilinear openings of the second story. 

The interior lobbies and stairways (PL 57) are extremely rich. 
Floors are of mosaic, walls are panelled in marble with a mosaic 
frieze at the top, and the elevator grilles and stair-rails are of orna- 
mental iron-work. The Guaranty Building is the richest, both with- 
out and within, of all Adler & Sullivan's skyscrapers, and affords 
the best study of Sullivan as a decorator. The building was renamed 
the "Prudential Building" in 1899, and. stands today with no mate- 
rial alterations or remodellings. 

The Guaranty Building was the last work of the partnership of 
Adler & Sullivan. In July, 1895, Adler retired from the profession 
of architecture to go into business. At that time Adler was fifty-one 
years old, Sullivan nearly thirty-nine. The firm had practiced more 
than fourteen years and had won a position of acknowledged lead- 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 175 

ership in the Middle West. But in spite of the large number of 
buildings designed by the firm between 1881 and 1895 over a 
hundred in all architecture in the middle nineties was not a lucra- 
tive calling. The panic of 1893 and the ensuing depression lasting 
to the closing years of the decade had hit the building business 
severely. Architects simply went without commissions, or, if they 
undertook to design a building, often had to accept stock in the 
enterprise in place of cash payment, and the par paper frequently 
became valueless through receiverships. Adler & Sullivan were hit 
with the rest. The only building finished in the year 1894 was the 
Stock Exchange, and most of the work on that had been completed 
in 1893. Virtually the only work during 1894 and 1895 was the 
Guaranty Building, and this, of course, did not go far toward the 
rent of the large offices in the Auditorium Tower or the mainte- 
nance of the staff of over fifty draftsmen, engineers, and designers 
which had been so busy in the early nineties. As work ran out, the 
office force had to be cut, and finally the partners themselves felt 
the financial pressure. Adler, with three children, two of them boys 
only approaching wage-earning age, necessarily had greater ex- 
penses than Sullivan who was unmarried. Consequently, when 
Richard T. Crane offered him a ten-year contract as consulting ar- 
chitect and general sales manager of the Crane Elevator Company, 
at an annual salary greater than the amount he had ever made in 
any one year in the profession of architecture, Adler was almost 
forced to accept although with great regret at leaving his chosen 
calling. He published an open letter dated July 11, 1895, in the 
Inland Architect., announcing his retirement from the profession. 11 
Sullivan was left alone to carry on the work in the offices of the 
Auditorium Tower. 

Richard Crane and Dankmar Adler were good friends, but both 
were men of virile character, inflexible will, and a strong liking for 



176 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

independence. Adler soon found himself anxious to get back to his 
life's work, and possibly Crane felt he had drawn a Tartar. At any 
rate, after only six months the contract was terminated by mutual 
agreement, and Adler returned to the practice of architecture in Jan- 
uary, 1896. Adler wished to re-form the firm of Adler & Sulli- 
van, but Sullivan refused unquestionably an error in business 
judgment, but he had felt Adler 's abandonment of the firm at a 
crisis rather keenly. Adler decided to practice alone, working on 
small commissions and maintaining a small office on the Wabash 
Avenue side of the Auditorium Building. During the four remain- 
ing years of his life the two men saw but little of each other. 

The work of the last years of Adler's life was divided between 
designing and writing, the latter chiefly on technical and legal 
questions connected with architecture. A brief account of these 
years is contained in the Appendix. He died of apoplexy, after an 
illness of ten days, on April 16, 1900. He was fifty-six years old. 
The funeral was held in the Anshe Ma'ariv Synagogue, and he was 
buried in Mount Ma'ariv Cemetery. One of the red granite columns 
from the entrance of the Central Music Hall stands over his grave. 



1 Francisco Mujica: History of the Skyscraper, p. 22. 

2 Sullivan: "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered," Lippin- 
cotfs Magazine, vol. 57, p. 403, March, 1896. 

3 Autobiography, p. 298. 

4 Sullivan: "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered," Lippin- 
cott's Magazine, vol. 57, p. 403, March, 1896. 

5 A few years ago when the theatre was being used for cinema purposes 
it was equipped with sound mechanism for talking movies. The firm which 
installed the equipment found that the acoustic properties were so good 
that less than half the amplifying power normally employed in theatres 
of that size was necessary. 

6 Montgomery Schuyler: "A Critique of the Work of Adler & Sullivan," 




Figure 13. Dankmar Adler in 1898. 




Figure 14. Louis Sullivan in 1904. 



(Koehne) 



GIVING FORM TO THE SKYSCRAPER 177 

Architectural Record, Great American Architects Series, no. 2, Decem- 
ber, 1895. 

7 Autobiography, p. 313. 

8 Montgomery Schuyler: op. cit. 

9 It is not clear whether the modern type of pneumatic caisson, with 
sufficient air-pressure in the working chamber to keep out water, and a 
decompression chamber above, was employed. There would seem to be 
no other possible method. Woltersdorf, in his biographical sketch of Ad- 
ler, and Sullivan in "The Development of Construction" state merely that 
"caisson foundations" were employed. 

10 Industrial Chicago, vol. I, p. 231. 

11 Inland Architect and News Record., vol. 25, no. 6, p. 61, July, 1895. 



VI. SULLIVAN ALONE 



THE story of Louis Sullivan's career from the dissolution of the 
partnership with Adler to the time of his death j& in many ways a 
tragic chapter. In the fifteen years from 188(Mo 1895 Sullivan had 
designed more than a hundred buildin^X^ during the nearly thirty 
years that remained of his life he hmlt only twenty buildings. In 
other words, his practice fell aj^fy on the average to a tenth of 
what it had been in number/of buildings, and to far less than a 
tenth in size of commissiojafC These are facts which speak for them- 
selves. Naturally SulL^an knew poverty and bitterness. He was 
forced in time to g^e up his offices in the Auditorium Tower, to 
sell his property/to give up his clubs, to dispose of his library, to 
borrow moneA/with little hope of returning it. It is perhaps fortu- 
nate that we know little of the painful details of this last period of 
his life :/Sullivan himself mentions nothing of them in the Auto- 
biography. 

But because of this very obscurity, legends have sprung up since 
the time of his death implying that his professional decline was 
due to some kind of personal disintegration. To be sure, Sullivan 
was at times during these many years unhappy, bitter, solitary, and 
seemingly listless. But this may well be explained as effect rather 
than cause of his professional "decline." That it was a "decline" 
remains to be proved: the record of his buildings and his writings 
is ample evidence that in creative force and power of thought he 

fell little, if at all, below the standard already set. To any who 

178 



SULLIVAN ALONE 179 

knew Sullivan, to any who realized the intensity of his faith, the 
ardor of his hope in a new architecture, the conviction is inescapa- 
ble that such bitterness and cynicism as marked his later years was 
due to a sense of failure in his mission: the failure to bring about, 
try as he would, any considerable and widely apparent progress 
toward a new architecture. Therein was his failure, and he felt it 
keenly. 

For the most part, however, he remained his old self. William L. 
Steele, one of the recruits of those days, described the office life of 
the post-Adler era: "We knew from afar his firm springy tread, 
and at the first brisk swing of the outer door we instantly subsided 
into graven images of unremitting toil. . . . Louis' methods with 
his draftsmen were severe. We did not love him, but we had a great 
respect for him, and a great admiration for his vigorous person- 
ality. His standards were unremittingly high. He allowed sloppy 
draftsmanship on no terms whatever. He did not care how much 
time was consumed in the drafting room as long as the work was 
done up to his exacting taste. Louis Sullivan composed all his own 
specifications while I was in his office, excepting one little one that 
he let me do. His method was to stride up and down dictating elo- 
quently and copiously. His specifications were models of clarity 
and precision. His thought seemed aimed at nothing but the best in- 
terest of the job to be done. . . . He was a natural leader of men, 
but was either too independent, or too indifferent, to lend himself to 
any of the arts of the politician. He was profoundly interested in 
his theory of democracy, especially in its relation to art as the self- 
expression of free men. On the other hand, in his way of life, his 
mode of dress, his manner of speech, he was an aristocrat of whom 
any old Bourbon might have been proud. Wilful, passionate, ambi- 
tious, domineering; a hard taskmaster as well as a fine raconteur 
and bon vivant, he held his handsome head high." l Certainly this 



180 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

does not sound like a man who had lost either his professional or 
his personal standards. 

A much more practical explanation of Sullivan's later difficulties 
is that he simply was net a good businessman. This again depends 
on the point of view. Undeniably he could be haughty and short 
with clients who displeased him, and he would never compromise 
his own ideals of what was fitting in order to make a sale. He lost 
commissions in this way. But if he was not an accommodating 
salesman of his wares, he was a good businessman in another way: 
he delivered the goods as promised. He never resorted to cheap or 
shoddy materials, nor on the other hand was he extravagant of his 
client's money. In the very difficult task of estimating costs in ad- 
vance he rarely underestimated only to demand additional funds 
for the completion of the building later on. 

A characteristic picture of his mode of procedure is contained in 
an anecdote told by the president of the People's Savings and Loan 
Association Bank at Sidney, Ohio, which was designed by Sullivan in 
1917. Sullivan was called to Sidney, and the directors outlined for 
him in informal conference their requirements for a new building. 
The site was then an empty corner lot. Sullivan retired to the opposite 
corner, sat on a curbstone for the better part of two whole days, smok- 
ing innumerable cigarettes. At the end of this time he announced to 
the directors that the design was made in his head, proceeded to 
draw a rapid sketch before them, and announced an estimate of the 
cost. One of the directors was somewhat disturbed by the unf amiliar- 
ity of the style, and suggested that he had rather fancied some classic 
columns and pilasters for the fagade. Sullivan very brusquely 
rolled up his sketch and started to depart, saying that the directors 
could get a thousand architects to design a classic bank but only 
one to design them this kind of bank, and that as far as he was 
concerned, it was either the one thing or the other. After some con- 



SULLIVAN ALONE 181 

ference, the directors accepted the sketch design and the bank was 
forthwith built with not a single essential change in the design and 
at a cost $1,000 below Sullivan's estimate, despite the fact that it 
was built during the war years. 

The loss of Adler from the firm is most often cited as the cause 
of Sullivan's failure to obtain commissions after 1895. Undoubt- 
edly there is much truth in this, but it must be remembered that 
during the ensuing five years, at least, the nation-wide depression 
made building very sluggish. During those five years Sullivan's 
commissions as an independent practitioner were, if not more nu- 
merous, larger and much more important than Adler's, for during 
these five years Sullivan did three major skyscrapers, Adler none. 

Probably the chief cause of Sullivan's paucity of commissions 
in later years was neither a personal breakdown nor a lack of busi- 
ness acumen, but simply that he was ill-attuned to the spirit of the 
generation he lived in. That he realized this is clearly evident in 
many passages in the last chapters of the Autobiography. With 
acute historical perception, he selects Daniel H. Burnham both as 
an antithesis to his own personality and as a symbol of the genera- 
tion they both lived in. His picture of Burnham is skilfully drawn 
in sentences here and there in the Autobiography. As Sullivan saw 
him, Burnham had a kind of dual personality, a combination of 
practical hard-headedness and romantic sentimentality; and Burn- 
ham was successful precisely because the temper of the American 
people at large was just such a combination of hard practicality and 
vague idealism. Sullivan speaks of Burnham's insatiable desire for 
bigness, evident even as a young man. "During this period there 
was well under way the formation of mergers, combinations and 
trusts in the industrial world. The only architect in Chicago to 
catch the significance of the movement was Daniel Burnham, for in 
its tendency toward bigness, organization, delegation, and intense 



182 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

commercialism, lie sensed the reciprocal workings of his own 
mind." But Sullivan also found Burnham "a sentimentalist, a 
dreamer, a man of fixed determination and strong will a man who 
readily opened his heart if one were sympathetic." Burnham's de- 
sire for bigness was a dream, "a fixed irrevocable purpose in life, 
for the sake of which he would bend or sacrifice all else." Yet he 
combined with that dream the capacity for compromising, in the 
practical sphere, with necessities. Burnham's notion of democracy 
was quite opposite to Sullivan's; he said to Sullivan: "It is not 
good policy to go much above the general level of intelligence." 

It was Daniel H. Burnham who was the father of the World's 
Columbian Exposition in 1893, and it was the World's Columbian 
Exposition, more than any other single factor, which led to Sulli- 
van's decline in popularity. Burnham was appointed Chief of Con- 
struction of the Fair in the fall of 1890, and John Root was made 
Consulting Architect. But even before Root's premature death in 
January, 1891, it became apparent that one man could not do such 
a vast amount of work in so short a time. Burnham was authorized 
to appoint a Board of Architects, and he selected five from the East 
and five from the West. At a meeting of this board in February, 
1891, Richard Morris Hunt presided and Sullivan acted as Secre- 
tary. "Burnham arose to make his address of welcome. He was not 
facile on his feet, but it soon became noticeable that he was pro- 
gressively and grossly apologizing to the Eastern men for the 
presence of their benighted brethren of the West. Dick Hunt inter- 
rupted: 'Hell, we haven't come out here on a missionary expedi- 
tion. Let's get to work/ " It was this sense of cultural inferiority in 
Burnham which permitted the Eastern architects to control the 
architectural program of the Fair. 

It is unnecessary to describe this program in detail. Suffice it to 
say that the Roman Classic style, executed in plaster and staff on 



SULLIVAN ALONE 183 

temporary wood and steel frameworks, with the exteriors all of a 
pure and chaste white, was agreed upon for all the major build- 
ings. The disposition of the buildings was determined along major 
axial lines, formally symmetrical, and affording vistas along la- 
goons, the whole tied together by a uniform cornice line at a height 
of sixty feet. The task was herculean, and Burnham was throughout 
the guiding spirit. Sullivan says: "Burnham performed in a master- 
ful way, displaying remarkable executive capacity. He was open- 
minded, just, magnanimous. He did his great share." But if the 
White City was a dream of beauty, it was a dangerous and spurious 
kind of beauty, spurious because it appropriated the forms of a 
culture not its own, dangerous because it seemed to do this so suc- 
cessfully. It represented the acme of all that Sullivan had fought 
against during his whole life. His criticisms of the Fair are vitri- 
olic, but their justness renders them worth quoting at length. 

"These crowds were astonished. They beheld what was for them 
an amazing revelation of the architectural art, of which previously 
they in comparison had known nothing. To them it was a veritable 
Apocalypse, a message inspired from on high. Upon it their imagi- 
nation shaped new ideals. They went away, spreading again over 
the land, returning to their homes, each one of them carrying in his 
soul the shadow of the white cloud, each of them permeated by the 
most subtle and slow-acting of poisons; an imperceptible miasm 
within the white shadow of a higher culture. A vast multitude, ex- 
posed, unprepared, they had not had time nor occasion to become 
immune to forms of sophistication not their own, to a higher and 
more dexterously insidious plausibility. Thus they departed joy- 
ously, carriers of contagion, unaware that what they had beheld 
and believed to be the truth was to prove, in historic fact, an ap- 
palling calamity. For what they saw was not at all what they be- 
lieved they saw, but an imposition of the spurious upon their eye- 



184 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

sight, a naked exhibitionism of charlatanry in the higher feudal 
and domineering culture, enjoined with expert salesmanship of 
the materials of decay. . . . The virus of the World's Fair, after 
a period of incubation in the architectural profession and in the 
population at large, especially the influential, began to show un- 
mistakable signs of the nature of the contagion. There came a 
violent outbreak of the Classic and the Renaissance in the East, 
which slowly spread westward, contaminating all that it touched, 
both at its source and outward. The selling campaign of the bogus 
antique was remarkably well managed through skilful publicity 
and propaganda, by those who were first to see its commercial 
possibilities. . . . Thus did the virus of a culture, snobbish and 
alien to the land, perform its work of disintegration; and thus ever 
works the pallid academic mind, denying the real, exalting the 
fictitious and the false, incapable of adjusting itself to the flow of 
living things, to the reality and the pathos of man's follies, to the 
valiant hope that ever causes him to aspire, and again to aspire; 
that never lifts a hand in aid because it cannot; that turns its back 
upon man because that is its tradition; a culture lost in ghostly 
mesalliance with abstractions, when what the world needs is cour- 
age, common sense and human sympathy, and a moral standard 
that is plain, valid and livable. 

"The damage wrought by the World's Fair will last for half a 
century from its date, if not longer. It has penetrated deep into the 
constitution of the American mind, effecting there lesions signifi- 
cant of dementia. 

"It was here that one man's unbalanced mind spread a gauze- 
like pall of fatality. That one man's unconscious stupor in bigness, 
and in the droll fantasy of hero-worship, made him do his best and 
his worst, according to his lights, which were dim except the one 
projector by the harsh light of which he saw all things illuminated 



SULLIVAN ALONE 185 

and grown bombastically big in chauvinistic outlines. Here was to 
be the test of American culture, and here it failed. Dreamers may 
dream; but of what avail the dream if it be but a dream of mis- 
interpretation? If the dream, in such a case, rise not in vision far 
above the general level of intelligence, and prophesy through the 
medium of clear thinking, true interpretation why dream at all?" 
The effects of the Fair on American architecture were twofold: 
it gave a great impetus to the use of the historic styles, especially 
the Roman and its Renaissance derivatives; and it greatly enhanced 
the prestige of the academically trained architect. Regarding the 
first, it may be noted that although the major buildings of the Fair 
were in the Roman Classic style, almost all other historic styles 
were represented in the "state" and "foreign" buildings and the 
bazaars along the Midway. Many of these, to be sure, were "more 
scenery than solid," and to describe them as of any particular style 
necessitates a rather elastic conception of the history of architec- 
ture; but in intention, at least, they were historical. For instance, 
among the "state" buildings were the following: the Massachu- 
setts Building, a replica of the John Hancock House in Boston; the 
Pennsylvania Building, with the tower of Independence Hall, 
Philadelphia; the Virginia Building, a replica of Mt. Vernon; the 
Connecticut, Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio and Nebraska Buildings, all 
in versions of the American Colonial, Georgian, or Neoclassic; the 
California Building, a partial reproduction of the old San Diego 
mission; the Maine Building, Romanesque; the Indiana Building, 
French Gothic; the Iowa Building, Early French Renaissance; the 
Arkansas Building, French Rococo ( ! ) ; the New York Building, a 
scholarly version of the Medici Villa in Rome by McKim, Mead 
& White; and the Minnesota Building, another Italian Renaissance 
villa. The foreign government buildings included the Elizabethan 
style in England's "Victoria House"; the Islamic style in the East 



186 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

India Building, by Cobb; the Spanish Gothic in the Spanish Build- 
ing; Japanese and Swedish Buildings in appropriate national 
styles; and the German Building, a large and elaborate medieval 
Rathaus on the shore of Lake Michigan. 

The justly famed "Midway" was originally conceived as a part 
of the ethnographic exhibit, consequently its architectural setting 
had a strong flavor of the aboriginal, with an Eskimo village, a 
Dahomey village, a Lapland village, a Javanese village, a Samoan 
village, Diamond Dick's Indian village, a Turkish village, an Al- 
gerian village, and the Ruins of Yucatan; but mingled with these 
were accomplished imitations of the buildings of the more civilized 
societies, Old Vienna, the German village, two Irish villages (one 
containing bits of Blarney Castle, the other Donegal Castle sur- 
rounded by "Druidical stones" and Celtic crosses), and perhaps 
the greatest attraction of them all, A Street in Cairo, containing a 
Mohammedan mosque and minaret, a large Temple of Luxor, and 
genuine original Egyptian harem muscle-dancing, all complete. 
Amidst the riot of mining-camps, ostrich farms, and scenic rail- 
ways, were other choice bits of architecture: a Moorish Palace, a 
Persian Palace, the Chinese Theatre, a Japanese bazaar, the Italian 
Gothic structure of the Venice-Murano Glass Company, and a 
Malayan Palace entitled "The Bungalow of the Sultan of Johore." 

The Fair was, in reality, the triumph of the romantic eclecticism 
that had been blossoming throughout the generation following the 
Civil War. But it was also the beginning of the more exact and 
scholarly eclecticism that characterized the architecture of the suc- 
ceeding generation. Most of the chief architects of the Fair had 
studied in architectural schools the first ones to be founded in 
this country or at the Ecole des Beaux- Arts in Paris and they had 
acquired a much more thorough book-learning concerning the 
styles of the past than had been generally current in the preceding 



SULLIVAN ALONE 187 

twenty years. Thenceforth with the aid of photographic documents 
it was possible to design a building with a much more genuine aura 
of the past. Architects became scrupulously exact in detail; a 
Tudor Gothic structure, for instance, might be decked with all the 
suggestions of medieval antiquity rough-faced masonry walls 
and small windows, picturesque dormers and chimney-pots, the 
roof-ridge sagging from centuries of the overburdening weight of 
heavy slate roof-tiles carefully stained at the eaves to simulate a 
growth of moss, the windows with crazy diamond-leaded panes, 
even the door-steps artificially hollowed out to reveal the wear of 
generation on generation of plodding feet. Ralph Adams Cram and 
Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue appeared on the scene to become the 
high priests of a revived medievalism. McKim, Mead & White up- 
held the banner of an impeccable classicism. Every architect 
worked in a style, and the less successful had to offer a choice of 
several. In Chicago, the firm of Daniel H. Burnham & Co. suc- 
cumbed more and more to the wave of Classic and Renaissance 
emanating from the East, and for twenty years it decorated its huge 
commercial structures with a classic colonnade below and a 
Bramantesque arcade above, con variazione. The Fair had aimed 
a death blow at the new style which had been evident in the work 
of the Chicago School before 1893 ; Richardson and John Root were 
dead, Sullivan as far as the public was concerned was moribund, 
and Wright had yet to make his mark. 

Small wonder that Sullivan wrote in the Autobiography: "Mean- 
while the architectural generation immediately succeeding the 
Classic and Renaissance merchants, are seeking to secure a special 
immunity from the inroads of common sense, through a process of 
vaccination with the lymph of every known European style, period 
and accident, and to this all-round process, when it breaks out, is 
to be added the benediction of good taste. Thus we have now the 



188 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

abounding freedom of Eclecticism, the winning smile of taste, but 
no architecture. For Architecture, be it known, is dead. Indeed let 
us gather, in procession, in the night, in the rain, and make soulful, 
fluent, epicene orations to the living dead we neuters eulogize. 

"Surely the profession has made marvellous improvements in 
trade methods, over the old-fashioned way. There is now a dazzling 
display of merchandise, all imported, excepting to be sure our own 
cherished Colonial, which maintains the Anglo-Saxon tradition in 
its purity. We have Tudor for colleges and residences; Roman for 
banks, and railway stations and libraries or Greek if you like 
some customers prefer the Ionic to the Doric. We have French, 
English and Italian Gothic, Classic and Renaissance for churches. 
In fact we are prepared to satisfy, in any manner of taste. Resi- 
dences we offer in Italian or Louis Quinze. We make a small charge 
for alterations and adaptations. Our service we guarantee as ex- 
ceptional and exclusive. Our importations are direct. We have our 
own agents abroad. . . . Our business is founded and maintained 
on an ideal of service, and a part of that service we believe to 
consist in an elevation of the public taste, a setting forth of the true 
standards in design, in pure form, a system of education by ex- 
ample, the gradual formation of a background of culture for the 



masses." 



But while the World's Columbian Exposition led to a renewed 
fever of borrowing from Europe, Europe itself was more apprecia- 
tive of Sullivan than of his imitative contemporaries. In 1893 when 
M. Andre Bouilhet, a Commissioner of the Union Centrals des Arts 
Decoratifs of Paris, visited the World's Fair, he was more im- 
pressed by the Transportation Building and the Chicago Audi- 
torium than by any other buildings, and in his report to the society 
he devoted more attention to Sullivan than to any other American 
architect. Speaking of the Fair, he said: "It is a great city of 



SULLIVAN ALONE 189 

palaces the architecture of which awakens no novel sensations in 
Europeans for we find here again more or less accomplished imita- 
tions of the monuments of Greece and Rome. With its domes, with 
its colonnades, its porticoes, its terraces, its gardens filled with 
statues, one might think he was looking at the realization of the 
dream of a young architect in quest of a magnificent projet which 
might open to him the portals of the Villa Medici. Only one of these 
palaces, which struck me the first time that I entered Jackson Park, 
is truly original; it is the work of a young American architect, 
formerly a student of our own Ecole des Beaux Arts, Mr. Sullivan. 
I refer to the Transportation Building. It is one of the most suc- 
cessful and original buildings, well conceived and of fine propor- 
tions; and it has the special merit of recalling no European 
building." 2 

M. Bouilhet requested of Sullivan some material for the Musee 
des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, and secured a number of his original 
drawings, many photographs of his buildings, and some casts of 
details of his ornament. Sullivan gave him a model of the Golden 
Door of the Transportation Building and casts of the doors of the 
Wainwright Tomb and Getty Tomb. 8 This material was assembled 
in a special Sullivan section of the museum, and after its exhibition 
created so much interest that the directors of an art gallery in 
Moscow asked to have duplicates made of the things on display. 
Subsequently so many other requests of a similar nature came in 
that the museum granted special permission to a firm in Paris to 
make replicas for various institutions throughout Europe. In 1894 
the Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs awarded Sullivan three 
medals, in gold, silver, and bronze, for the Transportation 
Building. 

The eminent French writer, Paul Bourget, was more interested 
in the mammoth commercial structures of downtown Chicago than 



190 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

in the accomplished imitations of the White City. That he appreci- 
ated the spirit that animated all of Sullivan's designs is evident in 
the following passage from Outre-Mer Impressions of America: 
"At one moment you have nothing around you but 'buildings.' 
They scale the very heavens with their eighteen and twenty stories. 
The architect who built them, or rather, made them by machinery, 
gave up all thought of colonnades, mouldings, classical decora- 
tions. He ruthlessly accepted the speculator's inspired conditions 
to multiply as much as possible the value of the bit of earth at 
the base by multiplying the superimposed 'offices/ One might 
think that such a problem would interest no one but an engineer. 
Nothing of the kind! The simple power of necessity is to a certain 
degree a principle of beauty; and these structures so plainly mani- 
fest this necessity that you feel a strange emotion in contemplating 
them. It is the first draught of a new sort of art an art of democ- 
racy made by the masses and for the masses, an art of science, 
where the invariability of natural laws gives to the most unbridled 
daring the calmness of geometrical figures." 4 It should be re- 
marked that M. Bourget had seen the skyscrapers of New York 
before those of Chicago, and had not been moved to any such 
enthusiasms. 

An anecdote from Mr. Max Dunning illustrates a characteristi- 
cally French .appreciation of Sullivan. Mr. Dunning was in conver- 
sation, in 1900, with a M. Pascal in one of the ateliers of the Ecole 
in Paris. The talk turned on the Transportation Building, for which 
M. Pascal expressed a great admiration, and then on Sullivan's 
work in general, with which M. Pascal seemed to have kept in close 
touch. One of his remarks was: "I consider that Louis Sullivan in 
his work has exemplified better the real essence of Beaux- Arts 
teaching than any other American." Another Frenchman, Jean 
Schopfer, writing of the architecture of New York City in 1900, 



SULLIVAN ALONE 191 

spoke of Sullivan's Bayard Building as "The best skyscraper yet 
erected." 5 In the same year a Danish reviewer, writing on the 
"Art of Optimism," cited Louis Sullivan's work as just cause for 
his thesis. Some years later, when Anders Zorn visited Chicago, he 
said: "What is the matter with you Chicago people? There in the 
Auditorium Tower sits your country's greatest living architect, one 
of the world's leaders in his profession, doing nothing. This could 
not happen in Europe." (Sic!) 

In this country, where Sullivan's achievements might naturally 
have received the most notice, only five published articles before 
1900 display any real appreciation of his importance in American 
architecture; these were written by Montgomery Schuyler, Barr 
Ferree, Robert Craik McLean, Charles H. Caffin, and Russell 
Sturgis. But it should be unnecessary to argue further that Sullivan 
was a prophet without honor in his own country. The very paucity 
of his commissions indicates how little he was appreciated. It was 
this fact, primarily, rather than any limitation of Sullivan's, which 
led to the decline during the last part of his life. A decline, not in 
creative power the buildings he did design amply attest this fact 
but a decline in the capacity of his professional contemporaries, 
and of the country at large, to recognize his talents or to realize his 
significance. 

The first buildings erected by Sullivan after Adler left the firm 
were three skyscrapers, begun in 1897, 1898, and 1899. In 1896 
there had been projects for two large skyscrapers, one in St. Louis 
and one in Cincinnati, but after the designs were made the enter- 
prises collapsed. The first structure actually built after the dissolu- 
tion of the partnership was the Bayard Building (PL 58) in New 
York. This was designed with Lyndon P. Smith, a New York archi- 
tect, as associate, and was erected in 189798. It was later known 
as the Condict Building, and it is still standing on the north side of 



192 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

Bleecker Street, opposite Crosby Street, just off Broadway. It is a 
twelve-story office building, steel-framed, and sheathed in terra 
cotta. The architectural scheme is fundamentally the same as that 
of the great skyscrapers prior to 1895, but it is most nearly akin 
to the unexecuted designs for the St. Louis Trust and Savings Bank. 
(PL 52) The treatment of the ground story, with display windows 
slanting back around columns at about two-thirds of their height, is 
the same as in the second of these designs. The alternation of heavy 
steel-bearing piers with lighter terra cotta mullions in the shaft of 
the building, and the decorated terra cotta spandrel panels and 
large arches connecting the main piers in the attic are almost 
identical with the corresponding features in the first of the Trust and 
Savings Bank designs. The chief difference is in the embellishment 
of the top story and attic by a kind of tracery in the heads of the 
large arches and the introduction of large figures of angels with 
outspread wings, rising from the primary piers to the cornice. Al- 
though Montgomery Schuyler remarks in defense of the fenestra- 
tion and enrichment at the top of the building that the two top 
stories are internally one story, the upper floor being a gallery 
surrounding an open room two stories in height which is lighted 
from above, this fact hardly seems to justify the exterior treatment. 
The general effect is rich and exuberant, but it does not accord with 
the remainder of the design. 

In spite of this infelicity, the Bayard Building was a prophetic 
apparition in New York; its freedom from historical preconcep- 
tions, its directness and fundamental simplicity made it far 
superior to its contemporaries and suggested the proper solution 
of the vexing problem of skyscraper design. Consequently it was 
the first of Sullivan's skyscrapers to be hailed by the Eastern 
critics, and we find it attracting more attention, due merely to its 
proximity, than had such landmarks as the Wainwright Building 



SULLIVAN ALONE 193 

and the Schiller Building six and seven years before. Russell 
Sturgis, whose buildings of the late sixties had also been prophetic, 
wrote in the Architectural Record: "There is here no pretense that 
the building is a massive structure of cut stone, and no pretense 
that it allows of treatment in the modern classical way with orders 
and with classical proportion. The whole front is a careful thinking- 
out of the problem, How to base a design upon the necessary con- 
struction in slender metal uprights and ties. Were it not for the 
most unfortunate treatment of each great opening between the up- 
rights with an arch and a seeming system of tracery in the head, 
this front might be pointed to as completely realistic in design. 
Even as it is, if the reader will eliminate by a mental process these 
five great arches with their subordinate arches and the oculi which 
fill their heads, he will have the architectural treatment of the 
future metal building of our cities in the form which it must pass 
through if it is to reach any serious architectural success." 6 

Montgomery Schuyler employed the Bayard Building as the 
climax of his article "The Skyscraper Up to Date." "It is an at- 
tempt, and a very serious attempt, to found the architecture of the 
tall building upon the facts of the case. The actual structure is left, 
or rather, is helped, to tell its own story. This is the thing itself. 
Nobody who sees the building can help seeing that. Neither the 
analogy of the column, nor any other tradition or convention, is 
allowed to interfere with the task of clothing the steel frame in as 
expressive forms as may be. There is no attempt to simulate the 
breadth and massiveness proper to masonry in a frame of metal 
that is merely wrapped in masonry for its own protection." 7 

Concerning the reduction of the base of the building from two 
stories (as in the Wainwright and Guaranty Buildings) to one, 
Schuyler goes on to say: "Even the second story 'counts in' with the 
superstructure, to which it logically belongs. ... It is not a ques- 



194 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

tion whether two or three stories would not be more effectively 
proportional to the superstructure than one. It is a question of 
fact. The result, whatever else one may think of it, is a sense of 
reality very different from what we get from the skyscrapers de- 
signed on conventional lines. It puts them to the same sort of shame 
to which the great roof trusses of the Manufacturers Building in 
Chicago (at the World's Fair) put the imitative architecture with 
which they were associated. Not that the gauntness and attenuation 
of the resulting architecture are in this case altogether agreeable 
to an eye accustomed to the factitious massiveness of the con- 
ventional treatment. But at the worst, this front recalls Rufus 
Choate's famous toast to the Chief Justice: 'We look upon him as 
the East Indian upon his wooden idol. We know that he is ugly, but 
we feel that he is great.' . . . Meanwhile the aesthetic, as dis- 
tinguished from the scientific attractiveness of the Bayard Build- 
ing, without doubt resides in the decoration which has been lavished 
upon it, and which is of a quality that no other designer could have 
commanded. . . . The Bayard Building is the nearest approach 
yet made, in New York at least, to solving the problem of the sky- 
scraper. It furnishes a most promising starting point for designers 
who may insist upon attacking that problem instead of evading it, 
and resting in compromises and conventions." 8 

The Gage Building (PI. 59) on Michigan Avenue, Chicago, was 
begun in 1898 and completed in 1899. In this commission Sullivan 
was an associate of the firm of Holabird & Roche. Stanley Mc- 
Cormick commissioned Holabird & Roche to design a building in 
three units to be used largely for the millinery business. The three 
units were of different heights, the southernmost being only six 
stories high, the middle one seven, and the northernmost eight; the 
south unit, moreover, was narrower than the other two. Sullivan 
was requested by Mr. McCormick to design only the fagade of the 



SULLIVAN ALONE 195 

north unit, occupied on completion by Gage Brothers & Com- 

i 

pany. Sullivan's fagade was executed in ornamental iron at the 
base and brown terra cotta above, whereas the other two units had 
fagades of red brick. The architectural scheme in all three units is 
similar, with slender vertical piers sheathing the steel columns and 
dividing the fagades into bays. The thinness of the wall, since it 
actually served only as a screen, is apparent in the lightness of 
proportion of these piers and the reduction of the wall to narrow 
spandrels between the strips of continuous windows in each story 
and even more in the flat treatment of the base, a mere external 
casing of the skeleton. There is patently no attempt to simulate 
masonry construction. 

The chief difference between the fagades of the different units 
is in the window treatment. All three units employ very large win- 
dows, of nearly the same size, but in the two southern units Hola- 
bird & Roche filled the entire window with transparent plate glass. 
Sullivan dropped a four-foot curtain of translucent glass from the 
top of the windpw, reducing the transparent windows to continuous 
horizontal strips about four feet high. This has been criticized as 
an example of Sullivan's "impracticality." A member of the firm 
of Holabird & Roche wrote in his reminiscences many years later: 
"The building was for a millinery business, and when artificial 
light was as poor as it was in those days, it was important that 
there be as much daylight as possible. Now we would have run the 
windows up just as far as they could go, for the light at the top 
carries further. But against our judgment Sullivan insisted on 
putting four feet of ornamentation at the top of the windows . . . 
and the store was ruined for a good many years, until artificial 
light approximating daylight had been developed." This criticism 
sounds plausible, but it will not bear examination. The arrange- 
ment of windows in the two south units is undoubtedly the one 



196 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

calculated to give the most light to the back parts of the rooms, 
since light entering at the top of a window penetrates farthest into 
the interior. But at the same time it affords too strong a light for 
the parts of the rooms adjacent to the windows. Direct daylight, and 
especially direct sunlight which strikes these fagades throughout 
the morning, is often too strong for exact ocular work such as read- 
ing or needle-work; that this is true in this instance is revealed by 
the fact that almost every window-shade is drawn down half-way 
to diminish the amount of light. This is true even of Sullivan's 
fagade, which was alleged to cut off so much light as to "ruin the 
building." Sullivan's window treatment effects a compromise be- 
tween admitting a proper amount of light and too brilliant a glare. 
Although he was in this instance criticized for denying functional 
needs for the sake of "decoration," it becomes apparent that in 
reality he made a much more discerning study of the functional 
needs than did his critics and had his "decoration" to boot. For 
an all-glass window treatment, one has only to inspect the Carson 
Pirie Scott Store, begun the year that the Gage Building was 
finished; here the function was different, the light was needed 
and supplied. 

Architecturally, the resolution of the horizontals and verticals in 
Sullivan's fagade is far more positive and successful than in the 
fagades of the other two units. The ornamental detail is perhaps 
of more questionable merit. The broad band of ornamental iron 
framing the show-windows and the small terra cotta decorations in 
the spandrels are, to be sure, admirably inventive if possibly over- 
exuberant. We know that Sullivan regarded such touches as "grace- 
notes" free, lyric enrichments without which the basic theme 
might have been too austere. And just as certain virtuosi over- 
embellish their piano playing, Sullivan was sometimes too little 
restrained in his decorative fancy. The huge foliations spreading 



SULLIVAN ALONE 197 

from the tops of the two piers seem too large for the building and 
too conspicuous, although as transition features from piers to 
cornice they are admirable examples of Sullivan's conception of 
ornament as an organic exfoliation, seeming to "grow out'" of the 
structural parts in both a literal and imaginative sense. They repre- 
sent an attempt to increase the plasticity of a structurally rather 
flat composition. In 1902 four stories were added to the Gage 
Building by Holabird & Roche, Sullivan's design being carefully 
preserved, and the attic, with its ornament and cornice, lifted 
bodily to the top. 

The most important building designed by Sullivan independently 
was the large department store built for the Schlesinger & Mayer 
Company in Chicago, and since 1904 occupied by Carson Pirie 
Scott & Company. (PL 60) This takes its place as of equal signifi- 
cance with the Wainwright Building, since it was the first depart- 
ment store designed by Sullivan, and as revolutionary and in- 
fluential a solution in its field as was the Wainwright Building in 
the field of office structures, although the two are almost contradic- 
tory in appearance. 

The old building of the firm of Schlesinger & Mayer, built shortly 
after the Chicago Fire, occupied the southeast corner of State and 
Madison Streets, known to Chicagoans as "the World's Busiest 
Corner," and although not very large, was signalized by a curved 
angle pavilion somewhat like that of the old Palmer House. The 
adjacent buildings to the south on State Street were of miscel- 
laneous sizes and styles. As early as 1891 the firm of Schlesinger 
& Mayer evidently contemplated the enlargement of their store 
southward two hundred feet along State Street, changing the va- 
rious fagades into one uniform front eight stories high, and en- 
gaged Adler & Sullivan as the architects for this work. Apparently 
this project rested in abeyance for the next eight years, and in the 



198 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

meantime Adler & Sullivan had separated. The actual construction 
was taken up in 1899, and Sullivan rather than Adler was selected 
as the architect. The first unit, built in 1899, was a small section on 
Madison Street nine stories high, but only three bays (about sixty 
feet) wide. There was another lapse of three years before the 
major part of the structure, extending west on Madison Street to 
the corner, and south on State Street about 150 feet, was under- 
taken. The old buildings occupying this extensive site were de- 
molished in 1902 and the new structure built in 1903 and 1904. 
It was three stories higher than the first unit, but otherwise the 
same in design. Before the building was fully completed, the firm 
of Schlesinger & Mayer sold out to Carson Pirie Scott & Company, 
and the latter firm occupied the new building in the summer of 
1904. The monogram "S & M" may still be seen, however, in the 
ornamental iron work of the exterior and interior. In 1906 Carson 
Pirie Scott & Company added a third unit, consisting of five bays 
(105 feet) extending to the south on State Street. D. H. Burnham 
& Co. were the architects for this portion, but the design, except 
in the attic story, is the same as in the previously completed struc- 
ture. 

Taken as a whole, the Carson Pirie Scott Store represents one 
of the most intelligent solutions of the problem of the large depart- 
ment store that has ever b^en made, and for its time it was epoch- 
making. That it is still, afttfr thirty years, not only adequate but 
highly satisfactory in spite ofSchanging conditions, is a tribute to 
the genius and foresight exhibited in its planning. 

The construction was of the skyscraper type, with steel frame 
resting on caisson foundations, and a terra cotta exterior. Since 
the fundamental interior arrangement was that of unbroken floor 
spaces for the display and saleW merchandise, it was important 
to have windows which would admit the maximum amount of day- 



SULLIVAN ALONE 



199 



light into these interior spaces. The problem was thus essentially 
different from that of the Gage Building, or any of the commercial 
office structures. The natural boundary of these jvindows would be 
the steel frame itself; the width determmetT by the distance be- 
tween columns, the height by the dist^rfce from floor to floor. These 
large window-openings, of uni|0ffn size, established the basis of 
the exterior design. Since ti^ir major dimensions were horizontal, 
they naturally suggested^ horizontal scheme in the whole design ; 
the horizontal surfaces of terra cotta are thus slightly wider than 
the vertical piers/and they are continuous throughout the whole 
length of the building, whereas the vertical piers are broken by two 
narrow bands of ornament at each floor level. 



This dominant horizo: 
ticality of the Wainwrigh 
on steel frames, should ] 
of the one or the vertical 
terpreted as reflecting Su. 
As pointed out before, th 
based to be sure on pract 
literal structuralism. On 



ility, so contrary to the dominant ver- 
Building, although both are constructed 
conclusive proof that the horizontally 
y of the other cannot consistently be in- 
van's intention to reveal the steel frame, 
form in each case is an aesthetic choice, 
al considerations, but far removed from 
le other hand, it may be remarked that 



as an aesthetic choice th 
Building was by no meai 
Sullivan to any and all 
that therefore the great ir 
European critics as a fc 
accidental. The America 
Europe in the early dec* 
Frank Lloyd Wright, Su 



own direct influence on 
much more a matter of 
stylisms. 



horizontality of the Carson Pirie Scott 
a universal mode of design applied by 
uildings, as is sufficiently obvious, and 
Test which this building has for modern 
irunner of the "International Style" is 
horizontalism which directly influenced 
es of the twentieth century was that of 
ivan's most famous disciple. Sullivan's 



modern European architecture has been 
heory and philosophy than of specific 



200 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

Sullivan's feeling for the need of some kind of accent at the top 
of a fagade is evident here as in his other buildings. There is no 
real cornice, but the twelfth-story window system is recessed, and 
a heavy shadow cast by the overhanging roof slab serves to de- 
limit the fagade at the top. This serves the expressional purpose 
of the earlier projecting cornices far more logically in terms of 
actual construction. Sullivan also employs narrow bands of terra 
cotta relief to ornament the small round columns and the tops of 
the corner piers. An irregularity not often noticed is the reduction 
in height of the top three stories, a treatment requested by the 
owners as an economy, but one also which gives interesting variety 
to the f agade. 

The three-quarter-circle curve of the main comer is an effective 
motive in the design, its curvilinear form and circular mullions 
contrasting nicely with the rectilinear severity of the two fagades. 
It is defined by a strengthening of the bounding piers, and by its 
reentrant angles (it is actually slightly more than three-quarters of 
a circle) especially evident at the cornice. This curvilinear motive 
was designed at the request of Schlesinger & Mayer as a reminis- 
cence of the curved pavilion on the same corner of their old build- 
ing. It is an appropriate and distinctive feature in its new form. It 
also serves a practical purpose: with the numerous doors around 
the curve it facilitates entrance and egress in several directions, 
thus distributing traffic at a busy corner. 

To later eyes the most debatable feature of the design has been 
the two-story base sheathed in a rich casing of ornamental iron. 
(Pis. 61, 62) This sheathing is only a veneer about a half -inch 
thick, and quite apart from its decorative value it represents an 
amazing technical achievement. The detail, designed by Elmslie 
who had remained with Sullivan as chief designer, is extremely 
fine and intricate, and some of it is free-standing. Kristian Schnei- 



SULLIVAN ALONE 201 

der, an artist-craftsman who worked with Sullivan more than 
twenty years, made the plaster models of the ornament from 
Elmslie's pencil drawings. He was very talented in this work, and 
modelled practically all of the ornament of Sullivan's buildings 
for execution in iron, terra cotta, or plaster from the time of the 
Auditorium to the late banks. Schneider's models were cast very 
precisely by the firm of Wmslow Brothers by means of new and 
improved technical processes. The result was that unprecedented 
virtuosities became possible in this technique, and the mere tech- 
nical achievement remains just cause for amazement. 

As to the design, Mr. Elmslie has explained the conception of 
the ornament as a rich frame to a rich picture. The window-displays 
were intended to attract the chief attention but it was considered 
appropriate to frame these as beautifully as possible with a rich 
and delicate kind of ornament, rather feminine in character. The 
detail is worthy of careful study. Certainly in no other buildings 
than Sullivan's can one find such arresting originality, fertility of 
invention, sensitiveness, movement, and love of true creation per- 
vading the whole. Undeniably in certain features, notably the 
weighty canopy over the Madison Street entrance, the virtuosity of 
rendition conceals any melody and loses all relation to the under- 
lying structural form. Conventional modern taste would doubtless 
prefer to frame the display-windows in smooth and lustrous sur- 
faces of white metals and marbles, but as the years go by archi- 
tecture may well develop toward a richness now undreamed of. At 
present, however, the reaction against all kinds of ornament is so 
widespread that we judge quality in this aspect of architecture with 
difficulty. 

During the years in which the Carson Pirie Scott Store was under 
construction Sullivan designed several industrial structures, and 
an office building for Crane Company in Chicago. (PL 63) The 



202 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

latter was built in 1903-04, and is a very simple brick structure, 
five stories high, a cubic block in shape, and absolutely devoid of 
ornament. The windows are connected by continuous sills and 
lintels, giving the intermediate horizontal bands of wall a slight 
emphasis over the vertical lines of the piers. Although the wall is 
quite plain, every fifth course of brick is laid with headers, a 
variation giving a certain interest to the surface texture. Most 
noteworthy is the complete omission of a cornice, the wall being 
terminated by a simple parapet and stone coping. This is archi- 
tecture reduced to its simplest terms, the form being most sug- 
gestive of some of the best German industrial work of the next 
decade. 

In 1905 Sullivan designed a small store building in Chicago for 
Mr. Eli B. Felsenthal. (PI. 64) It is made of tapestry brick, so 
that there is a rather specious color and richness of texture in the 
wall surface. Such decoration as there is derives its character 
from the material, the bricks being laid to form rectangular panels 
at the top of the wall. Two inset terra cotta panels are used on one 
wall, and two relief panels on the other. Despite its humble pur- 
pose and obvious inexpensiveness, the building has considerable 
dignity and force, the large areas of unbroken wall-surface em- 
phasizing the solidity of the mass. With this building Sullivan's 
skyscraper period is over. It is the first of the low suburban build- 
ings which the creator of the skyscraper style was called on to do 
during the rest of his life. 

Sullivan designed only two residences during this whole period. 
Both were fairly elaborate buildings in which cost was a secondary 
consideration, and they are of particular interest for the compari- 
sons which they afford with Frank Lloyd Wright's residences of 
the same years. The first was a residence built for Mr. Henry 
Babson in Riverside, Illinois, in 1907. (Pis. 65, 66) The house 



SULLIVAN ALONE 203 

is set well back from the road and surrounded by several acres of 
fine lawns and trees, with stable, garage, and service buildings 
located at some distance to the northwest of the house. Facing 
broadside to the road, shielded by trees, and built on very low 
foundations, the house presents an appearance of comfortable 
amplitude, dignified privacy, and admirable adaptation to its site. 
The use of projecting porches and porte-cochere adds to the sense 
of unity with the surroundings. The wall up to the level of the 
second-story window sills is of maroon tapestry brick, enlivened 
by a few inset terra cotta panels of intricate design and of a sea- 
green color touched with light blue. The second story is of dark- 
stained cypress wood, with horizontal battens and a broad pro- 
jecting roof. The under side of this roof projection is plastered and 
tinted a dull rose, echoing the color of the brick wall below, but 
at a far lower intensity. The windows have leaded glass, especially 
designed by Elmslie, and suggestive of Wright's work. The chief 
decorative feature of the main front is a large balcony projecting 
from the second story, executed entirely in wood. At first sight a 
somewhat overwhelming tour-de-force, this balcony becomes with 
familiarity a remarkably interesting and appropriate feature. It 
appears less weighty in actuality than in photographs, and the 
small arcade with delicate incised carving is in itself a most grace- 
ful feature. Functionally it has its obvious uses and architecturally 
it gives character to a facade that might otherwise be tame and 
excessively longitudinal. 

An interesting comparison has been made between this residence 
and Frank Lloyd Wright's Coonley residence, in Riverside, built 
the following year, in a well-illustrated article in the Architectural 
Record. Both houses are completely non-historical in style and 
emphasize long-drawn-out horizontals in the general composition. 
Of the two, the Coonley house undoubtedly represents the more 



204 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

radical departure from tradition in plan and general arrangement, 
and the more brilliant and imaginative use of plane surfaces and 
cubic volumes in the architectural composition. An unusual effect 
is achieved by concentrating all the living quarters of the house 
in the second floor, leaving the ground floor for service rooms and 
corridors and treating it with an almost solid wall. Since the house 
is very low on the ground, and the stories are of the minimum 
height, the effect is almost that of a one-story house. The plan is 
more complex than that of the Babson residence, with numerous 
projecting wings reaching over driveways and embracing the gar- 
dens and pool, so that the house is intimately united with its sur- 
roundings. The plastered walls give an effect of mobility and light- 
ness. The Babson residence is clearer in its disposition, the plan can 
be "read" more easily from the exterior, and the higher wall of brick 
gives an effect of greater solidity and durability. Sullivan's house is 
conceived more in terms of substantial mass; Wright's in terms of 
light, hollow volumes. Both are masterpieces of their own kind. 
Since Sullivan's historical achievement was particularly in the 
field of large buildings, and Wright's in the field of house design, 
it is worth pointing out that even here Sullivan has very character- 
istic virtues. 

The interiors of the Babson residence are more traditional in 
effect, but are of interest for the woodwork and for Sullivanesque 
details such as the rugs and lighting-fixtures. A large part of the 
designing was actually done by Elmslie, and he was retained for 
later additions to the house and the construction of a quadrangle 
of service buildings just prior to the War. These are in the style 
of the main house, and form an appropriate addition to the estate. 

The second of the two residences was built for Mrs. Josephine 
Crane Bradley at Madison, Wisconsin, in 1909. In plan it is T- 
shaped, with the main fagade - fronting south, and a long wing 



SULLIVAN A LONE 205 

extending northward from the middle of the back. The south 
fagade (PL 67) is a long, low mass, similar to the Babson resi- 
dence, except that the horizontal lines are broken at intervals by 
strong vertical piers of brick, extending from foundation to cor- 
nice and projecting some eighteen inches from the wall surface. 
In the middle is a polygonal projecting bay, similar to that on 
the garden front of the Babson residence except that it is only one 
story in height. The two ends of this main block offer the most 
extraordinary features of the house: large overhanging porches on 
the second story, supported by steel cantilever beams, encased in 
wood, with projecting ends elaborately sawed. The gable at the 
west end overhangs an open porch enclosed by a brick parapet 
(PL 68) ; the gable at the east end, exactly the same in form, over- 
hangs a side entrance on to the lawn. The parallelism with Wright's 
projecting gables of this period is evident, but there is a superior 
vigor and force in the weight and salience of these features as 
compared with Wright's. The wing extending toward the back is 
quite wide, and the roof consists of two gables, presenting twin 
gable-ends side by side over the rear fagade. The main entrance is 
from a porte-cochere at the back of this wing, from which one 
enters a long hall. (PL 69) Built for a large family of children, 
the house has numerous bedrooms, two sleeping porches, and large 
playrooms., and since the Bradley family left it, has served ad- 
mirably for a fraternity house. It seems just to attribute the design 
of this house to at least an equal cooperation between Sullivan 
and Elmslie. 

Sullivan's most important commission after the Carson Pirie 
Scott Store was the National Farmers' Bank at Owatonna, Min- 
nesota. This was the opening wedge for what was to become the 
most extensive field of practice of Sullivan's later years, and al- 
most his only means of support. Eight of his last eleven buildings 



206 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

were built for small banks, scattered throughout the farming com- 
munities of the Middle West. 

At the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893, according to 
many accounts, the building which most drew the great public 
the uncultivated masses was the Transportation Building. The 
man on the street admired, and was impressed by, the Roman 
grandeur of the great buildings surrounding the Court of Honor, 
but he really liked the Transportation Building. Just why this 
should be is difficult to explain. The nationalist would readily as- 
sume that it was due to the fundamental soundness of taste in the 
mass of the American people. Perhaps one should not even call it 
"taste," for to them "taste" already meant admiring the things 
that the "best people" admired. The general liking for the Trans- 
portation Building was something more than this; it was, per- 
haps, an instinctive response. For it had, although in a language 
unfamiliar to them, the simple qualities which they admired. It 
did not require them to accept "forms of sophistication not their 
own"; it was exotic but not "foreign"; in short, they liked it for 
the excellent reason that it was good Fair architecture. One likes 
to think that something of this common-sense approach, this native 
flair, stayed alive in the small farming towns of Ohio, Minnesota, 
Wisconsin, Indiana, and Iowa while the cosmopolitan centers lost 
their cultural independence. This may be a too sanguine estimate 
of rural American culture, but the fact remains that ten out of 
eleven of Sullivan's last buildings were built in small communities 
rather remote from metropolitan spheres of influence, whose pop- 
ulations never exceeded a few thousand. 

These buildings stand out like jewels on the shoddy main streets 
of the prairie towns. Tallmadge says of Sullivan's banks: "Their 
color, brilliance and gaiety entirely put in the shade the thin, 
awkward and wan examples of the country builder, and to the 



bULLlVAIN ALU1NL 2UY 

same degree the pallid and pudgy Roman frontispieces of the city 
architect. . . . The ornament, by its intricacy and vitality, com- 
pels the interest of the commoner who would, as we, pass by a mile 
of eggs and darts without sensing their existence. . . . These 
banks are a book of wonders to a people who all of their lives 
have been contemptuous of or oblivious to architecture." 10 

The bank at Owatonna was the first, and is often considered the 
best, of the series. In 1907 the bank officers decided to carry out 
long-contemplated plans for a new building. The vice-president of 
the bank, Mr. Carl K. Bennett, described in an article their search 
for an architect: "The layout of the floor space was in mind for 
many years, but the architectural expression of the business of 
banking was probably a thing. more felt than understood. Anyhow, 
the desire for such expression persisted, and a pretty thorough 
study was made of existing bank buildings. The classic style of 
architecture so much used for bank buildings was at first consid- 
ered, but was finally rejected as being not necessarily expressive 
of a bank, and also because it is defective when it comes to any 
practical use. Because architects who were consulted preferred to 
follow precedent or to take their inspiration 'from the books,' it 
was determined to make a search for an architect who would not 
only take into consideration the practical needs of the business but 
who would heed the desire of the bank officers for an adequate 
expression in the form of the building of the use to which it would 
be put. This search was made largely through the means of the 
art and architectural magazines, including the 'Craftsman/ with 
the hope of finding some architect whose aim it was to express the 
thought or use underlying a building, adequately, without fear of 
precedent, like a virtuoso shaping his materials into new forms of 
use and beauty." n It so happened that one of Sullivan's articles, 
entitled "What is Architecture? A Study in the American People 



208 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

of Today" had been published in The Craftsman in the preceding 
year, 12 and this article attracted the attention of the officers of the 
bank as revealing the architect they sought. Through it Sullivan 
obtained the commission. 

The National Farmers' Bank was begun in 1907, and completed 
in 1908. (PL 70) Since only part of the lot was necessary for the 
bank itself, the remaining land at the east was utilized for a two- 
story wing containing two stores, several offices, and a small ware- 
house. This wing is independent of the banking room, but treated 
in the same material and style. 

As in all of Sullivan's later buildings, only a partial impression 
of the beauty of both exterior and interior can be obtained from 
photographs, since the effect of the original depends so largely on 
color. The exterior of the bank has a base of reddish brown sand- 
stone ashlar, laid in courses of different heights, and penetrated 
by simple rectangular door and window openings. Above this the 
wall is faced by rough shale brick in soft and variegated colors, 
the general effect being a rich dark red. The walls are opened by 
two great arched windows thirty-six feet in span, with wide flat 
archivolts consisting of ten concentric header courses of brick. 
The glass is set in vertical steel mullions. The walls are treated 
as large rectangular panels framed by an outer band of enamelled 
terra cotta relief in bronze-green accented with brown, and an inner 
five-inch band of brilliant glass mosaic dominantly blue in color 
but with touches of green, white, and gold. The wall is capped by 
a heavy cornice of unique design (PL 71), consisting simply of 
corbelled courses of brick bounded above and below by bands of 
brown terra cotta. The total effect is very rich, with the colors 
blending softly from a distance, but strongly individual at close 
range. 

The interior is a large square room, rich in decorative detail 



SULLIVAN ALONE 209 

and glowing in color, although the total effect of light spaciousness 
absorbs the detail so that it is never obtrusive or over-brilliant. 
The room is amply lighted by the great arched windows on two 
sides and a skylight overhead, and there is a curious quality to 
the light a greenish tinge, like sunlight passed through sea-water. 
The windows are of double thickness: plate glass outside, and 
opalescent leaded glass inside, with an hermetically sealed air- 
space between for protection against extremes of cold and heat. 
The inner windows are marbled green and buff in color, with 
center patterns of buff and violet. On the opposite walls, under 
arches of the same size as the window arches, are two large mural 
paintings by Oskar Gross representing dairy and harvest scenes. 
The wide archivolts and outer soffits of all four arches are beauti- 
fully colored; on the archivolts a stencilled pattern in jade green, 
brick red, dull green and buff colors; on the soffits, terra cotta 
relief sheathed in gold leaf. (PL 73) The banking offices project 
into the room on three sides as one-story enclosures. The walls are 
of red Roman brick, topped by a cornice of enamelled green terra 
cotta. The counters and deal plates are of Belgian black marble, 
and the cashiers' grilles are of bronze. (PL 74) Noteworthy details 
are the green terra cotta enframement of the clock, the decorative 
panel over the entrance door, and the lighting fixtures, the shades 
of which are miniatures of the whole building. The furniture, in- 
cluding the check desks, was all especially designed. 

The plan is admirably adapted to the purpose of a farmers' 
bank. (Fig. 15) In addition to the strictly banking rooms, there is 
a farmers' exchange room intended for the private business or 
social transactions of the bank's clients; a women's parlor; a pri- 
vate consultation room for conference with the bank's officers; and 
the president's office. All of these are furnished in quarter-sawed 
white oak, with walls and ceilings panelled in broad, smooth sur- 



210 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

faces, built-in benches cushioned in dull red leather, and specially 
designed tables and writing desks, carpets, chairs, etc. In the presi- 
dent's office there is a small mural painting by John Norton, dated 
1923. This is undoubtedly the best painting to be found anywhere 
in association with Sullivan's architecture. Most of the interior 
details were designed by Elmslie, and the idea of the single great 
arches of the fagade was his, being substituted for three smaller 
arches in Sullivan's early sketches. Thus Elmslie, who was never 
formally a partner of Sullivan, was at this time a truer collaborator 
in design than Adler had ever been. 

Sullivan's next commission was for the People's Savings Bank 
in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, built in 1911. (PI. 75) Coming after the 
highly successful achievement at Owatonna, one would expect a 
repetition, with minor variations, of the general scheme of the 
Owatonna bank. But Sullivan now had time to work out each 
commission freshly. A different problem called for a different 
solution, and the two buildings are entirely unlike. As Montgomery 
Schuyler said: "Every one of his buildings is the solution of a 
particular problem, and the result is a highly specialized organ- 
ism, which is as suitable for its own purpose as it is inapplicable 
to any other. It is as inimitable in the mass as in the detail." 1S 
The program of the Cedar Rapids bank called for a larger amount 
of space to be devoted to accessory rooms than in the Owatonna 
bank, and the basis of the plan became a public room surrounded 
by accessory offices, rather than a room with the offices projecting 
into it. The bank consists, essentially, of a central hall, the main 
banking room, two stories high and about twenty-five by fifty feet in 
dimension. This is surrounded by subordinate rooms one story high 
vestibule, officers' quarters, clerks' cubicles, the vault, etc. 

The exterior is simply the envelope of the interior, expressing 




Figure 15. Plan of National Farmers' Bank, Owatonna, Minn. 



212 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

It in the simplest and most direct terms. There is almost no orna- 
mental detail, and the mass is severely rectilinear in shape. The 
wall is faced by tapestry brick, opened by small windows low 
down to light the rooms surrounding the main hall. The location of 
the main hall is evident from a kind of "clerestory" with windows 
about its base and four pylons at its corners. The cornice of the 
lower mass is reduced to a single projecting course of brick capped 
by a terra cotta coping, and there is no cornice at all on the central 
mass. The only ornament is in the terra cotta blocks terminating 
the continuous sill-course of the lower windows, the grotesques 
perched on top of the piers, and the panels on the corner pylons. 
Sullivan designed a sign over the entrance door, with appropriate 
lettering and a sense for its effect in the whole. The subsequent 
addition of no less than nine other signs has not improved the 
architectural effect. 

The interior is a model of availability and clarity of organiza- 
tion in the functioning parts. Quoting Schuyler: "This, one feels, 
is the habitation of a highly organized and highly specialized 
machine, in which not only provision is made for every function, 
but expression is given to that provision." 14 The whole internal 
economy is plain to view and friendly in feeling, not mysterious 
or forbidding. Even the vault is plainly visible, and its circular 
steel door seven feet in diameter and nearly two feet in thickness 
is an impressive element in the architectural effect. The interior 
materials are rich, but there is far less decorative detail than in 
the Owatonna bank. The counters are of white marble; all parti- 
tions and other woodwork of oak. This is treated with broad un- 
broken surfaces. Five columns on each side of the main hall sup- 
port the "clerestory"; they are of steel sheathed in wood, and 
adorned only by carving around the necks and on the faces of the 
abaci. Above these columns in a kind of "triforium" division are 



SULLIVAN ALONE 213 

long mural paintings by Philbrick which effectively complete the 
architectural scheme. 

At the same time that Sullivan was working on the People's 
Savings Bank, he was busy on plans for a church in Cedar Rapids. 
Although this was not erected until three years later, when Sullivan 
had nothing to do with its construction, the major part of the design 
is due to him. The history of the project is rather distressing. The 
Official Board of St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church of Cedar 
Rapids decided to erect a new church building in 1909. Their 
program was unusual, since they desired a structure with far more 
than the customary amount of space for the use of the Sunday 
school, and for other social and recreational activities. A number 
of architects were invited to submit plans in competition, and of 
the twelve sets of plans submitted, Sullivan's was chosen. He was 
accordingly engaged as architect in October, 1910. "His distinct 
invention in this case was the combination of a rectangular school 
and social building with a semicircular auditorium along one side, 
having its stairhouse entrances outside the semicircle, and provid- 
ing a great wall, separating these buildings, with ample openings. 
This simple arrangement met every fundamental requirement for 
what was later to be filled in." 15 But although Sullivan's concep- 
tion was accepted as the basis for the design, his first set of detailed 
plans was rejected as too expensive, and then a second set likewise. 
In March, 1912, Sullivan resigned as architect because of financial 
disagreements. The church board kept his plans, and in November 
turned them over to an obscure and undistinguished architect who 
had done several churches in Chicago. By virtue of making a few 
minor changes and substituting "store-bought" ornament for Sul- 
livan's especially designed ornament, the cost was brought down 
sufficiently for the project to be executed. Fortunately Elmslie was 
able to go over the revised plans thoroughly, without compensation, 



214 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

and eliminate most of the more glaring anomalies. The church was 
built on these plans between April, 1913, and May, 1914. This 
procedure, although doubtless "legal" enough, was protested in 
a brief editorial in the Western Architect entitled "A Sullivan 
Design That Is Not Sullivan's," 1(i and certainly the whole affair 
was unfortunate. Of course, the church itself is the chief loser, as 
anyone may see in observing the cheap "art-glass" of the main 
skylight, or the banal stencilled ornament in the Sunday school 
classrooms. But the church as built is fundamentally Sullivan's 
conception. 

The plan consists of a rectangular block at the back used for the 
Sunday school, offices, and social rooms, and a semicircular audi- 
torium sixty-five feet in diameter extending in front of this. (Fig. 
16) The exterior (PL 76) is quite unlike conventional ecclesi- 
astical architecture. The main front is a semicircular wall three 
stories high, sheltered by a broad cornice. The auditorium is en- 
tered by two stair towers detached from the sweeping curve of the 
wall, projecting at the southeast and southwest. Above is a simple 
curved roof of low pitch, with a bell-tower in the center. The junc- 
tion of the church auditorium and the school building is indicated 
on the outside by a low wall crossing the roof and by pylons at the 
sides. The only noteworthy change from Sullivan's scheme for 
the exterior is the substitution of square piers for free-standing 
columns around the curved auditorium at the third story. 

The interior of the auditorium is interesting in plan. Just within 
the curved wall is a broad corridor running around the back of the 
pews. Eight aisles converge from this toward the pulpit, and the 
pews are arranged between these in concentric circles, every seat 
facing the pulpit which is at the focus of all the radiating lines. 
There is a downward slant of four feet in the floor, affording a 




Figure 16. Plan of St. Paul's Church, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 



216 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

clear view of the pulpit. The acoustic properties are excellent. The 
main floor has seven hundred seats, and four hundred more are con- 
tained in a gallery which is built over the outside corridor and the 
last two rows of pews. Access to the gallery is by means of the stair 
towers. The auditorium is lighted by the two upper rows of windows, 
all of uniform size and shape. Below the auditorium is a large hall of 
the same size used for social purposes. Numerous doors connect the 
auditorium with the Sunday school building and the latter is 
equipped with more than twenty classrooms, several offices, par- 
lors, a social service room, a small chapel, and a gymnasium. Al- 
together the building affords unexcelled facilities for the educa- 
tional and social activities of a church institution. 

Sullivan's next building was a large dry-goods store built for 
the John D. Van Allen & Son Company in Clinton, Iowa. (PL 77) 
It was begun late in 1913 and finished early in 1915. The basic 
scheme of large plate glass windows separated by horizontal bands 
between floors is similar to that of the Carson Pirie Scott Store. 
The nature of the skeletal construction of steel is clearly evident. 
The wall is made of the long, thin bricks which Sullivan often 
used, in a burnt gray color with a tinge of purple. At the base are 
vertical slabs of black marble framing the large show-windows, 
and above the ground story all the windows are framed by a light 
gray terra cotta. There is a very slight cornice. The extraordinary 
feature of the design is apparent at the first glance. On the main 
fagade of the building are three slender mullions running through 
three stories, from ornate corbels at the second-floor level to huge 
outbursts of terra cotta foliage in the attic. Corbels and finials (if 
so they may be called) are a vivid green in color. Just above the 
finials, and forming a background for them, are inset tile panels 
in Dutch blue and white. These curious features must have been 
purely decorative in intention. They are non-structural, occurring 



SULLIVAN ALONE 217 

in the middle of the bays between the steel-enclosing brick piers. 
At the same time there seems to be no valid decorative excuse for 
them. They do not serve to express or to emphasize the fundamental 
form of the building, which is a series of horizontal bands; they 
do not seem to be a part of the form, but merely applied on it; the 
exuberant naturalistic foliations comport poorly with a structure 
otherwise so geometrically rectilinear; even the color does not 
seem in place. In short, one cannot understand why Sullivan put 
them there. Occasional details such as this appear in other of his 
buildings, and we feel in them a tendency toward purely lyrical 
outbursts, like some passages in his writing, but no others seem 
so entirely illogical, or, it must be admitted, so unsuccessful in 
effect. 

The next six buildings, chronologically, were banks, built be- 
tween 1913 and 1919. The first of these is the Henry C. Adams 
Building (PL 78), in Algona, a small town in northwestern Iowa. 
Intended by Mr. Adams for a bank building, and designed by 
Sullivan as such, the contemplated bank failed to receive a charter 
and the building was first used as a real estate building known as 
the Land & Loan Office. Although one of the smallest and most 
unassuming of Sullivan's buildings, it is one of the best a simple 
rectangular block, with no cornice, and sparing but effective orna- 
ment. It is so obviously a direct statement of the problem, and that 
problem was so simple, that it needs little comment. Few buildings 
of that period, however, either in this country or in Europe, match 
it in quality. 

The Merchants' National Bank in Grinnell, Iowa, was built in 
1914. (PL 79) Although a smaller building than either the Owa- 
tonna or the Cedar Rapids banks, it is fully as monumental in 
effect. The exterior walls appear almost solid, although the interior 
is amply lighted. The material used is a wire-cut shale brick of 



218 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

mixed shades, ranging in color from a blue-black to a golden brown, 
the general effect being a deep tapestry red. The cornice is of brown 
terra cotta, richly modelled and inlaid with gold. Although it does 
not project beyond the face of the building, small finials rise 
against the skyline, causing a slight indistinctness in the silhouette 
which does not accord with the otherwise clean-cut geometry of 
the mass. The great window on the east side, measuring about fifteen 
feet in height by forty feet in length, is an impressive feature. En- 
closed in a rectangular opening, and recessed from the wall sur- 
face, it is fronted by nine slender colonets. As their attenuated 
proportions suggest, these colonets are of iron, but they are 
sheathed in gold leaf and the combination of gold and dull red is 
in stunning harmony. The window itself is of double thickness, as 
at Owatonna, with plate glass outside and leaded colored glass in- 
side. The two small windows at the corner light the directors' room, 
and the window to the left of the door lights the women's lounge. 
The clock projecting from the corner was a relic of the old bank 
building. 

The most striking feature of the exterior is the entrance door 
with its huge sunburst of ornament above. All of this detail is 
executed in gray terra cotta, except the heraldic lions and certain 
portions of the ornament which are gilded. The sunburst above 
the door centers about a kind of "rose-window" in stained glass, 
and is a remarkable fantasy in superimposed circles, squares, and 
diamonds, with both naturalistic and geometric details. As a study 
in decorative design per se it is of great interest; as a part of an 
actual building it is far too large, too complex, and too heavy for 
the position it occupies. Like similar features on other late build- 
ings, it must be ascribed to Sullivan's innate tendency to burst out 
at times into overwrought lyricism. 

The interior is much less richly ornamented than the Owatonna 



SULLIVAN ALONE 219 

bank, but is by no means bare. (PL 80) The walls have a high 
brick dado topped by a finishing strip of dark-stained oak. Above 
this they are of light plaster. The brick wall at the back, over the 
vault and the safe deposit room, has a rich band of fire-gilt terra 
cotta ornament. Gold terra cotta trim also occurs on the tellers' 
cage at the back, and on the capitals of the square piers carrying 
large flower-bowls. The large window in the east wall is of leaded 
glass, with a ground of marbled yellow and lavender, with central 
insets in peacock blue and bright green colors. The skylight colors 
are cream and turquoise blue. Certain details are worthy of note: 
the clock over the entrance set in a glass mosaic field ; the suspended 
lighting fixtures of oak and frosted glass; and the circular window 
of the fagade, in brilliant colors. Although the bank is not large, an 
unusual sense of spaciousness is given by the complete openness 
of the interior above the low partition walls. 

The Home Building Association Bank at Newark, Ohio (PL 
81) was built at the same time as the Grinnell bank. The lot was 
of very small dimensions but the officers of the company desired 
accommodations for quite a large business. Consequently it was 
necessary to erect a two-story structure, and it was in reality a 
three-story building since the basement was designed for business 
use. The exterior is faced by greenish gray terra cotta slabs with 
ornamented borders. The long rectangular panel over the side 
windows is of glass mosaic in light green, and the entrance front 
has another very rich panel of green glass mosaic with the legend 
"The Old Home" emblazoned thereon in gold lettering. The general 
effect of the exterior is not good, and one has the feeling that the 
whole enterprise was cheap. Indeed, with the present obliteration 
of the building by red and gold signs, it looks as nearly ordinary 
as one of Sullivan's buildings could. 

The interior of the Newark bank (PL 82) is extremely rich in 



220 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

decoration. The counters and wall dado are faced by intricately 
veined black marble ; the wall is a polychromatic frieze ; and even 
the ceiling beams are richly ornamented. The glaring white porce- 
lain lights, it is hardly necessary to remark, were not a part of the 
original installation. The colors of the frieze at the top of the wall 
are brick red (the large star motives), dull green, dull blue, and 
gold-buff. The best feature of the interior is the treatment of the 
plate glass shield partitioning the tellers' cage from the public 
space. This consists merely of broad panels of polished plate 
glass on both front and top, from which depend inverted bronze 
troughs as light-reflectors, and bronze tellers' wickets inserted over 
the deal-plates. The arrangement is functionally admirable, and the 
effect of the polished glass and metal surfaces is like the gleaming 
precision of fine machinery. 

The Purdue State Bank in West Lafayette, Indiana, was also 
finished in 1914. It was the smallest and least expensive of all 
Sullivan's banks. The chief interest of the building is the manner 
in which it is adjusted to a small triangular and sloping site within 
the acute angle formed by the junction of two streets, utilizing the 
entire available area very skilfully in the plan of the interior. The 
exterior most closely resembles the Henry C. Adams Building at 
Algona. 

Finest of all the bank buildings designed by Sullivan, and one 
of the outstanding works of his whole career, is the People's Sav- 
ings and Loan Association Bank at Sidney, Ohio. (PL 83) Sul- 
livan himself considered this building the best of the series. One's 
first impression of the building is not so much of its form as of its 
beautiful harmony of soft, rich and luminous colors. The walls 
and base serve as a deep ground color against which the lighter 
and more brilliant glass mosaic and terra cotta ornament are re- 
lieved, like the melodic passages of solo instruments against the 



SULLIVAN ALONE 221 

sustained full harmonies of an orchestral accompaniment. The red 
of the bricks is not a flat opaque color, but the rich and vibrant 
red of tapestry brick of varied tones. The base consists of two-foot 
slabs of verde antique marble, strongly veined and almost black. 
On the entrance fagade the jambs and architrave of the door, the 
heraldic lions, the belt-course and impost moulding of the arch, 
the arch itself and the corbels on which it rests, are all in richly 
modelled terra cotta of a dull turtle green color. The tympanum 
of the arch, executed by Louis J. Millett, has a ground of light blue 
glass mosaic, with the single word "Thrift" in gold letters, and an 
inner archivolt in two shades of green, buff, and purple, the purple 
dominating. This is the "solo melody" of the fagade, and even from 
a distance its frank, clear color is readily apparent. The foliage 
designs in the corbels, the strong projection of the arch, and its 
enriched soffit, are all full of vigor and spirit. On the long west 
fagade, the tremendous windows lighting the banking room are 
boldly framed by strongly projecting sill, dividing mullions, and 
lintel, all in terra cotta. The color changes from mottled green 
below into brown above, gradually becoming lighter and merging 
into warm golden buff in the cornice. The long rectangular panel 
over the windows has a ground of light green glass mosaic, and the 
name of the bank in gold letters. 

Many features of the exterior design call for attention. There 
are, for instance, the four square brick lamp-posts bordering the 
streets, designed by Sullivan to give the setting of the building 
something of its own quality. One can imagine these replaced by 
the ubiquitous and ugly Aladdin posts of cast-iron which adorn 
most of our Main Streets. Then there is the fine lettering in gilded 
bronze across the upper part of the fagade, beautifully placed and 
in keeping with the whole. The robust foliage designs in terra cotta 
forming the corbels below the belt-course and the escutcheons 



222 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

above are worthy of careful study. The enframement of the great 
side windows is, however, too powerful and the way it is "pinned" 
to the wall by the brooch-like projections is of a disturbing plastic 
symbolism. Here character ends and caricature begins. 

The interior (PL 84) is simpler and finer than that of any other 
of Sullivan's banks. As at Grinnell, the room is left open and un- 
obstructed above a fringe of offices surrounding the central space, 
an arrangement giving the maximum effect of light and spacious- 
ness. The range of windows in the west wall has opaque leaded 
glass in subdued colors a light sea-green ground, with central 
ornaments in tomato and pale amber colors. The skylight is an 
iridescent mother-of-pearl color. The public space is screened 
from the tellers' cages, offices, etc., by a low brick wall topped by 
verde antique marble which forms the counter. At intervals pro- 
jecting slabs carried on legs form check desks. Above the counter 
square brick piers carry a beam of natural oak, with incised pat- 
terns and a two-inch strip of inlaid terra cotta ornament. The rec- 
tangular openings above the counter thus formed are either left 
open or filled by large panes of plate glass, in which the bronze 
tellers' wickets are inserted. At the south (back) end of the public 
space there is no solid wall, but in its place a single sheet of plate 
glass, through which may be seen the huge door of the vault, ex- 
actly centered on the main axis. This door, a beautiful and power- 
ful mass of polished steel, is the focus of one's first view of the 
interior and not only symbolizes the function of the building but 
is an important part in the decorative scheme. Sullivan has been 
accused of seeming "unaware of the machine as a direct element 
in architecture, abstract or concrete," 1T but here is an instance of 
a perfect concrete meeting of architecture and the machine. An 
example of Sullivan's meticulous care in details is his forethought 
in finding out from the bank's officers whether the vault door would 



SULLIVAN ALONE 223 

normally during the course of banking hours be left open or closed ; 
finding that it would be open, he placed the door just enough off 
axis so that when swung open on its great hinges it would fall on 
the center line. With the exception of a few corridor and office 
fixtures, all lighting is indirect. Counters and desks are lighted 
by overhead bronze reflecting troughs set with frosted glass, and 
the room as a whole is lighted by electric lights placed in troughs 
on top of the oak beam and in the large vases topping the four 
corner piers. The women's parlor (PI. 85), with gray-pink marble 
floor, gray brick wall and natural-finished oak trim, is an extremely 
simple but distinguished apartment. 

The mechanical equipment of the bank was very advanced, espe- 
cially in the system of air-conditioning. Detailed information on 
this is contained in an article by Tallmadge in the American Archi- 
tect of 1918. 18 

The Farmers' and Merchants' Union Bank in Columbus, Wis- 
consin, was built in 1919 and is the last of the series. The exterior 
(PL 86) is made of tapestry brick, ranging widely in color through 
browns and golden yellows. The general form, as at Grinnell and 
Sidney, is severely rectilinear, with broad expanses of plain wall 
surface against which the decorative enrichment of the portal and 
range of side windows stands out the more vividly. The small 
fagade has only two openings below: the entrance door and a large 
window opening on the officers' platform within. Resting across 
these is a huge decorative lintel, or panel, with the name of the 
bank lettered on a polished slab of verde antique marble framed 
by lavish terra cotta ornament in a mottled green color. The arched 
opening above has a lunette with colored glass, and a recessed 
archivolt in four faces, a treatment less effective than that at Sid- 
ney. The heraldic lions perched on Sullivanesque fasces also seem 
somewhat out of place. The side wall, slightly battered in its lower 



224 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

half, has a massive solidity akin to that of the Egyptian style, but 
with the lyric ornament of the row of arched windows, nothing of 
its ponderous character. 

The interior (PL 87) is a long narrow room, affording space 
for tellers' cages only on one side, but the arrangement of these 
is essentially the same as in the bank at Sidney. 

Sullivan's last work, designed in his sixty-fifth year, was a small 
music store built for William P. Krause on Lincoln Avenue, 
Chicago. The plan and interior of this building were designed by 
William C. Presto; only the fagade was by Sullivan. Since the 
building was used for a residence as well as a shop the fagade has 
two entrances at the sides and a display-window occupying the 
middle. Deeply recessed and richly framed, the window is con- 
ceived as a picture that dominates the lower part of the fagade. 
Above, the fagade is faced by terra cotta panels in a dull green 
color, simply treated except for a central motive rising from an 
enriched corbel and projecting above the cornice. It is not one of 
his best designs, but again we have only to compare it with the 
conventional fagades of the adjacent stores which have since been 
built up around it, to realize as forcefully as ever that even in his 
least significant works Sullivan was still a master. 

The whole story of Sullivan's personal life from 1895 to his 
death in 1924 will probably never be known. As mentioned before 
there are no details concerning it in the Autobiography, and only 
a few items may be gleaned from the reminiscences of those who 
knew him. We know, for instance, only the mere facts of his mar- 
riage: that he was married to Margaret Hattabough on July 1, 
1899, and that they were separated on January 29, 1917. Those 
who knew him say that he always spoke respectfully of his wife, 
and warmly admired certain of her qualities, but that they lived 
in different spheres, emotionally and intellectually. They lived 



SULLIVAN ALONE 225 

separately many years before the divorce took place. There were 
no children from the union. Sullivan thought and wrote a great 
deal from 1900 on. Kindergarten Chats, weekly articles published 
in an architectural journal throughout the whole year in 1901- 
02, were a book in proportion. While writing them Sullivan 
worked usually at a desk in the Cliff Dwellers club, writing late 
at night sometimes until two or three only to appear at the office 
the next morning apparently fresh and eager for work. 

He read a great deal. The books in his library reveal some 
rather esoteric interests. There were several books on Japan and 
Japanese art, and he possessed a small but choice collection of 
Oriental rugs, Chinese and Japanese vases, bronzes, and jade 
carvings. He had about a dozen books on gems and precious stones, 
from the designs of which it has been suggested that he derived 
motives for his ornament, although this is not true. Gray's Botany 
influenced his ornament more than any other single source. He had 
a dog-eared copy, showing extensive use in studying the morphol- 
ogy of plants and their curious and marvellous differentiations 
within species. He referred the book to students frequently. His 
sketch-book was full of drawings from this source: complex or- 
ganic developments from single germinal ideas. There were a few 
books on the history of music, others on musical analysis, harmony, 
etc., and fourteen volumes of oratorios. Several books on psychology 
and psychic phenomena reveal a profound interest in this field. 
There were in addition well-worn copies of Walt Whitman's Leaves 
of Grass and Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra, especially sug- 
gestive to the student of his writings. 

The lack of commissions reduced him to desperate straits by 
1909. It was at that time that he had to give up the office in the 
Auditorium Tower and to auction off his library and many of his 
household effects. He was also forced to dispense with the assist- 



226 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

ance of Elmslie in the office, thus being left completely alone. The 
last buildings that Elmslie helped with were the Bradley residence 
in Madison and the bank at Owatonna. Thee were many years of 
enforced inactivity, and the idleness and loneliness made inroads 
on his health. Frank Lloyd Wright renewed his friendship with 
Sullivan in 1914, and the two saw eafch other frequently in the 
subsequent years. Wright stood by loyally, and many interesting 
passages in his Autobiography tell/of these meetings, especially 
toward the end. In 1918 Sullivan/attempted to obtain war work 
with the Bureau of Construction of the Ordnance Department, but 
here again his services were not wanted. 

In June of 1918 Claude Bragdon urged him to rewrite and pub- 
lish in book form the Kindergarten Chats, and Sullivan worked 
throughout the summer and autumn at this task. Sometimes he took 
his work out to Washington Park, but more often he wrote at the 
Cliff Dwellers. The revision was finished in December, but no 
publisher was found. During 1922 and 1923 Sullivan wrote The 
Autobiography of an Idea. This work renewed his vitality and in- 
terest in life, and he was probably happier during these last years 
than he had been for a long time. The improvement in his health 
at this time was marked. To accompany the Autobiography he de- 
signed a series of nineteen plates of ornament, and these and the 
Autobiography were published in book form by the Press of the 
American Institute of Architects in 1924. 

But in February and March of 1924J Sullivan was in ill health. 
Neuritis developed in his right arm, and his heart was seriously 
dilated from an over-use of stimulants/ In April he failed rapidly. 
Just a few days before he died Mr. Max Dunning was able to visit 
him in his small rooms in the Warney Hotel and place in his hands 
the completed copy of his book apd the plates of his "System 
of Architectural Ornament." Mr. Dunning writes: "Mr. Sullivan 



SULLIVAN ALONE 227 

considered, I believe, that thesk two efforts constituted his life's 
greatest accomplishment, and ]/ believe that I am stating the truth 
when I say that his lak days \pre among the most pleasant he had 
experienced for many Vears/ as he felt that his life's work had 
been splendidly consummated." On the evening of April 13 he 
went to sleep, a sleep frornwhich he never wakened. He died early 
in the morning of April A4 1924, from heart trouble. Funeral 
services were held in a small chapel, and Sullivan was buried next 
his father and mother in GraceJ^nd Cemetery. A small monument 
was later erected by h/s friends; it stands very near the Ryerson 
Tomb, and not far from the Getty Tomb. Truly of him can it be 
said: "Si monumentum requiris, circumspice." 



1 From an Address to the Chicago Chapter of the A. I. A. on May 8, 1928. 

2 Andre Bouilhet: "L'Exposition de Chicago," Revue des Arts Decoratifs, 
vol. 14, p. 68, 1893-94. 

3 List of gifts and accessions in the official report of the vice-president 
of the Museum Commission, March 16, 1894, Revue des Arts Decoratifs, 
vol. 14, p. 324, 1893-94. 

4 Paul Bourget: Outre-Mer Impressions of America, 1895, p. 14. 

5 Jean Schopfer: "American Architecture from a Foreign Point of View: 
New York City," Architectural Review., vol. 7, (vol. 2 new series), no. 3, 
p. 25, March, 1900. 

6 Russell Sturgis: "Good Things in Modern Architecture," Architectural 
Record, vol. 8, no. 1, p. 101, July-September, 1898. 1 

7 Montgomery Schuyler: "The Skyscraper Up to Date," Architectural 
Record, vol. 8, no. 3, p. 231, January-March, 1899. 

8 Montgomery Schuyler : op. cit. 

9 "A Departure from Classic Tradition," Architectural Record, vol. 30, 
no. 4, pp. 327-338, October, 1911. 

10 Thomas E. Tallmadge: "The Farmers' and Merchants' Bank of Colum- 
bus, Wisconsin," Western Architect, vol. 29, no. 7, p. 63, July, 1920. 

11 Carl K. Bennett: "A Bank Built for Farmers," The Craftsman, vol. 15, 
no. 2, p. 176, November, 1908. 



228 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

12 The Craftsman, vol. 10; nos. 2-4; May, June, July, 1906. 

13 Montgomery Schuyler: "The People's Savings Bank of Cedar Rapids, 
Iowa," Architectural Record, vol. 31, no. 1, p. 45, Jan. 1912. 

14 Schuyler: op. cit. 

15 Descriptive and historical pamphlet issued by the Church Board at 
the dedication, May 31, 1914. 

16 Western Architect, vol. 20, no. 8, p. 85, August, 1914. 

17 Frank Lloyd Wright: Autobiography, p. 104. 

18 Thomas E. Tallmadge : "The People's Savings & Loan Association 
Building of Sidney, Ohio," American Architect, vol. 114, no. 2235, October 
23, 1918. 



VII. SULLIVAN'S ARCHITECTURAL 
THEORY 



SULLIVAN'S importance as a prophet of modern architecture lay 
equally in his theory and in his practice. Some other architects of 
his generation anticipated in isolated buildings the form of a mod- 
ern architecture, but there was no consistent achievement. Such a 
case was John Root's Monadnock Building of 1891 ; undeniably a 
primitive of the modern style, the Monadnock Building was never- 
theless a unique example which its architect never duplicated. 
Similarly many critics during the nineteenth century had had pre- 
monitions of a new philosophy of architecture. It might be argued 
that no essential point of Sullivan's theory was entirely new ; every 
one of his ideas had already been expressed. But no one before 
him had tied them together into a consistent system of thinking. 
Sullivan was probably the first man of his times to set forth both 
by precept and by example the clear outlines of a new philosophy 
and a new art of building. As Lewis Mumf ord has said : "Sullivan 
was the first American architect to think consciously of his relations 
with civilization. Richardson and Root both had good intuitions, 
and they had made effective demonstrations; but Sullivan knew 
what he was about, and what is more important, he knew what he 
ought to be about." 1 

In attempting to arrive at an understanding of Sullivan's theory 
of architecture we are confronted by two facts : that his theory was 
far too complex to be summarized in the catch-phrase "form fol- 
lows function," and that even with a more complete exposition of 

229 



230 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

his ideas no full realization of their import can be achieved with- 
out a sense of the passionate conviction that lay behind them. His 
was not a mere theory of architecture, nor even a philosophy of 
architecture; it was a religion of architecture. His writings are 
winged with poetry and shot through with emotional intensity. For 
this reason no mere analysis of Sullivan's credo is sufficient; its 
significance resides so largely in his manner of expression and 
choice of words that many passages in this account are quoted 
directly from his own writings. 

Sullivan wrote extensively, but unfortunately the greater part 
of his published articles and addresses appeared in comparatively 
obscure periodicals which have long since ceased publication, and 
bound volumes may be found on the shelves of only one or two 
libraries. Moreover two or three of his best addresses and his long- 
est book were never published. Consequently it has been difficult 
for any but the closest students of his life to make use of the great 
wealth of material which he left. Eighteen published articles and 
addresses and two published books are listed in the Sullivan bib- 
liography at the end of this work, and in addition six unpublished 
manuscripts are named. 2 It is impossible within reasonable limits 
to discuss in detail each of these articles, but it may be helpful to 
indicate briefly the general nature of those which are best known 
and those which may be considered most important. 

The earliest essay by Sullivan which has been preserved to us is 
a paper read before the Western Association of Architects in 1885, 
entitled "Characteristics and Tendencies of American Architec- 
ture." This was written when he was twenty-nine years old, yet it 
represents the point of view, in nearly complete form, from which 
he never essentially departed in forty years of further writing. It 
was published in full, with commendations, in the Builders' Weekly 
Reporter of London, but apparently aroused no great interest in 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 231 

this country. Although it is the earliest of Sullivan's essays pre- 
served to us, there is no reason to suppose that his characteristic 
point of view had not been evolved before 1885. According to the 
Autobiography Sullivan had conceived the notion of formulating 
a "Clopet demonstration" for architecture while he was still a 
student in the Ecole, about 1875. :l Certainly the account of his 
ambitions during the first year in the firm of Adler & Sullivan, 
1881, is most explicitly "functionalist" in character: "He could 
now, undisturbed, start on the course of practical experimentation 
he long had in mind, which was to make an architecture that fitted 
its functions a realistic architecture based on well defined utili- 
tarian needs that all practical demands of utility should be para- 
mount as a basis of planning and design; that no architectural 
dictum, or tradition, or superstition, or habit, should stand in his 
way." 4 .While it is possible that in this passage the man of over 
sixty-five was reading back into the mind of the youth of twenty- 
five ideas which he had not clearly formulated at that time, and 
while we know definitely that the actual phrase "form follows func- 
tion" did not appear in any known writings of Sullivan prior to 
1896, nevertheless it is reasonable to suppose that in a mind so 
original and active a well-defined point of view may have been 
formed during the early years. 

At any rate Sullivan's famous "Inspiration" essay, read before 
the Third Annual Convention of the Western Association of Archi- 
tects in Chicago in 1886, is generally conceded to have marked his 
intellectual majority. Over three hundred architects were present, 
from a territory extending as far west as Denver, east to Rochester, 
north to Minneapolis, and south to Atlanta. Sullivan, according to 
an eye-witness, "ascended the platform with an air of mingled 
diffidence and self-esteem, dark-complexioned, with scant black 
hair and chin whiskers" and held the audience in a state of close 



232 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

attention during a reading which occupied some forty minutes. It 
was a prose-poem, rhapsodic and lyric in utterance (Sullivan 
later considered it somewhat "sophomoric and over-exalted"), 
and it is doubtful whether more than a handful of his listeners 
understood what this remarkable effusion on a supposedly archi- 
tectural subject meant. But they received it courteously, and a few 
young men remembered it for years, for in the foreword was con- 
tained a complete summary of Sullivan's theory of architecture as 
organic growth, and in the body of the work poetic passages of 
memorable beauty. The essay fell into three parts: "Growth a 
Spring Song" ; "Decadence Autumn Reverie" ; and "The Infinite 
a Song of the Depths"; the transition from part to part effected 
by two interludes. 

The following two articles, one on the relationship of details 
to mass in architecture and the other on "Ornament in Architec- 
ture," coming in 1887 and 1892, are further developments of the 
idea of art as organic growth, the former containing some of his 
most eloquent passages. In "Objective and Subjective," an address 
read before the Twenty-eighth Convention of the A. I. A. in New 
York in 1894, Sullivan discusses the source and rise of artistic 
knowledge and, as a necessary corollary, launches into his first 
detailed attack on academic education, in particular the education 
imparted by the architectural schools of his day. This was a theme 
to which he devoted some of his most acid criticism in later years 
in fact, it was perhaps his major destructive attack, just as the 
idea of a functional and organic architecture was his major con- 
structive effort. 

In 1896, just after the completion of the Guaranty Building in 
Buffalo, Sullivan published his article "The Tall Office Building 
Artistically Considered." Originally appearing in Lippincotfs, 
this was at various later dates reprinted in the Inland Architect and 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 233 

News Record, The Craftsman, and the Western Architect, and is 
probably the best-known of his writings after Kindergarten Chats 
and the Autobiography. As A. W. Barker has pointed out, 5 it must 
be admitted that Sullivan's tendency to metaphor and the fluency 
of his thought often left his writings overloaded and somewhat 
obscure, but here his prose style is at its best. The simple and direct 
English of the essay is excelled only by the logic and clarity of its 
reasoning. It is the clearest and most concise statement of Sullivan's 
whole architectural theory that may be found. Those parts of it 
pertaining specifically to the skyscraper have been quoted at length 
in the discussion on the Wainwright Building. 

Two shorter and less important articles appeared in 1899, and 
in the same year the finest of his poems, a long work entitled "The 
Master," finished and dated on the day of his marriage, July 1st. 
This was never published. 

From 1900 to 1902 Sullivan wrote a great deal. The partnership 
with Adler had broken up five years before and during these years 
there were few commissions in the office. A note of bitterness crept 
into his writing; his attacks on the existing order were more viru- 
lent, while he restated his credo with more eloquence. His style 
became less urbane, more epigrammatic. He was, in spite of him- 
self, being forced to become not an architect but a teacher. In this 
situation he addressed himself more and more to the youth of the 
land as the hope of the future. "The Young Man in Architecture," 
an address to the Architectural League of America; "Reality in 
the Architectural Art"; and "Education," also read before the 
Architectural League, all appeared in these years. But the most 
famous work of this era was Kindergarten Chats. 

Kindergarten Chats was Sullivan's first sustained literary effort. 
The "Chats," mostly a page or two in length, appeared in weekly 
issues of The Interstate Architect and Builder, running through a 



234 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

whole year from February 16, 1901, to February 8, 1902. For 
purposes of a vital and dramatic presentation of his thoughts, Sul- 
livan chose the form of a series of dialogues between an imaginary 
teacher and pupil, the latter assumed to be a "young, well-educated, 
self-confident and unsuspecting hopeful" in whose mind the master 
might plant the seeds and cultivate the growth of a true conception 
of the architectural art. The title reflects Sullivan's conviction that 
the simple and intimate methods of kindergarten training are the 
only educational process that we have developed which is worthy 
of serious approval. "It is my main contention against prevailing 
educational methods, that their general, traditional tendency is to 
shut off Nature's stimuli and substitute book stimuli, or else the 
spectres of medieval theological doctrine. From this arraignment 
I specifically except the kindergarten, manual training school, 
gymnasium and athletic field, which are the best in educational 
method that we have." Sullivan sought an "architectural kinder- 
garten" in which simple and obvious truths might be presented 
without complication or obfuscation by pseudo-aristocratic learn- 
ing. Concerning the method of the "Chats," Sullivan addressed his 
pupil as follows: "First I would dissolve for you this wretched 
illusion called American architecture, and then cause to awaken in 
your mind the reality of a beautiful, a sane, a logical, a human, 
living art of your day; an art of and for democracy, an art of and 
for American people of your own time." 

It is a remarkable series. Ranging from scathing sarcasm and 
unbridled criticism of the commercial, the insincere, and the pre- 
tentious in the architecture of that day, through long passages of 
close reasoning concerning the true nature and function of archi- 
tecture, to moods of inspired feeling and pure poetry, it is the 
most complete record of Sullivan's range of thought and imagina- 
tion. His fearless attacks on contemporary architecture even of 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 235 

specific buildings without regard to the prestige of the architects 
concerned often seem unduly bitter, and the work is occasionally 
marred by trivialities or lapses in taste, but on the whole its con- 
structive truth outweighs these minor defects. Twenty years later 
Claude Bragdon wrote : "The Chats proved to be a vigorous, bitter, 
bludgeoning assault upon the then existing architectural order, 
. . . but they pointed out a way to freedom to any sincere young 
architectural talent stifling in the tainted air of our industrialism 
or bogged in the academic morass. Large, loose, discursive, a blend 
of the sublime and the ridiculous . . . Kindergarten Chats re- 
mains in my memory as one of the most provocative, amazing, 
astounding, inspiring things that I have ever read." 6 During the 
latter half of 1918 Sullivan revised Kindergarten Chats with a 
view toward their re-publication, and this version, edited by Claude 
Bragdon, was finally published in book form by the Scarab Fra- 
ternity Press late in 1934. 

From 1905 to 1910 Sullivan's writings centered on his concep- 
tion of a true democracy. "Natural Thinking: A Study in Democ- 
racy" was a long address given before the Chicago Architectural 
Club in 1905. It contains his definitions of feudalism and democ- 
racy as two opposed world-forces, an interpretation of history as 
the rise of feudalism with its two chief institutions of the aristoc- 
racy and the priesthood, and the gradual growth out of this of the 
democratic idea. Education as the outgrowth of "natural thinking" 
is analyzed and held up as the prime essential of a democratic 
society, and demonstrated as fundamentally democratic in nature. 
This address was never published, but several passages from the 
manuscript are quoted below. 

"The Possibility of a New Architectural Style," published in 
1905, was a very brief and lucid summary of the point of yiew 
developed in previous writings, demonstrating in particular that 



236 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

various current suggestions concerning the "appropriateness" of 
the Gothic style for modern American use were as beside the point 
as arguments for any other style-revival. This definite stand has 
particular interest in view of the fact that it appeared just prior 
to the completion of Cass Gilbert's West Street Building in New 
York, the first of a long series of Neo-Gothic skyscrapers which 
took as their point of departure the vertical emphasis of the high 
building which Sullivan had first clearly shown in the Wainwdght 
Building, and proceeded to "express" this with a vocabulary of 
Gothic ornament. Nothing could demonstrate more clearly the 
manner in which Sullivan's distinguished contemporaries seized 
at the superficials of his work and failed utterly to grasp its funda- 
mental thesis. "What is Architecture? A Study in the American 
People of Today," published in 1906, was a brief summary of 
principles previously enunciated. 

During the years 1906-08 Sullivan worked on a book which 
was to be the most complete statement of his whole social and 
artistic philosophy. It was to be entitled Democracy: A Man Search, 
and on the title page is a note in Sullivan's neat handwriting: "The 
revision of this book was completed by me at the Chicago Club, 
Chicago, at 1:42 A. M. April 18th, 1908." The manuscript was the 
longest he ever wrote. Although unpublished, it was in some ways 
the most remarkable of his books. Broader in scope than the 
"Chats," and displaying a far wider knowledge of previous phil- 
osophic writings and of the panorama of human history, it was 
at the same time more restrained in phrase but equally intense in 
poetic feeling. Like his other works, Democracy is somewhat baf- 
fling to the casual reader accustomed to reading poetry as poetry, 
philosophy as philosophy, criticism as criticism, sociological theory 
as sociological theory, and so on, each sphere of thought or feeling 
separated and presented as such. Sullivan merges all of these into 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 237 

one copious outpouring, as integral as life itself. Consequently its 
literary, or philosophic, or scholarly merits are difficult to isolate 
and estimate. As poetry we find it too philosophical, or as philosophy 
too poetic. One critic, in reviewing it, found "an immense amount of 
truly sensuous language snowed under by abstract language," or 
more appropriately from his standpoint, "full of grains of gold 
swept along in swift mud" ; another found it of compelling power 
in the construction of original and forcible thoughts, but confused 
by redundant and over-fluent moonshine. The fact is that Democracy 
requires a breadth of approach which shall, in Sullivan's own 
language, "illuminate the heart, expand the range of the creative 
power of the mind, and certify the spiritual integrity of man" be- 
fore it can be properly appreciated. Few persons of the author's 
acquaintance have read the manuscript, and none of these has felt 
fully competent to pass judgment upon it in its entirety. Certainly 
he feels less qualified to do so than many others, yet it seems valid 
to hazard an opinion that this might some day be taken as one 
of the great literary achievements of modern times. 

From 1908 until the last years of his life Sullivan wrote almost 
nothing. These were undoubtedly his darkest years. He was kept 
partially busy by the trickle of commissions for small banks and 
a few other structures between, 1907 and 1919, and one or two 
unimportant articles came from his pen. William L. Steele, in his 
memorial address on Sullivan to the Chicago Chapter of the A.LA. 
on May 8, 1928, said: "To us who knew and believed in Louis 
Sullivan and who followed his colorful and romantic career, it has 
not been easy to interpret him in any but tragic terms. Here was 
this gifted man, this genius, immensely capable, ready to do what 
was needed to be done in a complete and powerful way and yet, 
we saw him ignored when he was not ridiculed. ... It is amazing 
how, when the time came, so few noted his absence from his accus- 



238 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

tomed place. It was as though he had been away in a far country 
when, just before the end, he came back from nobody knew where 
and wrote his valedictory. It was a shadow of the powerfully built, 
broad-chested athlete of former days, but a quietly triumphant old 
man, who nightly sat at a table in the Cliff Dwellers Club writing 
what was to be his literary masterpiece." 

This latter-day acclaim, never very vociferous, but affording 
Sullivan some gratification in his last years, began with The Auto- 
biography of an Idea. In January, 1922, when Sullivan was sixty- 
five years old, Charles A. Whitaker, managing editor of the Press 
of the American Institute of Architects, wrote Sullivan to ask for 
a series of articles for the Journal of the A.I.A. which might later 
be reprinted in book form. From this request grew the conception of 
an autobiography, and Sullivan plunged into its writing with en- 
thusiasm. The work began in February, was continued through 
1922 and brought to completion in August, 1923. It appeared 
serially in issues of the Journal from June, 1922, to August, 1923. 
During the late summer and fall Sullivan revised certain passages, 
and the completed series was published in book form in March, 
1924. As related before, Sullivan received the bound copy on his 
death-bed. 

The Autobiography of an Idea needs no description here, since 
it has been reprinted by W. W. Norton in the "White Oak Library" 
series within the past year, and has been available to anyone 
interested in Sullivan. However, for this very reason, present-day 
conceptions of Sullivan are perhaps based too largely on the book. 
The majority of those who have heard of Sullivan at all know him 
only by the Autobiography, and perhaps three or four of his build- 
ings. It is well to keep in mind that the Autobiography was written 
when Sullivan was over sixty-five years old; that it came after a 
period of nearly fifteen years of comparative inactivity which had 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 239 

wrought their inevitable effects; that it treats largely of his long- 
gone youth, only partly of his professional career during the Adler 
& Sullivan days, and practically not at all of the years after 1893. 
For these reasons, it is only partially satisfactory as a biography, 
and as an exposition of his "Idea" of architecture it cannot be 
compared with the much more lucid articles of the nineties and 
early 1900's. This is not to suggest that the Autobiography is not 
an interesting, and even a great, book; but in my opinion it is by 
no means his literary masterpiece, nor yet an adequate source for 
a complete understanding of his philosophy. For this reason, in 
summarizing Sullivan's beliefs, an effort will be made to draw very 
largely on those sources which are earlier in date and less acces- 
sible to the general reader. 

During the same months that Sullivan was writing his auto- 
biography he was working on a series of large drawings to illus- 
trate a system of architectural ornament, originally requested by 
the Burnham Library of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Press of 
the American Institute of Architects asked for the publication 
rights, and the work was carried on as a companion volume to the 
Autobiography. Nineteen large drawings were done between Janu- 
ary, 1922, and May, 1923. Sullivan wrote a brief introduction and 
explanatory comments on several of the drawings. The plates for 
the book were finished in time for Sullivan to see them before his 
death, but it was not finally completed until May, 1924. Published 
in folio under the title "A System of Architectural Ornament Ac- 
cording with a Philosophy of Man's Powers," the book affords a 
glimpse of Sullivan's amazing powers of draftsmanship. That such 
marvels of lightness and delicacy could have been executed by a 
man of over sixty-five is no less astonishing than the fertility of 
invention, the richness, and the flexible strength of the drawings 
themselves. Yet even these may not be compared with some of the 



240 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

earlier drawings the preliminary drawings for the ornament of 
the Auditorium, for instance to see Sullivan as a draftsman at 
his best. 

During the last years of his life, the editors of several archi- 
tectural periodicals became aware of the genius in their midst and 
asked for articles from his pen. "The Tall Office Building Artisti- 
cally Considered" was republished in the Western Architect in 
January, 1922. A brief but caustic article on the "Chicago Tribune 
Competition" was published by the Architectural Record in Feb- 
ruary, 1923. In this Sullivan unerringly and forcefully pointed out 
the merits of Eliel Saarinen's design which was awarded second 
prize, hailing it as "the most beautiful conception of a lofty office 
building that has been evolved," then proceeded to analyze the 
defects of the first prize design an estimate of the two in which 
most subsequent criticism has concurred. In April, 1923, Sulli- 
van's appreciation of Frank Lloyd Wright's work was published 
in an essay "Concerning the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo." This was 
followed a year later by "Reflections on the Tokyo Disaster," after 
the Imperial Hotel had successfully withstood the great earth- 
quake and fire of September, 1923. In both these articles, written 
while The Autobiography of an Idea was under way, Sullivan dis- 
plays a new optimism, a sense that his life's work had not been in 
vain. 

Coming to a general statement of Sullivan's theory of archi- 
tecture, it must be reiterated that we are dealing with something 
comparable to a religion. Sullivan's conception of architectural 
design is far more vital than mechanical or utilitarian functional- 
ism on the one hand, or than "abstract composition" on the other, 
It takes on the dimensions of a whole life, and as such it must be 
approached. To understand Sullivan's ideas concerning archi- 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 241 

lecture it is necessary to know something of his conception of God, 
his ideas of man and of human powers, and his beliefs about the 
social order. All of these are indissolubly fused with his ideas of 
architecture. 

The Infinite. It has been observed that Sullivan was irreligious 
because he attacked the institution of the Church. It should be un- 
necessary to remark that this is a superficial observation. Sullivan 
was profoundly religious. Although he never used the word "God," 
preferring the phrase "Infinite Creative Spirit" or more often 
simply "The Infinite," the concept of an ultimate source of all 
Nature and life was ever-present and active in him. This Infinite 
was to him the immanent spirit in all the myriad phenomena of 
Nature, and as such it becomes evident to man. Although Sullivan 
was not given to speculation about its exact nature, it seems evi- 
dent that he did not conceive of the Infinite as either personal or 
causal that is, he did not necessarily distinguish between it as the 
creator and the phenomena of Nature and the universe as the cre- 
ated. But although the Infinite is resident in and integral with all 
Nature, and can be perceived or realized by man through Nature, 
its apprehension is ultimately a personal process. This belief is 
probably most closely allied to modern pantheism, in the sense 
that it suggests that the universe, taken as a whole, is God; that 
there is no other God than the combined forces and laws mani- 
fested in the existing universe. Sullivan did not conceive of the 
Infinite as either conscious or intelligent, and he was not the least 
interested in the notion of life after death. But it is hard to over- 
estimate the vital importance to him of Nature. He loved and wor- 
shipped Nature from childhood on, and countless passages reveal 
its inspiration to him in every day of his life. From the rank weed 
in a roadside ditch to the grandeur of a summer storm or the vast 



242 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

stretches of lake and prairie, Sullivan saw fascinating beauty and 
thrilling perfection. The Infinite, through Nature, was the very 
source and life-blood of artistic inspiration, as of life itself. 

"I must insist, very earnestly, upon the great practical value in 
our daily lives of this conviction that the Infinite is partly intelli- 
gible, and wholly useful to us* All the more I must impress it upon 
you, because precisely the contrary is taught, and because it is 
generally and tacitly assumed by the unthinking and the cynical 
that the Infinite is apart from us. Under such conditions of belief 
the Infinite has become in our minds an academic, an abstract 
symbol, instead of a living presence and our unison with it 
official, delegated, perfunctory and occasional. The simple con- 
ception of the Infinite, that I am herein setting forth, has been so 
distorted for us by the theologians, the ecclesiastics of all denomi- 
nations, creeds and sects, so cobwebbed, and obscured and blended 
with the conception of a Deity, that the Infinite has become, 
literally, in practice a thing remote from us. 

"The traditional notions, however sincere, were based upon the 
conception of the Infinite as a Monarch, and our relations to him 
distant with the sense of fear and our own sinful unworthiness 
predominant. 

"... I purposely herein have separated the Infinite from the 
religious conceptions that have descended to us, because these have 
as their axis of revolution the thought of a hereafter. I wish to deal 
with the present. I deem it vastly more important. What becomes 
of a man's soul in a theoretical hereafter is of insignificant value 
to the people at large in comparison with the social or anti-social 
use he puts it to here. 

"Natural thinking must, as a prerequisite, rest upon an elevated, 
a humane, an enlightened and natural appreciation of the Infinite 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 243 

on adequate realization of our close identity with It, with Na- 
ture, and with our Fellow Men." 7 

Man. Man, to Sullivan, is the perfectly designed receiving-set 
for the impulses emanating from Nature. The five senses, when 
keenly attuned, are marvellous channels for the transmission of 
her stimuli to the organs of perception, and the result is objective 
experience. However, these senses may become dulled through 
perverse education or other causes, the channels become blocked, 
and in this case man is without the essential primary nutriment for 
right thinking or right feeling. Sullivan insists on the necessity of 
keeping the senses keenly attuned; he cites the difference between 
merely hearing, as a passive process, and listening as a vital and 
attentive process of hearing, and recommends that people should 
be taught to "listen" with all five of the senses, as children nor- 
mally do. 

Objective experience is but the first step in the apprehension of 
Nature. It is the primary material. But just as food is assimilated 
by the bodily organs into the blood stream, objective experience 
must be translated into subjective experience before it can become 
of vital use. This is accomplished by three faculties, or powers: 
the intellect, the emotions, and intuition. The intellectual powers 
are those commonly known as observation, memory, reflection, and 
reasoning; acting upon objective experience, they translate it into 
subjective experience which has meaning and the possibility of use. 
Similarly, the emotions endow objective experience with qualities 
of value and intensity, rendering it through a process of selection 
and reinforcement of potential value in expression. Intuition, 
which can be defined only as "that acute and instant scent in 
matters objective leading to matters subjective," endows objective 
experience with a unitary significance. Like the physical powers 



244 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

(the senses) these mental powers may become slackened or ob- 
structed, and the translation of objective experience into subjective 
experience may not occur with its proper force and clarity. Sulli- 
van's only prescription for this is sound education, sound physical 
health, and the constant use of the powers which Nature has given, 
for through use they become stronger and more perfect. With a 
normal vital education in natural living and natural thinking the 
potentialities of the human mind are almost unlimited. 

"Never doubt the possibilities of your own mind, for they are 
there, waiting for you to discover them, to know them, to use them. 
You cannot hope to know your own powers until you test them 
with the force of will and the backing of character to overcome 
obstacles. It is almost folly to talk of the limitations of the mind. 
I tell you that the limitations of your mind are much further off 
than you suppose. The so-called average mind has vastly greater 
powers, immeasurably greater possibilities of development than 
is generally supposed." s 

"It is quite the fad to discourse upon genius as a form of in- 
sanity, and to assert its essential identity with degeneracy and 
crime. The argument is specious; there is something in it. It is a 
fragment of truth. But its discovery is so enthusiastically cherished 
by the alienist that he does not sense the center of gravity around 
which his satellite of truth must necessarily revolve, namely, the 
organic sanity of genius as an expression of race-intellect forced 
up sporadically through the human mass fcy the same persistent 
urge of Nature that is striving today, as it has ever striven, to make 
the sanity of the genius normal and universal; and that it is toward 
this physical and spiritual equilibrium that Nature is striving to 
shape Mankind. When intuition and imagination are absentees, the 
alienist is not likely to suspect their supreme value as agencies in 
the human intellect. He is pleased to speak in compliment of the 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 245 

creative-power of genius, yet ... he discusses genius as almost 
all men artificially educated treat almost all things natural; that 
is to say, as an accident, a perversion. 

"It is my profound conviction that every infant born in what is 
generally called normal health, is gifted by Nature with a normal 
receptivity, which if cherished and allowed to be nourished . . . 
will unfailingly develop those normal, natural and sane qualities 
of mind to which, today, under a completely inverted conception of 
the Infinite, of Nature and of Man, we give the name Genius as 
we would give name to a thing strange,, and apart from the people. 
"In our study of social science, altogether too much importance 
has been attached to heredity and too little to environment. In my 
view there is no normal heredity but that which Nature intended, 
namely, health, vigor and beauty. In a humane and democratic 
philosophy there is not room for such a thing as an unfit human 
being except in a very limited and strictly pathological sense 
and indeed this would disappear/' 9 

Thus far we have traced what might be called Sullivan's episte- 
mology his theory of the source and rise of mental content, the 
way in which knowledge and insight are achieved. The use of this 
content, the reverse process the "objectification of the subjective" 
is creative activity. 

Creative activity presupposes the achievement of the kind of 
insights and values heretofore mentioned as a first requisite. With- 
out vital experience, both objective and subjective, man cannot 
create vital things. As a man is, so also is that which he creates. There 
can be no art without some prior experience of Nature and of Life, 
and the measure of an art is the depth and breadth of the experi- 
ence which calls it forth. 

"I would give you of our art some adequate notion of its possible 
beauty, its endless capacity for expression, its fluency, its lyric 



246 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

quality, its inexhaustible dramatic power when it comes into 
kinship with Nature's rhythms. And how can you know this unless 
you have felt it? And how can you understand it if you have not 
known it? And how can you express it unless you have lived it and 
understood it? You cannot express unless you have a system of 
expression; and you cannot have a system of expression unless you 
have a prior system of thinking and feeling; you cannot have a 
system of thinking and feeling unless you have had a basic system 
of living. When all is said and done, the great masterpiece, or the 
little masterpiece, is but the condensed expression of such philoso- 
phy of life as is held by the artist who creates it." 10 

Creative activity occurs by means of three processes or agencies : 
Imagination, Thought, and Expression. Imagination is that in- 
tuitive union of the senses, the intellect, and the emotions in an 
instantaneous integration which determines at once the whole char- 
acter of the creative act. It is an "illumined instant," a revelation 
that has lain dormant but potential, in short, what we call inspira- 
tion. In Sullivan's words, it is "the very beginning of action because 
it is a sympathy that lives both in our senses and our intellect the 
flash between the past and the future, the middle link in that living 
chain or sequence leading from nature unto art, and that lies deep 
down in the emotions and the will." Thought, on the other hand, is 
the cumulative factor, which weighs and tests and lends validity to 
the act of the imagination. It is "the faculty which doubts and in- 
quires, that recognizes time and space and the material limitations, 
that slowly systematizes, that formulates, that eventually arrives 
at a science of logical statement that shall shape and define the 
scheme and structure that is to underlie, penetrate and support the 
form of an art work." Expression is the physical embodiment of 
the emotional experience which gives beauty and communicative 
power to the creation. "Exuberant in life and movement, free, 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 247 

supple, active, dramatic, changeable, it is the part of Expression to 
clothe the structure of art with a form of beauty; for it is the per- 
fection of the physical, the physical itself, and the uttermost at- 
tainment of emotionality." Thus the spiritual, intellectual and 
emotional must be bound together in a complete harmony; the 
whole process must be a unitary impulse, "for otherwise and with- 
out this unitary impulse our expression, though delicate as a flower, 
our thinking as abstract as the winds that blow, our imagination as 
luminous as the dawn, are useless and unavailing to create: they 
may set forth, they cannot create." 

Creative activity, then, somewhat as in the process above de- 
scribed, grows organically and naturally out of experience. It 
cannot spring by a purely intellectual process out of sets of ob- 
jective criteria such as rules of proportion or rules of composition. 
The word "composition" was anathema to Sullivan, because to 
him architecture is not composition, but growth and organization. 
Similarly "proportion" as a set of rules for the achievement of an 
harmonious relationship of parts is false and artificial: "propor- 
tion is a result, not a cause. It may be imprisoned for a while in 
architectural ratios, but it does not reside in them." Sullivan in- 
sisted on architecture as organic in nature, meaning it must have 
the quality of life because it is an embodiment of life. 

"All life is organic. It manifests itself through organs, through 
structures, through functions. That which is alive acts, organizes, 
grows, develops, unfolds, expands, differentiates, organ after 
organ, structure after structure, form after form, function after 
function. That which does not do these things is in decay! This is a 
law, not a word! And decay proceeds as inevitably as growth: 
functions decline, structures disintegrate, differentiations blur, the 
fabric dissolves, life disappears, death appears, time engulfs 
the eternal night falls. Out of oblivion into oblivion so goes the 



248 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

drama of created things and of such is the history of an 
organism." 1 1 

If true creation cannot be learned in already created formulae, 
but must be the result of the growth of the power to experience and 
embody, a necessary corollary is that architectural design, in it- 
self, cannot be taught directly. It can be taught only indirectly 
through bringing out in the student the creative power which a full 
and vivid experience insures. In other words, one does not learn 
how to create beauty; one becomes the kind of person who can and 
does create it. While this doctrine may seem at first glance dis- 
couraging, since it upsets our whole notion of education as some- 
thing literal and formal and susceptible of strictly rational man- 
agement, it is in reality the most optimistic of all doctrines, for it 
asserts that true creative power is potential in all mankind; genius 
is normal, not abnormal, if we would only release ourselves from 
artificial and false training. The conception of architectural edu- 
cation as mere lesson-learning is responsible for most of our 
present-day architectural ills. 

"I know that the secret of our weakness lies primarily in the 
utterly purposeless education we have received. I know that the 
architectural schools teach a certain art or method of study in 
which one is made familiar with the objective aspects and forms of 
architecture. I know that this is, as far as it goes, conscientiously 
and thoroughly done. But I also know that it is doubtful, in my 
mind, if one student in a thousand emerges from his school pos- 
sessed of a fine conception of what architecture really is in form, 
in spirit and in truth: and I say that this is not primarily the stu- 
dent's fault. I know that before entering his architectural school 
he has passed through other schools and that they began the mis- 
chief: that they told him grammar was a book, algebra was a book, 
geometry another book, geography, chemistry, physics still others; 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 249' 

they never told him, never permitted him to guess for himself how 
these things were actually intense symbols, complex ratios, repre- 
senting man's relation to Nature and his fellowman; they never 
told him that his mathematics, his geography, his chemistry and 
physics, came into being in response to a desire in the human breast 
to come nearer to nature ; that the full moon looked round to the 
human eye ages before the circle was dreamed of. 

"Our student knows to be sure, as a result of his teaching, that 
the Greeks built certain-shaped buildings, that the Goths built 
certain-shaped buildings, and that other peoples built other build- 
ings of still other shapes. He knows, moreover, a thousand and one 
specific facts concerning the shapes and measurements and ratios 
of the whole and the parts of said buildings, and can neatly and 
deftly draw and color them to scale. He moreover has read in the 
philosophies, or heard at lectures, that the architecture of a given 
time gives one an excellent idea of that time. 

"This, roughly speaking, is the sum total of his education, and 
he takes his architectural instruction literally, just as he has taken 
every other form of instruction literally from the time he was a 
child: because he has been told to do so, because he has been 
told that architecture is a fixed, a real, a specific, a definite thing, 
that it's all done, that it's all known, arranged, tabulated and put 
away neatly in handy packages called books. He is allowed to be- 
lieve, though perhaps not distinctly so taught, that, to all intents 
and purposes, when his turn comes, if he wishes to make some 
architecture for Americans or for this generation at large, he can 
dip it out of his books with the same facility that dubs a grocer 
dipping beans out of a bin. He is taught by the logic of events that 
architecture in practice is a commercial article, like a patent medi- 
cine, unknown in its mixture and sold to the public exclusively on 
the brand. 



250 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

"He has been seriously taught at the school, and has been en- 
couraged in this belief by the endorsement of people of culture, 
that he can learn all about architecture if he but possess the at- 
tributes of scholarship and industry. That architecture is the name 
of a system of accredited, historical facts as useful, as available, 
and as susceptible to inspection as the books of a mercantile 
house," 12 

"Better no architectural school than schools of the kind we have. 
Better the vulgarest of homely vernaculars than learned folly of 
speech. Indeed, a true vernacular in our art is what you are to 
seek: a sane, an organic art of expression, which shall arise from 
you, and from the heart of hearts of your land and people." la 

What, then, should a proper architectural education be like? It 
must, in Sullivan's thought, be an education whereby subjective 
values are built up naturally and spontaneously out of immediate 
objective experience. It should foster the desire to absorb and to 
emit; the desire to receive and to create. This should begin as one of 
the earliest parts of the curriculum of a general education. Such 
an inter-play of in-taking and out-giving is certainly not to be 
found in books as such, but rather in direct contact with Nature 
contact so close that the result is not merely sensuous experience, 
but a communion with, an entering into the soul of Nature. Edu- 
cation at present is submission to the authority of forms of thought 
accumulated in the past, with no thought of testing them in the 
light of the present. Architectural schools, in Sullivan's view, are 
teaching artificial and objective canons rather than the subjective 
significance of architecture. 

But if the old objective canons are to be abandoned, what is to 
be substituted for them? Evidently architectural Design, according 
to this new conception, must be an exceedingly flexible matter. Any 
rule which is set up must be as fundamental and all-embracing as 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 251 

the fundamental unity of life itself; it must be a rule which allows 
place for both objective and subjective values; it must permit the 
utmost individual creative freedom. Sullivan's life-long search in 
architecture was for a "rule so broad as to admit of no exceptions." 
This rule, as he evolved it from his experience with Nature, is the 
simple one that form follows function. To Sullivan, this was simply 
natural law. It was a direct adaptation of a great biological prin- 
ciple to the sphere of architecture. Unfortunately, this rule sounds 
simpler than it really is. Taken at its face value, it was accepted by 
some of Sullivan's contemporaries, and has been more widely ac- 
cepted since, as the text of modern "functionalist" theory, and has 
frequently been perverted into something which Sullivan never 
intended. A similar fate befell Cezanne's phrase, that "all nature 
can be reduced to terms of the sphere, the cone, and the cylinder 9 ' ; 
as employed by the Cubists, it by no means comprehended Ce- 
zanne's theory of painting. Thus the truths of one generation be- 
come the cliches of the next, as Sullivan himself realized: 

". . . formulas are dangerous things. They are apt to prove the 
undoing of a genuine art, however helpful they may be in the 
beginning to the individual. The formula of an art remains and 
becomes more and more rigid with time, while the spirit of that 
art escapes and vanishes forever. It cannot live in text-books, in 
formulas, or in definitions." 14 

To Sullivan, "function" meant, first and most obviously, the 
use to which a building is put. As straight utilitarianism, this was 
nothing new, having been proclaimed as a mode of architectural 
design by previous nineteenth-century writers; in combination with 
Sullivan's virulent attacks on eclecticism, it was, however, of new 
force. It meant, simply, that architectural form will express the 
purpose of the building which it clothes; the function of a library 
is different from that of a railroad station, and that of a church 



252 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

different from that of a residence. This is elementary. Their dis- 
position of masses, of openings, their treatment of decorative de- 
tail everything about them should proclaim that they are what 
they are. A library will not attempt to look like a Gothic cathedral, 
nor a railroad station like a Roman bath, nor a bank like a classic 
temple. Secondly, it meant that architectural form will express the 
structural nature of a building. If it has a steel frame, this should 
be expressed, not made to look like solid masonry construction. 
If the structure of a building demands a blank wall, the wall should 
be left blank, not interrupted by false windows or other features of 
structural origin for the sake of symmetry or rhythm or other 
qualities of purely formal design. In short, architecture should be 
first of all honest and truthful. 

This all sounds very simple. But there are complex overtones. 
Just what is the "use" to which a building is put? If it is a house, 
certainly it will minister to more than creature comforts; it will 
have to satisfy something more than physiological man ; it will be 
more than "a machine to live in." It must contribute insofar as 
possible to man as an intellectual, an emotional, a spiritual being. 
In short, the word "function" meant to Sullivan the whole life that 
would go on in a building. Similarly, structure has imaginative 
and emotional qualities. For example, an office building is two 
hundred feet tall in terms of finite' measurements. There is inherent 
in this physical fact the emotional overtone of loftiness; this lofti- 
ness must be given expression, and when it is the structural nature 
of the building is enhanced, clarified, given human meaning. It 
will be noted that Sullivan never talks about the revelation of 
function and structure, but the expression of function and struc- 
ture. This means the "expression or symbolization of a thought, 
feeling, or quality"; certainly nothing merely utilitarian or 
mechanical is here. Furthermore, with regard to the expression of 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 253 

parts of a building, Sullivan says specifically, "y u should add, 
that, if the work is to be organic the function of the part must have 
the same quality as the function of the whole, and the parts, of 
themselves and by themselves must have the quality of the mass 
must partake of its identity." 

Sullivan's functionalism, then, means something far more than 
mechanism and utilitarianism. It means that a building must be 
organic, unitary, that it must have life; it means that a building 
must express intellectual and emotional and spiritual realities. 
The fact that he insists that expression grow out of actual experi- 
ence keeps him tied to earth ; but in his insistence on expressiveness 
as well as on adequacy he goes beyond pure functionalism as it 
exists in its most bald form today; that is a form which he would 
have considered as unsensitively materialistic as the eclecticism 
which he so passionately condemned. 

u We may talk for years on the inter-relationship of function 
and form, and get only an average and a fairly good start. But it 
will be a right start, I believe. We may, perhaps, see where the end 
lies, but it will be, like a star in the sky, unreachable and of un- 
known distance; or it will be like life itself, elusive to the last, even 
in death. Or it will be like a phantom beacon on a phantom stormy 
sea; or as a voice calling afar in the woods; or, like the shadow of 
a cloud upon a cloud, it will remain diaphanous and imponder- 
able, floating in the still air of the spirit/' 15 

"I value spiritual results only. I say spiritual results precede 
all other results, and indicate them. I can see no efficient way of 
handling this subject on any other than a spiritual or psychic basis. 

"It is for this reason that I say all mechanical theories of art are 
vanity, and that the best of rules are but as flowers planted over 
the graves of prodigious impulses which splendidly lived their 
lives, and passed away with the individual men who possessed these 



254 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

impulses. This is why I say that it is within the souls of individual 
men that art reaches its culminations. This is why I say that each 
man is a law unto himself; and that he is a great or a little law in 
so far as he is a great or a little soul. 

"I regard spiritual facts as the only permanent and reliable 
f acts h e on ly solid ground. And I believe that until we shall 
walk securely upon this ground we can have but little force or 
directness of purpose, but little insight, but little fervor, but little 
faith in material results/' 1G 

In a narrow functionalism there would be no place for ornament 
on a building. Sullivan himself asserted that it would be greatly 
for our aesthetic good if we should refrain entirely from the use 
of ornament for a period of years, but this only as a purgative 
measure, in order that the remains of ornamental detail of previous 
ages persisting in our architecture might be completely eliminated, 
and the way prepared for the "production of buildings well-formed 
and comely in the nude." But he felt that a truly appropriate 
system of ornament is desirable, and that an architecture com- 
pletely lacking in ornament cannot realize its highest possibilities. 
Ornament is the most subtle and gracious aspect of expression; 
after the basic form of the building has been made in itself expres- 
sive, the creative impulse should be carried on into the ornament. 
It will be organic, growing out of the mass rather than applied to 
it, expressing the nature of its material, and partaking of the 
fundamental rhythms of the building itself. But it will appear, not 
as something merely receiving the spirit of the structure, but as a 
thing expressing that spirit by virtue of differential growth. 
Furthermore, it follows that a certain kind of ornament should ap- 
pear on a certain kind of structure ("just as a certain kind of leaf 
must appear on a certain kind of tree"), and that the ornamental 
systems of buildings of various sorts should not be interchange- 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 255 

able between these buildings. Buildings should possess as marked 
an individuality as that which exists among men. Ornament is no 
more a closed system of forms than are the structural parts and 
the ever-changing uses to which buildings are put. It should grow 
in endless variety from man's imagination, inspired by Nature. 

"The decoration of a structure is in truth, when done with under- 
standing, the more mobile, delicate and sumptuous expression of 
the creative impulse or identity basically expressed in the struc- 
ture; it is the further utterance, the more sustained and delicate 
rhythmical expression thereof. For the new architecture a new 
decoration must evolve to be the worthy corollary of its harmonies, 
a decoration limitless* in organic fluency and plasticity, and in in- 
herent capacity for the expression of thought, feeling and senti- 
ment. And when this power of plastic modulation, of rhythmical 
fluency, shall characterize your expression, throughout the entire 
being of a structure, you will have arrived at the heights of that 
art of expression I wish you to attain." 1T 

Society. But even though man as an individual achieves the 
experience which is given forth through the crucible of personality 
as creative activity, and every product of creative activity is 
stamped with its own and its author's individuality, yet the sanction 
and the worth of this achievement is not individual but social. 
Higher even than the individual is the social order, and this, to 
Sullivan, meant true Democracy. Like Whitman before him, Sulli- 
van was an ardent believer in the democratic ideal. By Democracy 
he meant, not the extant American government and social system, 
nor even an ideal political system, but a perfect social order in 
which the political system is of relatively minor import because 
man shall have become more perfect in brotherhood, in love, and in 
character. This he believed to be possible of achievement, like 
genius in creative expression, through right education. In fact, the 



256 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

only valid education he termed democratic education. Opposing 
the forces leading toward true Democracy are all anti-social mani- 
festations, which he lumped together under the term Feudalism. 
It is important to realize the comprehensiveness of these two terms 
in Sullivan's thinking. Like his conception of functionalism, they 
embrace far more than is ordinarily included in the definition of 
the words themselves. They are symbols of positive and negative, 
constructive and destructive forces in the social order. All social 
manifestations, such as architecture, education, business, religion, 
are estimated by Sullivan as either Democratic or Feudal. 

The two principles on which a Democratic society rests are 
individual freedom and individual responsibility. 

"We live under a form of government called Democracy. It is 
of the essence of Democracy that the individual man is free in his 
body and free in his soul. It is a corollary therefrom, that he must 
govern or restrain himself, both as to bodily acts and mental acts; 
that in short he must set up a responsible government within his 
own individual person. It is the highest form of emancipation of 
liberty physical, mental and spiritual, by virtue whereof man calls 
the gods to judgment, while he heeds the divinity of his own soul. 
It is the ideal of Democracy that the individual man should stand 
self-centered, self-governing an individual sovereign, an indi- 
vidual god." 18 

"Personal responsibility and personal accountability must, 
absolutely, be cardinal doctrines in every branch of our education, 
if democracy is to survive. Educational methods in general must 
take cognizance of this principle, and hence prepare the youthful 
individual for his coming responsibilities first, by making him 
aware of the nature of those responsibilities, and second, by train- 
ing his character as well as his mind to accept and meet them." 19 

Architecture is to be judged by social principles. "Architecture 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 257 

is not merely an art, more or less well or more or less badly done, 
it is a social manifestation. If we would know why certain things 
are as they are, in our architecture, we must look to the people; for 
our buildings as a whole are an image of our people as a whole, 
although specifically they are the individual images of those to 
whom, as a class, the public ha? delegated and entrusted its power 
to build. Therefore by this light, the critical study of architecture 
becomes, not the study of an art for that is but a minor phase of 
a great phenomenon but, in reality, a study of the social con- 
ditions producing it, the study of a new type of civilization. By 
this light the study of architecture becomes, naturally and logically, 
a branch of social science." 20 Similarly, the study of the history of 
architecture becomes, not a history of "styles," but a history of 
civilization. "To begin with, disabuse your mind of this word 
'styles.' It is a misnomer, or at the least reckoning, it is a term 
devoid of genuine significance. If for the word 'style' we substitute 
the word 'civilization' we make at once a pronounced stride in 
advance toward an intelligent understanding of the values of the 
historical monuments of architecture. Bear also in mind, that while 
the continued and customary use of the word 'styles' tends to con- 
firm a popular notion that there were in the past many architec- 
tures, there is now, as ever there has been and as ever there will be, 
but one architecture, of which the so-called styles were and are 
variants expressive of differences and changes in civilization." 21 
Style is really the crystallization of the thought of certain peoples, 
done more or less consciously, but unerringly. It is valid only for 
the time and people which created it. 

The function of the architect is primarily a social one: "The 
true function of the architect is to initiate such buildings as shall 
correspond to the real needs of the people: ... to vitalize build- 
ing materials, to animate them with a subjective significance and 



258 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

value, to make them a visible part of the social fabric, to infuse 
into them the true life of the people, to impart to them the best 
that is in the people." Yet instead of this, the majority of our archi- 
tects, lost in a morass of artificial learning, false social standards, 
and a fear of reality turn backward to the imitation of past 
"styles." 

"American architecture is composed, in the hundred, of ninety 
parts aberration, eight parts indifference, one part poverty and one 
part Little Lord Fauntleroy. You can have the prescription filled 
at any architectural department-store, or select architectural mil- 
linery establishment." 22 

"Yet there is a certain grim, ghastly humor in it all; for in- 
stance: A banker sitting in a Roman temple; railway tracks 
running into a Roman bath; a Wall Street broker living in a French 
chateau; a rich vulgarian living in a Trianon; a modern person 
living in a Norman castle; a hive of offices built up of miscel- 
laneous crippled fragments of ancient architecture, firmly fastened 
to a modern steel frame; university buildings with battlements and 
towers, but no cross-bow-men. Libraries that might be mistaken for 
banks, hospitals that might be taken for libraries, department 
stores that might be taken for hotels ; a Doric column proposed as 
a memorial to the hardy American Pioneer ; the suggestion to trans- 
form the city of Washington into a modern Rome, and to make of 
the Potomac an American Tiber. The suggestion in general that if 
anything in particular is to be done it shall be done in the most 
unnatural way: in other words, like some other thing, some prior 
thing, that bears no traceable relationship to it. We see : factories 
with Corinthian columns; domes upon "pure Greek' buildings; 
Greek temples set upon the tops of office buildings; fagades of 
Roman temples inserted in the middle of apartment buildings; 
Northern dwellings in the South; Southern dwellings in the North; 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 259 

buildings at variance with climate, or purpose 'architecture* 
lugged to buildings and pasted thereon wherever place may be 
found. And all these things meaningless, the real building always 
obscured, never revealed: all purposeless, all in essential bad 
faith, all masquerade, scene-painting, theatrical, presumptuous 
all discordant, even riotous, inept even where quiet and 'scholarly' 
all inept all an imposition upon honest intelligence." 23 

"I urge that you cast away as worthless the shop-worn and em- 
pirical notion that an architect is an artist and accept my as- 
surance that he is and imperatively shall be an interpreter of the 
national life of his time. If you realize this, you will realize at 
once and forever that you, by birth and through the beneficence of 
the form of government under which you live that you are called 
upon, not to betray, but to express the life of your own day and 
generation. That society will have just cause to hold you to account 
for your use of the liberty it has given to you, and the confidence 
it has reposed in you. You will realize, in due time, as your lives 
develop and expand and you become richer in experience, that a 
fraudulent and surreptitious use of historical documents, however 
suavely presented, however cleverly plagiarized, however neatly 
re-packed, however shrewdly intrigued, will constitute and will be 
held to be a betrayal of trust. It is futile to quibble, or to protest, 
or to plead ignorance or innocence, or to asseverate and urge the 
force of circumstances. Society is, in the main, honest for why 
should it not be? and it will not ask and will not expect you to be 
liars. It will give you every reasonable and legitimate backing, if 
you can prove to it, by your acts, that artistic pretension is not a 
synonym for moral irresponsibility. If you take the pains truly to 
understand your country, your people, your day, your generation ; 
the time, the place in which you live : if you seek to understand, 
absorb and sympathize with the life around you, you will be under- 



260 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

stood and sympathetically received in return. The greatest poet 
will be he who shall grasp and deify the commonplaces of our life: 
those simple, normal feelings which the people of his day will 
be helpless, otherwise, to express: and here you have the key with 
which, individually, you may unlock in time the portal of your 
art." 24 



1 Lewis Mumford: The Brown Decades, p. 143. 

2 In 1933 Mr. George G. Elmslie turned over all the original manuscripts 
and typed copies of Sullivan's writings in his possession to the Burnham 
Library of the Art Institute of Chicago. This constitutes a nearly complete 
collection of his writings, and it is augmented by the original drawings for 
the plates of "A System of Architectural Ornament" and many other in- 
teresting items of Sullivaniana. 

8 Autobiography, p. 221. 

4 Autobiography, p. 257. 

5 A. W. Barker: "Louis H. Sullivan, Thinker and Architect," Architec- 
tural Annual, 2nd edition, p. 49, 1901. 

6 Foreword to The Autobiography of an Idea. 

7 "Natural Thinking: A Study in Democracy." 1905. 

8 Kindergarten Chats. 1901-02. 

9 "Natural Thinking: A Study in Democracy." 1905. 

10 Kindergarten Chats. 1901-02. 

11 Kindergarten Chats. 1901-02. 

12 "Emotional Architecture as Compared with Classical." 1894. 

13 Kindergarten Chats. 1901-02. 

14 Kindergarten Chats. 1901-02. 
16 Kindergarten Chats. 1901-02. 

16 "What is the Just Subordination, in Architectural Design, of Details 
to Mass?" 1887. 

17 Kindergarten Chats. 1901-02. 

18 "The Young Man in Architecture." 1900. 

19 Kindergarten Chats. 1901-02. 

20 Kindergarten Chats. 1901-02. 



ARCHITECTURAL THEORY 261 

21 Kindergarten Chats. 1901-02. 

22 "The Young Man in Architecture." 1900. 

23 "Natural Thinking: A Study in Democracy." 1905. 

24 Address to the Chicago Architectural Club, May 30, 1899. 



VIII. A CRITICAL ESTIMATE 



THE general conception of the importance and significance of an 
architect depends largely, after all, on what has been written about 
him by eminent scholars and critics. Granting that a serious lack 
of detailed information has impeded the formation of a just ap- 
praisal, the fact remains that Sullivan's life and work have re- 
ceived scant recognition at the hands of our scholars and histo- 
rians. As remarked in the Foreword, some of his work was 
enthusiastically hailed by the more discerning critics of the nine- 
ties, but in general he was then and has since been regarded as 
something of a freak a genius perhaps, doubtless a well-meaning 
enthusiast with some talent, but out of touch with stern practical 
realities and inevitably destined to a life of failure. His career has 
been regarded as an interesting by-path, off the main highway of 
our architectural development. 

Most of these views need not concern us since they were patently 
so short-sighted. A more interesting interpretation, however, ap- 
peared in an article written in 1925 by a great historian of Ameri- 
can architecture, Mr. Fiske Kimball. 1 In my opinion this interpre- 
tation was wrong, but it was important as one of the first serious 
attempts to place Sullivan in relation to his times, and because it 
suggests a method of approach to an estimate of Sullivan's signifi- 
cance. Quoting from the article: "The coherence of the realistic 
treatment of the subject matter of modern life by Sullivan and his 
fellows was with the work of the realistic schools of the nineteenth 

262 



A CRITICAL ESTIMATE 263 

century in painting and sculpture, in literature and music. Under 
the domination of science, the painting of Monet and the impres- 
sionists, the sculpture of Carpeaux and Rodin, the music-drama 
of Wagner, the novels and plays of Flaubert, Zola, Tolstoi, and 
Ibsen, all sought .characteristic beauty through truth to nature, 
rather than abstract beauty through relations of form. Against this 
domination of art by science, there had been a reaction even before 
1890. Cezanne let anatomy and photographic foreshortening in 
painting give way to formal organization; sculpture became 
'archaic 9 and geometrical; there was a renaissance of verse, of 
'absolute' music. The counterpart in architecture has been a re- 
newed interest in unity and simplicity of form, as against a func- 
tional or dynamic emphasis. As in previous great periods of 
abstract composition of mass and space, the fifteenth and eight- 
eenth centuries, there has been a reversion to the classic elements, 
regarded as a universal language of elementary geometric simplic- 
ity. Beginning in New York in the eighties with Joseph Morrill 
Wells, Stanford White, and McKim, triumphing at the Chicago 
Fair, the movement, American in its genesis, is now pressing on to 
foreign conquests. . . . Instead of the forerunner of the new 
century, Sullivan, we now see, was the last great leader of the old. 
He was the Monet; Wells the Cezanne. Like Monet, living on into 
another age, he was within his lifetime already an old master." 

There are three points in this argument which demand discus- 
sion: first, that Sullivan's theory of architecture is essentially 
scientific in nature and that he belongs with the nineteenth-century 
school of realistic artists; second, that the dominant tendency of 
twentieth-century art has been a search for abstract beauty through 
geometric relationships of 'pure form' ; and third, that the Classic 
and Renaissance revivals of McKim, Mead & White and the archi- 
tecture of the World's Columbian Exposition may be taken as the 



264 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

most characteristic evidence in the field of architecture of this 
essential twentieth-century tendency. 

The character of nineteenth-century art cannot be discussed at 
length here, but it is safe to say that it was by no means exclusively 
dominated by science. The nineteenth century, conscious of the 
limitations of the "age of reason/' sought reality in new directions. 
Science and romanticism, although apparent opposites, were 
merely two phases of this search, like the two faces of a single 
coin. Science was a search for reality in the world of "facts," 
eliminating from consideration the humanistic values which earlier 
centuries had cherished to such an extent. In asserting that every 
fact and every relationship of facts perceivable by the human 
senses, augmented by the telescope, microscope, and sundry other 
implements, are fundamental truths, it sets up a series of absolutes 
which are now being disproved by scientists themselves, and which, 
even if they were not, are as quixotic as the sheerly logical abso- 
lutes of the seventeenth century, for they could make no effective 
working contact with that which lies beyond science. Thus the con- 
flict between science and religion. 

Romanticism, on the other hand, was an attempt to apprehend 
reality by means of emotional experience rather than by rational 
calculation. Its strength lay in the recognition of the validity of 
emotional experience as an avenue to reality; its weakness lay in 
its tendency to deny the validity of rational or scientific knowledge, 
and in its intense and narrow pursuit, to bog down in the emotional 
experience without achieving the reality. There was in it an intent 
to be intense, which of course failed of success, and romantic art 
tended, not to express a new sense of reality, but to "just plumb 
express." Emotional inspiration is not spun out of the individual 
consciousness by sheer will-power, it must come as the natural 
coloring of the normal experiences of life. 



A CRITICAL ESTIMATE 265 

The romantic was usually too intense; the scientist too literal. 
The result was a general lack of a common outlook on life, a point 
of view, which might have served as the source of a genuine style 
in art. This accounts for the disparateness, not to say chaos, of 
nineteenth-century artistic manifestations. There were the "Real- 
ist*" and the "Romantic" schools in sculpture and painting, and 
there were individual artists who were a little of both. In archi- 
tecture, there was the succession of "styles" on the one hand 
Classic, Gothic, French Empire, Renaissance, Byzantine, Roman- 
esque, or what have you; and the development of iron construction, 
fireproofing, high buildings, plumbing, and technical progress in 
general on the other. 

In architectural criticism, the same dichotomy of values was 
evident. The romantic criticism tended to evaluate architecture for 
its "emotional" qualities. In principle this might have been very 
fruitful; in practice it usually failed as romanticism itself failed, 
and for the same reasons. Instead of seeking the real emotional 
qualities inherent in buildings themselves, it paraded a melange 
of ethical, literary, naturalistic and sentimental values associated 
with buildings either by accident or fancy. Ruskin, dean of the 
romantic critics, was chief offender in this respect. The criticism 
arising out of the realistic, or scientific, point of view is more inter- 
esting since it bears a closer superficial relationship to Sullivan's 
theory of functionalism. Viollet-le-Duc, greatest of the real- 
istic critics, appealed constantly to "truth" in architecture. He saw 
that the stupid imitation of various past styles represented a com- 
plete failure to understand the lessons of the history of architec- 
ture, and he ridiculed the rules of the academies. In their place he 
sought to establish the rule of structure: that "all architecture pro- 
ceeds from structure, and the first condition at which it should aim 
is to make the outward form accord with that structure." ' 2 More- 



266 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

over, he constantly stressed the importance of satisfying new needs 
by new types of buildings, and of employing all the new materials 
and devices which science and the machine placed at the disposal 
of architecture. But Viollet-le-Duc's conception of architecture was 
too much thought, too little felt. His own practice, though sound 
and sensible and scientific to* a degree, lacked the urge of a vital 
inspiration. His experiments in structure, conditioned doubtless by 
his enthusiasm for the Middle Ages and by the limited size of 
available members in structural iron, were in reality adaptations 
of the forms of late medieval vaulting to execution in iron. His 
decorative forms, although he strove for originality, have the 
family appearance of nineteenth-century Gothic. 

The realistic criticism in general followed the biologic theory 
of the adaptation of form to function and environment, emphasiz- 
ing conditions of use and structure as a means of achieving archi- 
tectural beauty. It was closely allied to the mechanism and utili- 
tarianism of contemporary philosophy. But it fell short in two 
essential respects. First, it was largely a matter of words rather 
than accomplishment; although the engineers showed the way in 
practice, few who professed themselves to be architects were will- 
ing to follow it to an entirely realistic conclusion. And second, even 
if they had, the result would not have been architecture, for the 
realistic attitude was too narrow. Architectural design is not a 
mechanical registration of the mere facts of structure and function, 
however honest this method may be. Although Sullivan advocated 
an honest acceptance and recognition of the facts of function and 
structure as the right start toward creative architectural expression, 
he then added, "We must now heed the imperative voice of emo- 
tion." It should be quite evident, both from his buildings and his 
writings, that Sullivan's conception of architecture is more than 
scientific, and that in searching something more than literal truth 



A CRITICAL ESTIMATE 267 

to nature he goes far beyond the nineteenth-century "realistic" 
artists. 

Are we to assume that the dominant tendency of twentieth- 
century art has been a search for abstract beauty through geometric 
relationships of "pure form"? In my opinion such an interpretation 
is quite erroneous. In searching for a more universal interpretation 
of nature than his predecessors the Impressionists had given, 
through simplifying natural forms to their fundamentals of mass 
and color, Cezanne was working from actual visual experience 
toward an organic order, not from purely rational concepts of form 
toward a geometric order. This was the same kind of abstraction 
that Sullivan employed in reducing a building program to its 
simplest and most universal terms as an approach to creative ex- 
pression. And this, it seems, was the really significant abstractionist 
tendency of the twentieth century, despite the fact that Cezanne was 
followed by the Cubists, and Sullivan by the "Classicists." 

And as to the Classic and Renaissance revivals of McKim, Mead 
& White and the architecture of the World's Columbian Exposition 
representing this characteristic twentieth-century interest, it should 
be unnecessary to point out that such architecture was neither 
organic nor geometric nor abstract; it was specific and representa- 
tional, and represented the worst phase of nineteenth-century 
academicism rather than the best expression of the twentieth cen- 
tury. It would be more proper to say that McKim, Mead & White 
were the Lord Leightons, the Alma-Tademas, the Bouguereaus ; 
Sullivan the Cezanne. 

Such an estimate, made in 1925, was undoubtedly influenced 
by the still-persisting dominance of the historic styles and the 
academic attitude toward architecture. There was little evidence, 
in this country at least, to show that Sullivan had been anything 
more than a voice crying in the wilderness. But the rapid advance 



268 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

of modernism in architecture during the past ten years makes it 

far easier now to see Sullivan in his true role of prophet, and there 

is every indication that he will achieve growing recognition as 

modern architecture continues to develop and as its significance is 

realized. 

How may we view his achievement today, both as to theory and 
practice? As far as the influence which they exerted goes, it seems 
fairly certain that Sullivan's thinking was of far greater import 
than his buildings. It is difficult to dissociate the two, since the 
buildings were always, in a measure, practical demonstrations of 
his theories. But his system of thinking when expressed in stone and 
mortar was conditioned by a great many factors which tended to 
obscure its real significance. In the first place, thinking deals in 
generalizations, whereas building deals, literally and figuratively, 
in specifications. No matter how much Sullivan sought to reduce 
a building program to its simplest and most universal terms and 
to achieve a "true normal type/' he was always confronted by the 
myriad facts of costs, materials, site, patronage, etc. factors 
which tended to make the specific solution in each case obscure the 
general principle of design. To be sure, he welcomed these practi- 
cal conditions and sought through them the architectural expres- 
sion which he desired, but the results were not always transparently 
clear to those who saw his buildings. The Wainwright Building was 
the nearest approach to a "true normal type" and undoubtedly the 
most influential building which he designed. Yet as has been 
pointed out before its influence on other architects was a matter of 
superficial rather than fundamentals, results rather than methods, 
copying rather than thinking. Thus what Sullivan did in the Wain- 
wright Building which was merely to show the way resulted in 
little or no further progress, but rather a crystallization into a 
formula of design. 



A CRITICAL ESTIMATE 269 

Moreover, there is little doubt that the bare logic of Sullivan's 
architectural thinking would have been more clearly apparent to 
his contemporaries if his buildings had not been adorned by such 
lyrical enrichments in the way of ornament. These were fascinating 
and baffling, oftentimes totally inexplicable, and they attracted 
such attention that Sullivan was considered more as an orna- 
mentalist than as an architect. That ornament was essential to 
Sullivan's architecture is undeniable, but it was nevertheless con- 
fusing. And like his general system of design, it was copied quite 
widely by lesser architects who could employ it imitatively but not 
creatively. 

His genuine influence on the practice of architecture in this 
country, however, was far more extensive than is generally sup- 
posed. Acting first through his disciples of the "Chicago School," 
it later spread so widely as almost to establish a new vernacular 
style in the cities and small towns of the Middle West. Travelling 
through the suburbs of Chicago and in towns and cities from 
Buffalo to western Iowa, one frequently sees a "Sullivanesque" or 
else a "prairie style" building, done perhaps by a local architect 
of no distinction but bearing unmistakable evidence of influence 
from the source. 

As a great architect, Sullivan had followers. There were not 
many; he was too uncompromising in his strictures of timidity or 
stupidity to be a popular idol and too urgent in his architectural 
proselytizing to be a comfortable companion to the mildly pro- 
gressive. But there were a few hardy spirits who admired him im- 
mensely as a prophet and as a man, and these came to be known 
as the "Chicago School." Sullivan wanted no one to be an imitator, 
not even of himself, and his success as a teacher may be indicated 
by the way in which his followers for the most part acquired his 
manner of thinking rather than his specific stylisms. Some of them, 



270 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

armed with this start, progressed into individual styles only re- 
motely resembling Sullivan's. From the middle nineties up to the 
time of the War, and even after, there was a small but vital current 
of fine work produced by these men, forceful and individual in 
character and always fundamentally sound. Perhaps the best of 
them were Frank Lloyd Wright, George Elmslie, George B. Maher, 
and Walter Burley Griffin. Others who received Sullivan's impress 
to a greater or less degree were: William Gray Purcell, who 
worked in partnership with Elmslie several years; Hugh Garden; 
Dwight Perkins; Robert C. Spencer; George Dean; Richard E. 
Schmidt, for many years in partnership with Hugh Garden; Wil- 
liam Drummond; and Claude Bragdon. Until the work of the 
Chicago School is better known than it is at present, however, it 
will be impossible to estimate correctly the real force and char- 
acter of Sullivan's direct practical influence in this country. 

The influence of Sullivan's thinking was more belated, but more 
powerful. It did not at once reverse the current of academic theory 
inherited from previous generations, but it added to it new streams 
of vitality and freshness, and ultimately turned its direction into 
a new channel. The process has taken more than a generation, and 
is perhaps not yet complete, yet it is sufficiently advanced so that 
the significance of Sullivan's thinking can be far more readily 
understood today than it was ten years ago. 

The major destructive attack in Sullivan's writings was on 
eclecticism in architecture, and the major constructive effort, we 
have seen, was the idea of a functional and organic architecture. 
How valid was his attack on eclecticism? Many of us have not made 
up our minds on this issue, and unless we do or until we do it 
will be quite impossible either to judge Sullivan or to understand 
modern architecture. The historic styles are still imitated in the 
architecture of today indeed probably the greater part of current 



A CRITICAL ESTIMATE 271 

building is eclectic in nature but our placid acceptance of this 
attitude toward architecture is beginning to be shaken by doubts. 
What are we to believe? 

The word "eclecticism" comes from the Greek eklegein, mean- 
ing to select, to choose. It commonly implies the selection of certain 
elements from differing sources as a means of achieving a balanced 
and inclusive point of view. For instance, in philosophy, it is "the 
practice of choosing doctrines from various or diverse systems of 
thought in the formation of a body of acceptable doctrine" 
(Webster). In architecture, it commonly means the use of historic 
styles in modern architecture. Properly, the term should be em- 
ployed with respect to a single building composed of elements from 
various historic styles, but in practice it is applied to the mass of 
modern buildings as a whole, representing a variety of historic 
styles. These two usages have been defined by Mr. Henry-Russell 
Hitchcock as "eclecticism of style" and "eclecticism of taste," 
respectively. 

We may examine the former first. It might be represented by a 
church whose architect sought a new kind of eclectic architectural 
beauty that would satisfy admirers of the Classic, the Byzantine, 
the Gothic, and the Renaissance styles by combining Byzantine 
domes on pendentives over the nave and choir, a Renaissance dome 
raised on a drum over the crossing, a classic temple facade deco- 
rated along the raking cornice with Gothic pinnacles and crockets 
and possibly a caryatid porch using the Beau Dieu of Amiens 
and Notre Dame de Paris as supports. It is easy to smile at such 
a fancy, and we are sure that it wouldn't be beautiful, but why? 

The answer may be given, perhaps, in terms that would satisfy 
both the formalist and the functionalist, as follows : a work of art 
is a unity which is more than the sum of its parts, a unity dependent 
on the inter-relationship of its parts in a coherent artistic (organic) 



272 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

order. The whole is more than the sum of its parts because it has 
abstract (functional) significance. Interchange two or three parts, 
or take them away, and the unity is lost. Take one part away from 
the whole and it is not partially beautiful in proportion of its size 
to the size of the whole it is not beautiful at all. It has ceased to 
have the aesthetic significance with which its relationship to the 
whole had endowed it. Thus a Doric column used by itself, as a 
memorial, for instance, is an aesthetic absurdity. Going one step 
further, the attempt to recombine elements of diverse architectural 
styles that have ceased to exist as stylistically or architecturally 
significant to recombine these into a new style that will represent 
the diverse beauties of the original styles is obviously childish. It 
is like attempting to create a new literature out of a dozen different 
languages the words of which have ceased overnight to have any 
meaning. It is bound to result in something that has neither the 
merits of the individual beauties of the past on the one hand, nor 
of a genuine new beauty on the other; it will be neither flesh, fowl, 
nor good red herring. Eclecticism of style may be dismissed as of 
no significance and this would be generally agreed upon today, 
for our eclecticism is predominately an eclecticism of taste, in 
which "pure" rather than hybrid styles are employed. 

This more general form of eclecticism may be defined as "dif- 
ferent styles used contemporaneously, but each building all in one 
style." Used in this sense, the degree of style-imitation varies con- 
siderably in modern buildings. There may be an almost exact 
imitation of a specific historic building, such as the Nashville 
Parthenon; there may be an imitation of only part of a specific 
historic building, such as the caryatid porch on the old Buffalo art 
museum; there may be an imitation of a general style but of no 
specific building, such as the Washington cathedral; or there may 
be an imitation of historic detail on a building which could not 



A CRITICAL ESTIMATE 273 

possibly be taken entirely as of a past style, such as the Chicago 
Tribune Tower. All of these differ in degree, not in essence; they 
all represent an attempt to borrow forms of beauty from the past. 

Another aspect of modern eclecticism is that the historic styles 
are always modified in an attempt to accommodate them to modern 
functional needs and to take advantage of the latest modern im- 
provements in construction. In other words, the designers are 
changing the architecture without changing its expression. It must 
be granted at once that there is no single modern building that does 
not involve some kind of change in function and technique from 
its stylistic original. The Nashville Parthenon is not a temple to 
Athena; it is made of composition stone instead of Pentelic marble; 
machines were used in its construction instead of hand labor; in 
short, there are an infinite number of differences between it and the 
Parthenon at Athens. But one would not deny that it is Greek in 
style in spite of these differences. The dormitories at Yale have 
steel frames, concrete floors, squash-courts and electric lights, and 
in that sense they are not medieval buildings; but the aesthetic 
intention is that they should look medieval. 

Thus limited, we conceive eclecticism to mean the imitation of 
historic styles, in varying degrees of strictness and completeness, 
for the achievement of architectural beauty; and the concurrent 
employment of modern engineering for the achievement of modern 
functional demands. Used in this sense, how valid is eclecticism as 
a mode of architectural design? 

There are several arguments commonly proposed by the advo- 
cate of eclecticism. Let us take his side for a moment. In the first 
place, he would argue, insofar as architecture is an art (and we 
assume it is), beauty is a necessary part of it. Beauty has no nec- 
essary relationship to matters of function and structure in build- 
ing; these are merely the practical conditions, and the practical 



274 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

and the aesthetic may be clearly separated and distinguished. For 
instance, the Doric column in a Greek temple is a beautiful sup- 
port, but from the structural standpoint it is inefficient because it 
is unnecessarily heavy and because the vertical flutes which give it 
such an appearance of grace and strength are structural liabilities 
rather than structural assets. Beauty evidently has no relationship 
to structural fact here. The flying-buttress on a Gothic cathedral is 
eminently a structural feature, yet that it could serve the ends of 
beauty quite apart from structural necessity is attested by the 
fact that in many cathedrals the topmost row of flying buttresses 
counters no vault thrusts whatever, and indeed is anti-structural, 
for the buttresses would push the tops of the walls inward unless a 
concealed structural device under the roof were employed to pre- 
vent this. Instances from the architecture of the Renaissance could 
be multiplied a thousand-fold, and all would tend to show that 
architectural beauty has no necessary relationship to function and 
structure. 

What is beauty, then, and how is it achieved? Beauty, the eclec- 
ticist would answer, is something that pleases the eye, and it is 
not something which is invented overnight but is inherited from 
the past. The enduring kind of beauty, like morality, is a social 
product that has taken thousands of years in development. It repre- 
sents the accumulated experience of the race. We have the priceless 
lessons of the past on which to build: restraint, simplicity, unity, 
balance, careful refinement of proportion and detail. These lessons 
are embodied in the great architecture of the past. To abandon 
them would be to abandon our cultural heritage and to risk almost 
certain chaos. It is folly to talk of "modern civilization" as though 
it began a generation, or even a century, ago; our roots are in the 
past, we owe a great debt to Greece, to Rome, as also to the Middle 
Ages and the Renaissance. And to employ the architectural styles 



A CRITICAL ESTIMATE 275 

of these epochs is no more than a just and appropriate recognition 
of that debt. Culture is a continuous stream, and cultural expres- 
sions, like architectural styles, are valid for us today because they 
represent our roots in the past. 

These arguments in favor of eclecticism are plausible; taken 
together they may be quite convincing. But they are nevertheless 
hopelessly wrong. Let us attempt to answer them one by one, if 
need be sentence by sentence. 

In the first place, in asserting that beauty is an essential element 
of architecture, we too often run into the error that it is the primary 
element, necessarily implying that requirements of function and 
structure be subordinated to it wherever there may be conflict. 
Architecture is a utilitarian art, not a fine art, and utility is far 
more important than beauty. It might well be worth inquiring of 
every building, first: "Was it worth building?" and only second- 
arily "Was it beautifully done?" But the question of the priority of 
beauty or utility is in any case an academic one. For in all the great 
architecture of the past the practical and the aesthetic have not 
been separated. Function, structure, and beauty have been wholly 
integrated. Beauty has been derived out of function and structure, 
not in spite of them. The separation of the practical and the aesthe- 
tic into two separate categories is false and artificial and at the 
root of most of our architectural follies. We may use the example 
of the Doric column, which embodies perfectly the relationship 
between structure and beauty: its weight and its vertical flutes are 
no mere aesthetic accident, they are essential because they symbol- 
ize or express the structural purpose and nature of the column as a 
support. The column must not only be strong; it must look strong. 
It is not a matter of "pleasing lines" or "nice proportions"; the 
reason why we find the column pleasing is not because of any 
inexplicable magic of proportion, but because it is an apt structural 



276 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

expression. A similar explanation might be given of the top-of-wall 
buttresses in a Gothic cathedral. Although mechanically unneces- 
sary, they carry to completion the expression of the general struc- 
tural system of the cathedral. They demonstrate perfectly the close 
relationship between structure and beauty. 

What about the second argument? Is architectural beauty some- 
thing of permanent value, representing the accumulated experience 
of the race? Assuredly it is, but what conclusions are we to draw 
from this fact? Quoting an argument in defense of eclecticism: "If, 
then, it is true that we are co-heirs with our brothers who have not 
yet emigrated of the glory and the grandeur that were Greece and 
Rome; if the same blood that joined thrust to thrust in the dizzy 
groins of Amiens, that hung the vault of St. Peter's so little below the 
firmament, that flecked the streets of London with the white fingers 
of Wren's churches if the same blood flows in our veins, why 
should we give up this royal heritage? It is ours as much as it is 
theirs across the seas." Does this then mean that we should imitate 
that heritage? Indeed we have the Parthenon and Amiens Cathedral, 
just as we have Dante and Chaucer; it would be folly to destroy 
them, but why build a modern Parthenon any more than write a 
modern novel in medieval Italian or Chaucerian English? Was the 
beauty of the Parthenon or of Amiens achieved by imitating some- 
thing that had been done centuries before in another country and 
for another civilization? Architectural beauty may be permanent, 
but it is not permanently the same. The succession of the historic 
styles, representing an ever-changing beauty, is ample demonstra- 
tion. How can we argue that because our whole culture and civiliza- 
tion has its roots in the past we are therefore to perpetuate the 
ancient forms of cultural expressions? True enough, culture is a 
continuous stream, but this very analogy suggests that it is not fixed, 
but changes. As a matter of fact, only limited portions of past cul- 



A CRITICAL ESTIMATE 277 

ture are valid for us today. We owe much to Hebraic culture, but 
those aspects of it which are the expression of a primitive pastoral 
society are no longer valid for us today: who believes in eye-for-an- 
eye justice? We owe much to Greek culture, but Platonic philosophy 
is contrary to our whole notion of reality. We owe much to the Mid- 
dle Ages, but its scholastic theology is of little concern to us. In 
short, only such inheritances from the past as are valid for us today 
form a part of our culture, and is this not properly modern culture, 
rather than ancient cultures? And if, in actual practice, the eclectic 
architect is to defend his use of the historic styles as a recognition 
of our debt to the past, how is he to explain the fairly frequent use of 
Islamic, Oriental, Maya-Aztec, and even Neolithic styles today, 
when the debt of modern culture to these sources is almost nil? Also, 
in what way does a skyscraper, a railroad station, a cinema theatre 
represent a debt to the past and therefore why should we make 
them Gothic, or Classic, or Louis XIV? 

We have studied much the "priceless lessons of the past," but the 
one all-embracing and vital lesson that we have failed to learn is 
that architecture in all the great periods of the past has been a 
creative art, not an imitative art. In previous periods, architects and 
master-builders have always built, simply, modern architecture. 
They did not consciously elect to build in the "Gothic style" in 
thirteenth-century France; they built in the best manner of their 
day. Genuine beauty, and genuine style, are the result of a creative 
approach to architecture: the determination of building needs, the 
Holution of technical problems, and the evolution of an architectural 
form appropriate to and expressive of those needs and those tech- 
nical solutions. And since the needs and problems of one age are 
different from those of another age, the architectural form will 
change correspondingly. Of course this change will progress slowly, 
just as language and civilization develop slowly, and it is more inv 



278 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

portant to respect the tradition of the past than to attempt to invent a 
new beauty without reference to that tradition. "Strive not," said 
Sullivan, "after what is called originality. If you do you will be 
starting in exactly the wrong way. I wish distinctly to impress upon 
you that what I am advocating and what I am striving to point out 
to you is a normal development. . . ." 3 

But "respect for tradition" does not imply a slavish subservience 
to the past. "I do not see and cannot comprehend how anyone who 
truly reveres the great works of the past can for a moment dream of 
imitating them. . . . Nor does it avail in the least to say that such 
imitation professes the reproduction, in our day, of forms of ancient 
origin which the world has long held noble. That is merely a super- 
ficial begging of the question; an out and out sophistication. For in 
the first place, you can revivify nothing that is dead ; and the men 
who made these works have long gone to their fathers. Those men 
alone could have made other works in the same spirit. In the second 
place, if your mind is lofty enough to come into a genuine com- 
panionship and communion with theirs, you will wish, through such 
communion, to do what they did, namely > to produce; to inter pet 
the life of your own people. 99 * 

The most deplorable result of the eclectic approach is that it kills 
or stultifies creative thinking and imagination. Is "creative genius" 
so rare? It is my conviction that a genuine attitude toward architec- 
ture, calling for a creative approach to every new problem, will in 
itself generate creative power, or reveal it where it exists. The 
imagination does not act where there is no stimulus and no necessity 
for it to act. But where it is clearly demanded its quiescent potentiali- 
ties may become apparent. Herein lies the possibility of a future 
architecture that will be creative, not imitative; genuine, not spu- 
rious. It may seem that we have devoted overmuch attention to slay- 
ing the dragon of eclecticism. But that it is no imaginary dragon, 



A CRITICAL ESTIMATE 279 

let him read who runs through the streets. It should be clearly evident 
that Sullivan's thinking in this connection is almost as much needed 
today as it was a generation ago. 

Is Sullivan's constructive theory of an organic and functional 
architecture still valid today? We have only to look at the "new 
architecture" as it has developed in Europe and America during the 
past few years. Clean-cut, angular, of an elementary simplicity, 
swift in line, it seems to answer the description of a new kind of 
architecture. The form-relationships bear no resemblance to the 
mode of "abstract composition" of the past; there is neither mass, 
specious monumentality, rigid symmetry, nor formal division of 
wall-surfaces, there is no classic decorative detail, nor Gothic; in 
fact, there is almost no decorative detail whatsoever. In short, the 
organization of these new forms seems to rely on some entirely dif- 
ferent principle than that of following rules of composition and 
grammars of detail. What that principle is we have to find out only 
by consulting the buildings themselves or the architects who de- 
signed them. And the testimony is well-nigh universal. LeCorbusier, 
Gropius, Lurcat, Mies van der Rohe, Oud, and many others have 
stated and reiterated their faith, and it is always the word "func- 
tionalism." Some have only partially understood it, and have re- 
garded fanctionalism as a matter of pure mechanical and utilitarian 
revelation in architectural design, and the results in buildings have 
been hard and bare and mean; but in the hands of creative artists 
it has been a weapon of tremendous force. 

Once it is understood that the conception of functionalism, as set 
forth by Sullivan and as it has since grown, calls for emotional and 
spiritual realities as well as physical realities, much confused think- 
ing will be avoided* But they must be realities, not fantasies. It may 
be questioned by the skeptical: Of what use is such a theory of func- 
tionalism? If it is so broad as to include all kinds of vague mystical 



280 LOUIS SULLIVAN 

values and so loose as to permit all kinds of exceptions to mechanical 

truth of what use is it in design? 

The answer is definite. Functionalism as a theory of architecture 
is of absolutely no use to an architect who seeks a convenient rule- 
of-thumb, or set of proportions, or vocabulary of detail, or other 
prescription for our architectural ailments. It cannot make up for 
the lack of creative imagination, the lack of the ability to conceive 
strictly and to execute rightly. Functionalism is in reality only a 
system of thinking. It cannot by itself make a great architecture, but 
it can make a great architecture possible. That style has changed, 
and will continue to change, there can be no doubt. Even since Sulli- 
van's day we have new needs, new materials, and new techniques, 
and all are finding expression. But Sullivan did not lay down a style 
to follow, he proposed a system of thinking, a system which is finally 
bearing fruit in a genuine modern architecture. 

Sullivan may have been a great prophet of modernism, but he 
was equally a great traditionalist, for what he urged was the renewal 
of architecture as a creative art, based on those fundamentals which 
have always existed in the great architecture of the past. His work 
and his thinking have made architecture once more plastic in the 
hands of the creative artist, and rendered possible the development 
of a true architectural style in the present day. 



1 Fiske Kimball: "Louis Sullivan, an Old Master," Architectural Record, 
vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 289-304, April, 1925. 

2 VioIlet-le-Duc : Lectures on Architecture., James Osgood & Co., Boston, 
1881. Vol. II, p. 3, 

3 "The Young Man in Architecture." 1900. 

4 Kindergarten Chats. 1901-02. 



APPENDIX 



DANKMAR ABLER 

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH 



DANKMAR ABLER was born at Stadt Lengsfeld, a small village about 
twenty miles southwest of Eisenach, Germany, on July 3, 1844. His 
father, Liebman Adler, was a teacher in the public school and cantor 
in the local synagogue. His mother died at his birth. It was this 
circumstance which caused his father to christen him Dankmar, a 
compound of the German dank (thanks) and the Hebrew mar (bit- 
ter) . Liebman Adler came to America in 1854 and settled in Detroit, 
where he became the rabbi and cantor of the Jewish Congregation 
Bethel. Dankmar went to the public grammar schools in Detroit, 
and later to the Detroit and Ann Arbor high schools. Failing to pass 
the entrance examinations for the University of Michigan, he es- 
sayed a short apprenticeship in an exchange and shipping business 
which turned out to be unsatisfactory. 

When about fifteen years old the boy had taken a course of in- 
struction in free-hand drawing given by Mr. Jules Melchers, father 
of Gari Melchers. Dankmar 9 s aptitude in the work and his special 
interest in architectural drawing led his father to place him under 
the tutelage of John Schaefer, a Detroit architect. Mr. Schaefer gave 
the youth a conventional training in the five orders, and taught him 
to draw a great deal of the alleged Byzantine and Romanesque orna- 
ment which was so popular in that day. His theoretical instruction 
in the origin and history of architectural styles, however, seems to 
have been rather eccentric* Among Mr, Schaefer's teachings was 

283 



284 APPENDIX 

one to the effect that in erecting buildings devoted to the worship 
of God, our ancestors designed them in a style intended to illustrate 
by an upward tendency of lines their aspiration toward God, and 
that for this reason the style was called "Goddik," which has since 
been corrupted by the ignorant to "Gothic." 

Dankmar Adler stayed but a short time with Mr. Schaefer, then 
in 1859 entered the office of E. Willard Smith in Detroit. In a brief 
autobiography written toward the end of his life Adler speaks of 
Mr. Smith as "an honor to his profession." "By him and by his 
able assistant, Mr. John M. Bancroft, now of Brooklyn and then 
just graduated from Dartmouth, I was introduced to a systematic 
study of architectural history and of the philosophy of architec- 
tural design, as also to neatness and finish of rendering of drawings 
and water colors. Under their guidance I worked indefatigably, 
often twelve and sixteen hours per day, and laid the foundation of 
whatever actual knowledge of my profession I may have acquired." 

In May, 1861, Liebman Adler moved to Chicago to become the 
rabbi of the Congregation Anshe Ma'ariv. There he served with 
great distinction for over thirty years, and had the satisfaction of 
seeing the construction of a new synagogue designed by his son and 
Louis Sullivan just before his death in 1892. In the summer of 1861 
Dankmar sought employment in a Chicago architect's office, but 
found such a dearth of business that at first no one was willing to 
take him on either as draftsman or student. After a few months, 
however, he obtained a position as draftsman in the office of Augus- 
tus Bauer. His stay in this office was cut short by the Civil War, 

In July of 1862 Adler enlisted in Company M of the First Regi- 
ment of Illinois Light Artillery. He saw service in the campaigns of 
1862, 1863, and 1864 in Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia, and 
participated in some of the hardest fought battles of the war* Al- 
though wounded, he escaped serious injury and illness* Being an 



DANKMAR ABLER 285 

artillery man, he found opportunity to secrete several scientific and 
historical books in ammunition caissons, and to study them at 
intervals over several months. During the last nine months of his 
service he was detailed as draftsman in the Topographical En- 
gineer's Office of the Military Division of Tennessee, where he had 
valuable engineering experience. Thus when he was discharged in 
August, 1865, he had made good use of his military experience in 
training himself for his future career. 

After the war Adler returned to the office of Augustus Bauer in 
Chicago for a short time. He then entered the office of 0. S. Kinney, 
first as a draftsman, then later as foreman. Kinney had quite a large 
practice in churches, schoolhouses and courthouses in various 
parts of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. Adler rose rapidly in the office, 
and on Mr. Kinney's death in 1869, he and A. J. Kinney, a son, 
assumed joint responsibility in finishing up the uncompleted com- 
missions in the office. 

In January, 1871, Adler left the younger Kinney to accept a 
partnership with Edward Burling. Adler worked with Burling for 
nine years, under the several firm names of E. Burling & Company, 
Burling & Adler, and Burling, Adler & Co. Eight months after the 
partnership was formed Chicago was devastated by the great fire 
of October, 1871. This meant a great rush of work in all architects' 
offices, and Burling & Adler played an important part in the recon- 
struction of the city. The Chicago Tribune of October 9, 1872, re- 
corded that during the year following the fire Burling & Adler had 
designed a hundred buildings aggregating 8,875 feet of street 
frontage and costing $4,022,000. 

In 1872 Adler married Dila Kohn, daughter of Abraham Kohn, 
a pioneer settler in Chicago and founder of the Anshe Ma'ariv 
Congregation. 

The practice of Burling & Adler during the nine years from 



286 APPENDIX 

1871 to 1879 was extensive. The office records of the firm have been 
lost, but the names of at least thirty-five buildings designed by the 
firm have been preserved. Among these were the old Chicago 
Tribune Building, at Dearborn and Madison Streets; Delmonico's, 
at Madison and Clark; Kingsbury Hall on Clark Street; the Garrett 
Biblical Institute on Lake Street; and the Methodist Church Block 
on Clark Street. Adler, as chief designer, was in charge of the 
drafting-room, but he was also responsible for a large part of the 
supervision of construction so that the designs of only nine or ten 
buildings were done by his own hand. One of these was the Sinai 
Temple at Indiana Avenue and 21st Street, Chicago, built in 
1875-76; this building was completely remodelled in 1892 by the 
firm of Adler & Sullivan. During the course of years Burling 
progressively loaded more responsibilities on Adler, a policy which 
at first incurred his resentment, but which soon gave him an ex- 
perience and resourcefulness in handling the business which might 
otherwise have taken many years to acquire. Adler gained the con- 
fidence of the firm's clients., and by the end of the decade felt 
himself in a position to cut loose from the partnership with 
Burling. 

In 1879 Adler established an independent practice, and very 
shortly after this Louis Sullivan first entered the office as a drafts- 
man. During the year 1879 Adler devoted most of his time to 
the design and construction of the Central Music Hall, on the cor- 
ner of Randolph and State Streets, Chicago. It was torn down in 
1900 to make room for the retail store of Marshall Field & Com- 
pany. The building was entirely the work of Adler, except for the 
decorative organ grilles in the theatre, which were designed by 
Sullivan. It was finished in December, 1879. Adler was always 
very proud of this building, his first independent architectural 
undertaking, and wrote of it in his autobiography: "It has proved 



DANKMAR ADLER 287 

in many respects one of the most successful buildings ever erected 
in Chicago, and I shall always consider it the foundation of what- 
ever professional standing I may have acquired." 

The Central Music Hall was the ancestor or prototype of a long 
series of theatres designed by the firm of Adler & Sullivan; in 
it were already exemplified the acoustic principles which de- 
termined the lay-out of orchestra, balconies, and ceiling in all of 
the later theatres by the firm. The building as a whole was a com- 
bination of stores, offices, and theatre in a six-story structure cost- 
ing $215,000. Although the exterior was not distinguished, it was 
nevertheless superior to most of its contemporaries, and in certain 
parts, notably the window groupings on the north side, quite dig- 
nified and forceful. John Wellborn Root, one of Chicago's most 
sensitive and discerning architects, wrote just before his death: 
"Among the highest in all the profession stands Mr. Adler. . . . 
Of late Mr. Adler has passed the artistic crayon to Mr. Sullivan, 
but work designed by him in the earlier days such as the build- 
ing at 97 Dearborn Street, and the Central Music Hall shows a 
strength, simplicity, and straightforwardness, together with a cer- 
tain refinement, which reveal the true architect. No professional 
man has pursued a more consistent and dignified course than he, 
and no man is more respected by his confreres." 1 The chief merits 
of the design lay in the arrangement of the interior and the 
acoustic properties of the theatre. The seventy offices were well- 
lighted and easily accessible; in addition to the theatre there was 
a concert hall of about one-quarter its size; and all these in com- 
bination with stores and the necessary corridors and stairs were 
so disposed as to gain much praise at the time as an example of 
practical planning. The acoustic properties of the theatre became 
nationally famous. These were partially due to the upward curve 
of the orchestra floor, greater than the mere line of vision re- 



288 APPENDIX 

quired, to the transverse beams projecting below the ceiling, and 

to the lateral curve of the ceiling itself. 

Adler's knowledge of acoustics seems to have been unique in 
that generation, and he must have obtained it entirely by himself, 
since it was not a subject which had been dealt with to any extent 
in scientific writings. Sullivan, discussing the Grand Opera House 
of a few years later, said: "I then discovered what Mr. Adler knew 
about acoustics. I did not know anything about them, and I did not 
believe that anyone else did. ... It was not a matter of mathema- 
tics, nor a matter of science. There is a feeling, perception, instinct 
and that Mr. Adler had. He had a grasp of the subject of acoustics 
which he could not have obtained from study, for it was not in books. 
He must have gotten it by feeling." 2 Adler learned a lesson in acous- 
tics from the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, which he 
visited in 1885. Woltersdorf gives the following account: "The 
Mormon Tabernacle, of turtle-back form, was conceived and exe- 
cuted by ship-builders, who thought of the structure as the upset 
hull of a ship, with rounded ends. Years after it was built neces- 
sity demanded more seating accommodations and a balcony was 
constructed at one end. Because of the rounded roof-end, head 
room would have been lacking in the last rows of seats, had the 
balcony been constructed and tied up against the dome. So this 
balcony was kept a few feet free of the rear wall, with the result 
that the sound waves under the balcony impaired in no way the 
acoustics at that end. Adler visited the Mormon Tabernacle to 
study the acoustics. He saw this balcony; he saw, too, the open 
back. He visited the place during services, when the tabernacle 
was crowded, and found that the open end was a great advantage 
to the acoustics and that the movement of sound waves was un- 
impaired. This theory was later reflected in much of Adler's thea- 
tre work, where open stair wells were constructed in back of the 



DANKMAR ABLER 289 

house to allow movement of the sound up the well. All this was 
before the day of city ordinances separating the auditorium from 
foyer by means of fireproof walls." 3 

Adler served at various times as a consultant on acoustics. He 
was called to Milwaukee to improve the acoustics of the Pabst 
Theatre, which he did simply by inserting transverse beams pro- 
jecting below the ceiling of the auditorium to break up the reflect- 
ing area. He was also consultant on acoustics to the architect of 
Carnegie Hall, New York, when this building was designed by 
William B. Tuthill in 1889. 

With the completion of the Central Music Hall, Adler found 
himself crowded with other commissions. The Borden Block, the 
Grand Opera House, the John Borden residence and other struc- 
tures were in the office. It was at this time that he turned over more 
and more of the actual designing to Sullivan, and Sullivan's rise 
from draftsman to chief draftsman to junior partner to full part- 
ner was rapid, as related in the first chapter. Although the first 
few buildings after the Central Music Hall were nominally the 
work of Dankmar Adler & Company, Sullivan had an important 
part in their design, and for practical purposes they may be con- 
sidered the first works of the firm of Adler & Sullivan. 

During the years of the partnership with Sullivan, Adler was 
not only the guiding hand in all the business and engineering 
aspects of the work of the firm, but he was also very active in 
forwarding the activity of various architectural associations and 
in establishing a code of professional standards. When the West- 
ern Association of Architects was formed in a meeting at Chicago 
in November, 1884, Adler was elected first treasurer of the or- 
ganization, and at the meeting in St. Louis in November, 1885, 
he was elected its second president. He remained an active member 
to the end of his life, serving on innumerable committees and on 



290 APPENDIX 

the board of directors. He was a member of the Chicago Chapter 
of the American Institute of Architects, and of the Illinois State 
Association of Architects, acting as president of the latter body 
in 1886-87. One of his most important achievements as a member 
of the latter organization was the proposal of a state law for the 
recognition and legal control of the architectural profession. The 
law which he drafted was enacted in 1888, resulting in the forma- 
tion of the Illinois State Board of Examiners of Architects, and 
Adler was appointed its first chairman by the Governor. In 1890, 
when the Chicago Chapter of the A. LA. and the Illinois State 
Association of Architects decided to merge into a single body to 
be called the Illinois Chapter of the A.I.A., Adler was one of the 
incorporators and helped to write the charter which was granted 
on February 8, 1890. He was at the same time elected treasurer 
of the new organization. He was active in the revision of the build- 
ing ordinances of the City of Chicago, introducing many reforms 
of lasting benefit. He was also interested in the cause of labor and 
served on boards of arbitration in labor disputes on numerous oc- 
casions. 

Adler wrote extensively during these years chiefly on techni- 
cal or legal aspects of architecture, or official reports in connection 
with his positions in architectural associations. There is hardly 
a single issue of the Inland Architect in the eighties and early 
nineties without some committee report, or treasurer's statement, 
or presidential address, short or long, from his pen. He wrote 
several papers on theatres, such as "The Paramount Requirements 
of Large Theatres" (an address before the Twenty-first Annual 
Convention of the A.LA. in 1887), "The Chicago Auditorium" 
(a complete description, published in 1892), and "Convention 
Halls" (1895). On technical and legal questions, he wrote "Com- 
ment on Skyscrapers" (an extensive analysis of building founda- 



DANKMAR ABLER 291 

tions, 1891), "Light in Tall Office Buildings" (1893), and 
"Municipal Building Laws" (1895). 

The account of the dissolution of the partnership of Adler & 
Sullivan in July, 1895, has been related in Chapter V. Adler's con- 
nection with the Crane Company as consultant architect and gen- 
eral sales manager was of short duration, and he returned to the 
independent practice of architecture in January, 1896. With the 
help of his two sons, Abraham and Sidney, he built several fac- 
tories and warehouses for the Meyer Estate, the Chicago Dock 
Company, the Wright & Hill Linseed Oil Company, and some 
grain elevators. In 1897 and 1898 he designed a group of three 
buildings for the Morgan Park Military Academy, in a suburb 
of Chicago. The following year he designed the Isaiah Temple, 
at 45th Street and Vincennes Avenue, Chicago. The cornerstone 
was laid on September 11, 1898, and the building was dedicated 
on March 17, 1899. It was cruciform in shape, with the main 
fagade fronted by a slightly projecting portico with four Ionic 
columns carrying an entablature and balustrade. This was his last 
work. 

During his last years he continued to write, chiefly on technical 
and legal questions. Among the articles of this period were "Slow- 
Burning and Fireproof Construction" (1896), "The Influence of 
Steel Construction and of Plate Glass Upon the Development of 
Modern Style" (1896), "Architects and Trade Unions" (1896), 
"The Tarsney Act and the American Institute of Architects" 
(1897), and "The Architect's Duty Regarding the Enforcement of 
the Tarsney Law" (1897). Unfortunately, some of his articles 
were never completed. The writer has had the privilege of ex- 
amining several manuscripts of considerable interest. One is a 
brief typewritten autobiography, written about 1894, from which 
Montgomery Schuyler drew some of the information for his re- 



292 APPENDIX 

view of the work of Adler & Sullivan published in 1895. Another 
is an article on "The Proposed Technological School of the Uni- 
versity of Chicago from the Standpoint of the Architect," already 
in galley proof, but never published. Most interesting is a series 
of uncompleted articles on such terms as "Acoustics," "Audi- 
torium," "Concert Hall," and "Theatre" in preparation for the 
Architectural Encyclopedia at the time of Adler's death. The parts 
finished show a great amount of scientific knowledge and a wealth 
of practical experience, and it is to be regretted that such authori- 
tative discussions could not have been brought to completion. 
Adler died on April 16, 1900, at the age of fifty-six. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ADLER'S WRITINGS 
IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER 

"Paramount Requirements of Large Theatres." A paper read be- 
fore the 21st Annual Convention of the A. I. A. in Chicago, 
October 19, 1887. Building Budget, vol. 3, no. 9, pp. 127-129, 
October, 1887. 

"Comment on Skyscrapers." The Economist, vol. 5, no, 26, pp. 
1136-1138, June 27, 1891. 

"The Chicago Auditorium." Architectural Record, voL 1, no. 4, 
pp. 415-434, ApriHTune, 1892. 

"Some Notes upon the Earlier Chicago Architects." Inland Archi- 
tect & News Record, vol. 19, no. 4, pp. 47-48, May, 1892, 

"Tall Office Buildings Past and Future." Engineering Magazine, 
vol. 3, no. 6, pp. 765-773, September, 1892. 

"Light in Tall Office Buildings." Engineering Magazine, vol. 4, 
no. 2, pp. 171-186, November, 1892. 

"Municipal Building Laws." Inland Architect & News Record, 
vol. 25, no. 4, pp. 36-38, May, 1895. 

Open letter announcing his retirement from the profession. Inland 



DANKMAR ADLKR 293 

Architect & News Record, vol. 25, no. 6, p. 61, July, 1895. 

"Convention Halls." Inland Architect & News Record, vol. 26, no. 
2 ? pp. 13-14, September, 1895; and vol. 26, no. 3, pp. 22-23, 
October, 1895. 

"Slow-Burning and Fireproof Construction." Inland Architect & 
News Record, vol. 26, no. 6, pp. 60-62, January, 1896; and 
vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 3-4, February, 1896. 

"Architects and Trade Unions." Inland Architect & News Record, 
vol. 27, no. 4, p. 32, May, 1896. 

"Influence of Steel Construction and of Plate Glass upon the De- 
velopment of Modern Style." A series of four papers read be- 
fore the 30th Annual Convention of the A. I. A. at Nashville, 
Tenn., October 21, 1896, by J. W. Yost, Dankmar Adler, 
George F. Newton, and Robert D. Andrews. Adler's paper is a 
critique of the doctrine "form follows function." Inland Archi- 
tect & News Record, vol. 28, no. 4, pp. 3437, November, 
1896. 

"Open Letter to Chicago Mason Builders." Inland Architect & 
News Record, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 2-3, February, 1897. 

"The Tarsney Act and the American Institute of Architects." In- 
land Architect & News Record, vol. 30, no. 4, p. 36, November, 
1897. 

"The Architect's Duty Regarding the Enforcement of the Tarsney 
Law." Inland Architect & News Record, vol. 30, no. 5, pp. 46- 
47, December, 1897. 

1 John Root: "Architects of Chicago," Inland Architect & News Record, 
vol. 16, no. 8, p. 91, January, 1891. 

a Sullivan: "Development of Construction," The Economist, vol. 55, 
no, 26, p. 1252, June 24, 1916, 

s Arthur Woltersdorf: "Dankmar Adler," Western Architect, vol. 33, 
no. 7, p. 75, July, 1924. 



CHRONOLOGICAL LIST OF 
BUILDINGS 



Buildings designed by the firm of Adler & Sullivan and by- 
Louis Sullivan independently are listed as nearly as possible ac- 
cording to the chronological order of their construction. The fol- 
lowing data are given for each building: name, address, date of 
construction, whether the building is still standing, its present 
name if different from the original one, dimensions of the ground 
plan, and cost or approximate cost. Addresses given are the pres- 
ent ones; for many of the buildings in downtown Chicago these are 
different from addresses given in old accounts, since the street 
numbers and in many instances the names of the streets have been 
changed since the buildings were constructed. Except for a few 
lists of buildings, no office records of the firm of Adler & Sullivan 
or of Louis Sullivan have been preserved; this has made the com- 
pilation of a complete list of their works difficult and many items 
of information are lacking. All data available through records of 
building permits, descriptions in old periodicals, correspondence 
with former owners, or examination of the buildings themselves 
have been included in this list. 

1. Central Music Hall, SE corner of Randolph & State Streets. 
Chicago. 1879. Dankmar Adler & Co. Demolished in 1900. 
Lot: 125' x 151'. Cost: $156,463. 

2. Borden Block, NW corner of Randolph & Dearborn Streets, 
Chicago. 1879-80. Dankmar Adler & Co. Demolished in 
1910. Lot: 80' x 90'. Cost: ca. $80,000. 

294 



BUILDING LIST 295 

3. Grand Opera House (remodelling), 119 North Clark Street, 
Chicago. 1880. Dankmar Adler & Co. Demolished in 1927. 
Cost: ca. $55,000. 

4. John Borden residence, 3949 Lake Park Ave. Chicago. 
1880. Dankmar Adler & Co. Still standing, now Vincennes 
Sanitarium. 

5. Rothschild Store, 210 West Monroe Street, Chicago. 1881. 
Dankmar Adler & Co. Built for Max M. Rothschild, oc- 
cupied by E. Rothschild & Bros. Wholesale Clothiers. 
Still standing, now the Milton F. Goodman Building. Lot: 
50' x 180'. Cost: $75,811. 

6. Rosenfeld Building, SE corner Washington & Halsted 
Streets, Chicago. Built for Levi Rosenfeld in two sections: 
three-story section on east side of Halsted Street south to 
Meridian built in 1881 cost $42,850; five-story section oc- 
cupying corner of the lot and extending 150' east on Wash- 
ington Street built in 1882 cost $92,091. Still standing. 

7. Brunswick & Balke Factory (1881), Warehouse (1882), 
and Lumber-Drying-Plant (1883), entire block bounded by 
Orleans, Huron, Sedgwick & Superior Streets, Chicago. Still 
standing. Cost: $168,165. 

8. Revell Building, NE corner of Wabash & Adams Streets, 
Chicago. 188183. Built for Martin A. Ryerson; long oc- 
cupied by A, H. Revell Co. Still standing; lower stories re- 
modelled in 1929. Lot: 116' x 172'. Cost: $321,112. 

9. Jewelers' Building, 15-19 South Wabash Ave. Chicago. 
1881-82. Built for Martin A. Ryerson. Still standing. Lot: 
58' x 160'. Cost: $90,260. 



296 BUILDING LIST 

10. Frankenthal Building, 141 South Wells Street, Chicago. 

1882. Still standing. Lot: 22' x 72'. Cost: $21,407. 

11. Hammond Library, 44 North Ashland Avenue, Chicago. 
1882. Still standing, now Union Theological College. Lot: 
43'x65'. Cost: ca. $15,000. 

12. Flat-building built for Max M. Rothschild, 3200 Prairie Ave. 
Chicago. 1882. Still standing. Lot: 19' x 74'. Cost: ca. $10,- 
000. 

13. Henry Leopold residence, 2516 Indiana Ave. Chicago, ca. 
1882. Demolished. 

14. Sigmund Hyman residence, 2624 Wabash Ave. Chicago, ca. 

1882. Demolished. 

15. Knisely Store, Lake Street, Chicago. 1883. Built for Richard 
Knisely. Lot: 35' x 75'. Cost: ca. $16,000. 

16. Three residences built for Max M, Rothschild, 3201-05 
Indiana Ave. Chicago. 1883. Still standing. Lot: 50' x 65'. 
Cost: ca. $17,000. 

17. E. L. Brand Store, Jackson Street, Chicago. 1883. Demol- 
ished. Cost: $3,000. 

18. F. A. Kennedy & Co. Bakery, South Desplaines Street, Chi- 
cago. 1883-84. Cost: ca. $70,000. 

19. Wright & Lowther Oil & Lead Mfg. Co., Chicago, 1883. Cost: 
ca. $40,000. 

20. C. P. Kimball residence, 22 East Ontario Street, Chicago. 

1883. Still standing, now "L'Aiglon" restaurant. Cost: ca. 
$45,000. 

21. Sol Bloomenfeld residence, 8 West Chicago Ave. Chicago. 
1883. Still standing, now "Cozy Hand Laundry." 



BUILDING LIST 297 

22. Morris Selz residence, 1717 South Michigan Ave. Chicago. 

1883. Still standing. Cost: ca. $30,000. 

23. Charles H. Schwab residence, 1715 South Michigan Ave. 
Chicago. 1883. Still standing, much remodelled. Cost: ca. 
$18,000. 

24. A. Halsted residence, Lincoln Avenue, Chicago. 1883. Cost: 
ca. $14,000. 

25. Rubee Store, South Clark Street, Chicago. 1883i Cost: ca. 
$16,000. 

26. Kauffmann Store, Lincoln Avenue, Chicago. 1883. Cost: ca. 
$10,000. 

27. Schoolhouse, Marengo, Illinois. 1883. Cost: ca. $20,000. 

28. E. L. Brand Building, East Jackson Street, Chicago. 1883. 
Demolished. Cost: ca. $15,000. 

29. Three residences built for Max M. Rothschild, 32nd Street & 
Indiana Ave. Chicago. 1884. Still standing. Cost: ca. $12,- 
000. 

30. Three residences built for Mrs. N. Halsted, North Park Ave. 
Chicago. 1884. Cost: ca. $12,000. 

31. Martin Barbe residence, 3157 Prairie Ave. Chicago. 1884. 
Still standing. 

32* Abraham Strauss residence, 3337 Wabash Avenue, Chicago. 
1884-85. Still standing. Cost: ca. $16,000. 

33, Ryerson Building, 16-20 East Randolph Street, Chicago. 

1884. Still standing. Lot: 68' x 171'. Cost: $152,127. 

34. Troescher Building, 15-19 South Market Street, Chicago. 
1884, Still standing, now the Daily Times Building. Lot: 
8Q'x80'. Cost: $90,614. 



298 BUILDING LIST 

35. Knisely Building, 551-557 West Monroe Street, Chicago. 
1884. Still standing. Cost: $86,928. 

36. Zion Temple, SE corner Washington & Ogden Streets, Chi- 
cago. 1884-85. Demolished. Lot: 65' x 115'. Cost: ca. $35,- 
000. 

37. J. W. Scoville Building, 619-631 West Washington Street, 
Chicago. 1884-85. Still standing. Cost: $44,444. 

38. Hooley's Theatre (remodelling), NE corner Randolph & 
LaSalle Streets, Chicago. 1884-85. Demolished 1927. Cost: 
ca. $50,000. 

39. Chicago Opera Festival Auditorium, Interstate Exposition 
Building, Grant Park, Chicago. 1885. Demolished 1892. 

40. McVicker's Theatre (remodelling), Madison Street, Chi- 
. cago. 1885. Destroyed by fire, 1890. Cost: $95,074. 

41. M. C. Stearns residence, Douglas Ave. Chicago. 1885. De- 
molished. Cost: ca. $8,000. 

42. Benjamin Lindauer residence, 3312 Wabash Avenue, Chi- 
cago. 1885. Still standing. Cost: ca. $25,000. 

43. Residence, Prairie Avenue & Gano Street, Chicago. 1885. 
Cost: ca. $13,000. 

44. Henry Stern residence, 2915 Prairie Avenue, Chicago. 1885. 
Still standing. Lot: 25' x 80'. Cost: ca. $13,000. 

45. Samuel Stern residence, 2963 Prairie Ave. Chicago. 1885. 
Still standing. Cost: ca. $12,000. 

46. Abraham Kuh residence, 3141 South Michigan Ave. Chi- 
cago. 1885. Demolished. Cost: ca. $10,000. 

47. Mrs. Abraham Kohn residence, 3541 Ellis Ave, Chicago. 
1885-86. Still standing. 



BUILDING LIST 299 

48. Dankmar Adler residence, 3543 Ellis Ave. Chicago. 1885- 
86. Still standing. 

49. Eli B. Felsenthal residence, 3545 Ellis Ave. Chicago. 1885- 
86. Still standing. 

50. Hugo Goodman residence, 3333 Wabash Avenue, Chicago. 
1885-86. Still standing. 

51. Mrs. Eda Holzheimer residence, 3538 Ellis Ave. Chicago, 
ca. 1886. Still standing. 

52. Gustav Eliel residence, 4122 Ellis Avenue, Chicago, ca. 

1886. Still standing. 

53. Peck Building, SW corner of LaSalle & Water Streets, Chi- 
cago. 1886. Demolished. Cost: $36,312. 

54. West Chicago Club, 119 Throop Street, Chicago. 1886. Still 
standing, now Chicago Labor Temple. 

55. Suburban Station, Illinois Central R. R., 39th Street, Chi- 
cago. 1886. Still standing. 

56. Suburban Station, Illinois Central R. R., 43d Street, Chi- 
cago. 1886. Still standing. 

57. Martin Ryerson Charities Trust Building, 318 West Adams 
Street, Chicago. 1886. Demolished. Cost: $100,282. 

58. Selz, Schwab & Company Factory, NE corner of Superior 
& Roberts Streets, Chicago. 188687. Still standing. Lot: 
Ill'x204'. Cost: $75,773. 

59. Wirt Dexter Building, 630 South Wabash Ave. Chicago. 

1887. Still standing. Lot: 70' x 160'. Cost: $99,636. 

60. Joseph Diemal residence, 3143 Calumet Ave. Chicago. 1887. 
Lot: 25'x27'. 

61. Springer Building (remodelling), corner of State & Ran- 
dolph Streets, Chicago. 1887. Demolished. 



300 BUILDING LIST 

62. John Kranz Building (remodelling), State Street, Chicago. 
1887. 

63. Mrs. Mary M. Lively residence, Oak Ave. Chicago. 1887. 
Lot: 20'x45'. Cost: ca. $4,500. 

64. Auditorium Building, Chicago. 1887-89. Still standing. 
Lot: 187' frontage on Michigan Ave., 362' frontage on 
Congress Street, 162' frontage on Wabash Ave. Cost: $3,- 
145,291. 

65. Standard Club, SW corner of Michigan Ave. & 24th Street, 
Chicago. 1887-88. Demolished 1931. Lot: 60' x 162'. Cost: 
$108,139. 

66. Walker Warehouse, 200-214 South Market Street, Chicago. 
1888-89. Still standing. Cost: $325,942. 

67. Felsenthal Building, 63-71 North Canal Street, Chicago. 
1889. Demolished 1908. Lot: 38' x 150'. Cost: $32,022. 

\ 

68. Ira A. Heath residence, 3132 Prairie Ave. Chicago. 1889. 
Still standing. Cost: ca. $15,000. 

69. Wirt Dexter residence (addition), 232 Irving Ave. Chicago. 

1889. Lot: 20' x 50'. Cost: ca. $25,000. 

70. Martin Ryerson Tomb, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago. 1889. 
Still standing. 

71. Jewish Training School, 554 West 12th Place, Chicago, 
1889-90. Still standing. Lot: 60' x 100'. Coat: $48,730. 

72. Crane Company Factory, Judd Street, Chicago. 1890. De- 
molished. Lot: 100' x 203'. Cost: ca. $50,000. 

73. Carrie Eliza Getty Tomb, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago. 

1890. Still standing. 

74. Louis Sullivan Cottages, Ocean Springs, Miss. 1890. Still 
standing, remodelled. Lot: 300' x 1800'. 



BUILDING LIST 301 

75. Three residences built for Victor Falkenau, 3420-24 Wa- 
bash Ave. Chicago. 1890. Still standing. 

76. Opera House Block, Pueblo, Colorado. 1890. Destroyed by 
fire 1922. 

77. Design for Opera House Block, Seattle, Wash. 1890. Never 
built. 

78. Design for Hotel Ontario, Salt Lake City, Utah. 1890, Never 
built. 

79. Das Deutsche Haus, Milwaukee, Wis. (remodelling). 1890. 

80. Dooly Block, 111 West 2nd South Street, Salt Lake City, 
Utah. 1890-91. Still standing. 

81. McVicker's Theatre, Madison Street, Chicago (remodel- 
ling). 1890-91. Demolished 1925. Cost: $106,120. 

82. Wainwright Building, NW corner Seventh & Chestnut 
Streets, St. Louis. 1890-91. Still standing. Adler & Sullivan; 
Charles K. Ramsey, Assoc. Lot: 127' x 114'. Cost: $561,- 
255. 

83. Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv Synagogue, SE corner of 33d Street 
& Indiana Ave. Chicago. 1890-91. Still standing, now Pil- 
grim Baptist Church. Cost: $91,005. 

84. Chicago Cold Storage Exchange Warehouse, West Water 
Street between Randolph & Lake Streets, Chicago. 1891. De- 
molished 1902. Cost: $442,896. 

85. Design for a Hotel, Chicago. 1891. Never built. 

86. Design for an Apartment-hotel, South Michigan Ave. Chi- 
cago. 1891. Never built. 

87. Design for Mercantile Club, St. Louis. 1891. Never built. 

88. Design for Fraternity Temple, Chicago. 1891. Never built. 



302 BUILDING LIST 

89. Schiller Building, 64 West Randolph Street, Chicago. 1891- 
92. Still standing, now Garrick Theatre Building, remod- 
elled 1935. Lot: 80' x 181'. Cost: $737,099. 

90. J. W. Oakley Building, 141-143 West Austin Street, Chi- 
cago. 1892. Still standing, completely remodelled. Cost: 
$95,017. 

91. James Charnley residence, 1365 Astor Street, Chicago. 
1892. Still standing. 

92. Albert W. Sullivan residence, 4575 Lake Park Ave. Chicago. 
1892. Still standing. 

93. Charlotte Dickson Wainwright Tomb, Bellefontaine Ceme- 
tery, St. Louis. 1892. Still standing. 

94. Sinai Temple, SW corner of Indiana Ave. & 21st Street, 
Chicago. Remodelling. 1892, Demolished. 

95. Passenger Station, Illinois Central R. R., New Orleans. 
1892. Still standing. 

96. Union Trust Building, NW corner of Seventh & Olive Streets, 
St. Louis. 1892-93. Adler & Sullivan; Charles K. Ramsey, 
Assoc. Still standing, now Central National Bank Building, 
Lot: 84' x 127'. Cost: $631,076. 

97. Design for Trust & Savings Bank Building, Seventh & Olive 
Streets, St. Louis. 1892-93. Adler Sullivan; Charles K. 
Ramsey, Assoc. Never built, 

98. St. Nicholas Hotel, Eighth & Locust Streets, St. Louis. 1892- 
93. Adler & Sullivan; Charles K. Ramsey, Assoc. Still stand- 
ing, much remodelled. Cost: $334,187. 

99. Victoria Hotel, Chicago Heights, Illinois. 1892-93. Still 
standing, remodelled. 



BUILDING LIST 303 

100. Meyer Building, 307 West VanBuren Street, Chicago. 1893. 
Still standing, remodelled. Cost: $205,825. 

101. Transportation Building, World's Columbian Exposition, 
Chicago. 1893. Demolished. 

102. Stock Exchange Building, 30 North LaSalle Street, Chicago. 
1893-94. Still standing. Lot: 101' x 181'. Cost: $1,131,555. 

103. Guaranty Building, SW corner Church & Pearl Streets, Buf- 
falo. 189495. Still standing, now Prudential Building. Lot: 
93 / xll6 / . 

Dissolution of the partnership, July, 1895 

104. Bayard Building, 65-69 Bleecker Street, New York. 1897- 
98. Louis Sullivan; Lyndon P. Smith, Assoc. Still standing, 
now Condict Building. 

105. Gage Building, 18 South Michigan Ave. Chicago. 1898-99. 
Still standing, remodelled. Louis Sullivan; Holabird & 
Roche, Assoc. 

106. Schlesinger & Mayer Department Store, SE corner of State 
& Madison Streets, Chicago. Nine-story section on Madison 
Street, 1899. Twelve-story section on corner of lot and ex- 
tending 150' south on State Street, 190304. Five southern- 
most bays on State Street, 1906, by D. H. Burnham & Co. 
Still standing, now Carson Pirie Scott Store. 

107. Euston & Company Linseed Oil Plant, Blackhawk Street, 
Chicago, ca. 1899-1900. 

108. Euston & Company Linoleum Plant, Chicago, ca. 1899- 
1900. 

109. Crane Company Foundry & Machine Shop, SE corner Canal 



304 BUILDING LIST 

& 12th Streets, Chicago. 1899-1900. Still standing, com- 
pletely remodelled. 

110. Crane Company Office Building, Canal Street & West 12th 
Place, Chicago. 1903-04. Demolished. 

111. Store built for Eli B. Felsenthal, 701-703 East 47th Street, 
Chicago. 1905. Still standing. 

112. National Farmers' Bank, NE corner of Broadway & Cedar 
Streets, Owatonna, Minn. 1907-08. Still standing, now Se- 
curity Bank. Lot: 68' x 154". 

113. Henry Babson residence, 230 Riverside Drive, Riverside, 
111. 1907. Still standing. 

114. Mrs. Josephine Crane Bradley residence, 106 North Pros- 
pect St., Madison, Wis. 1909. Still standing, now Sigma Phi 
Fraternity House. 

115. People's Savings Bank, 3d Ave. S, W, & 1st St. S. W., Cedar 
Rapids, Iowa. 1911. Still standing. Lot: 50' x 90'. 

116. St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church, 3d Ave. S. E. & 14th 
St. S. E., Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 1913-14. Still standing. 

117. John D. Van Allen & Son Company Dry-Goods Store, NW 
corner 5th Ave. & So. 2nd St., Clinton, Iowa. 1913-15. Still 
standing. 

118. Henry C. Adams Building, NW corner Moore & State Streets, 
Algona, Iowa. 1913. Still standing, now Druggists* Mutual 
Insurance Co. 

119. Merchants' National Bank, NW corner 4th Ave. & Broad 
Street, Grinnell, Iowa. 1914. Still standing, now Poweshiek 
County National Bank. 

120. Home Building Association Bank, NW corner West Main & 



BUILDING LIST 305 

North 3d Streets, Newark, Ohio. 1914. Still standing, now 
Union Trust Company. 

121. Purdue State Bank, State & Vine Streets, West Lafayette, 
Ind. 1914. Still standing. 

122. People's Savings & Loan Association Bank, SE corner Court 
Street & Ohio Avenue, Sidney, Ohio. 1917-18. Still stand- 
ing. 

123. Farmers' & Merchants' Union Bank, NW corner James Street 
& Broadway, Columbus, Wis. 1919. Still standing. 

124. William P. Krause Music Store and residence, 4611 Lincoln 
Ave. Chicago, 1922. Louis Sullivan; William C. Presto, As- 
soc. Still standing. 



A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE 

WRITINGS OF LOUIS SULLIVAN 



Listed in Chronological Order 

"Characteristics and Tendencies of American Architecture." A 
paper read before a meeting of the Western Association of 
Architects in St. Louis in 1885. Published in the Builders 9 
Weekly Reporter (London) in 1885. No ref. 

"Inspiration." A paper read before the Third Annual Convention 
of the Western Association of Architects in Chicago, November 
17, 1886. Published in brochure by the Inland Architect Press, 
Chicago, 1886. 

"What is the Just Subordination, in Architectural Design, of De- 
tails to Mass?" A symposium at a meeting of the Illinois As- 
sociation of Architects in Chicago, April 2, 1887, with talks 
by Louis Sullivan, L. D. Cleveland, and 0. J. Pierce, with a 
summary by Louis Sullivan. Published in the Inland Architect 
& Neivs Record, vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 51-54, April, 1887, and in 
Building Budget, vol. 3, no. 3, pp. 62-63, April, 1887. 

"Ornamentation of the Auditorium." A paper quoted in part in 
Industrial Chicago, vol. 2, pp. 490-49 L 

"Ornament in Architecture." Engineering Magazine, vol. 3, no. 5, 
pp. 633-644, August, 1892. 

"Objective and Subjective." A paper read before the 28th Annual 

301! 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 307 

Convention of the A.I.A. in New York, October, 1894. Pub- 
lished in brochure by the Inland Architect Press, Chicago, 
1895. 

"Emotional Architecture as Compared With Classical, a Study in 
Objective and Subjective." Inland Architect & News Record, 
vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 32-34, November, 1894. 

"The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered." Lippincott's, 
vol. 57, pp. 403-409, March, 1896; Inland Architect & News 
Record, vol. 27, no. 4, pp. 32-34, May, 1896; Western Archi- 
tect, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 3-11, January, 1922. 

"An Unaffected School of Modern Architecture: Will It Come?" 
Artist (N.Y.), vol. 24, pp. xxxiii-xxxiv, January, 1899. 

Address to the Chicago Architectural Club, read at the Art In- 
stitute, Chicago, May 30, 1899. Unpublished. 

"The Master." Part 2 of Inspiration series. Completed July 1, 
1899. Unpublished. 

"The Young Man in Architecture." A paper read before the Archi- 
tectural League of America, June 12, 1900. Published in The 
Brickbuilder, vol. 9, no. 6, pp. 115-119, June, 1900; Western 
Architect, vol. 34, no. 1, pp. 4r-10, January, 1925. 

"Reality in the Architectural Art." Interstate Architect & Builder, 
vol. 2, no. 25, pp. 6-7, August 11, 1900. 

Kindergarten Chats. Interstate Architect & Builder, vol. 2, no. 52 
vol. 3, no. 51; 52 issues from February 16, 1901 to February 
8, 1902. Sullivan's revision of June December, 1918, edited 
by Claude Bragdon, published in book form by the Scarab 
Fraternity Press, 306 Marvin Hall, Lawrence, Kansas, 1934. 

"Education." A paper read before the Annual Convention of the 



308 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Architectural League of America in Toronto in 1902. Unpub- 
lished. 

"Sympathy A Romanza." A short poem written about 1904. 
Unpublished. 

"Natural Thinking: A Study in Democracy." A paper read before 
the Chicago Architectural Club, February 13, 1905. Unpub- 
lished. 

"The Possibility of a New Architectural Style." A reply to an 
article by Frederick Stymetz Lamb on "Modern Use of the 
Gothic." The Craftsman, vol. 8, pp. 336-338, June, 1905. 

"Form and Function Artistically Considered." A reprinting of 
"The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered" in the "Archi- 
tectural Discussion" department of The Craftsman, vol. 8, pp. 
453-458, July, 1905. 

"What is Architecture? A Study in the American People of Today." 
American Contractor, vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 4854, January 6, 1906. 
Reprinted in The Craftsman, vol. 10, no. 2, pp. 145149; no. 3, 
pp. 352-358; and no. 4, pp. 507-513; May, June, July, 1906. 

Democracy: A Man Search. A book in 44 chapters, ca. 180,000 
words. First draft completed July 1, 1907; revision completed 
April 18, 1908. Unpublished. 

"Is Our Art a Betrayal Rather Than an Expression of American 
Life?" The Craftsman, vol 15, no. 4, pp. 402-404, January, 
1909. 

Letter replying to an article by Gutzon Borglum. The Craftsman, 
voL 17, no. 3, December, 1909. 

"Suggestions in Artistic Brickwork." Foreword to a pamphlet en- 
titled "Artistic Brick," pp. 5-13, published by the Hydraulic- 
Press Brick Company, St Louis. N.d. (ca, 1910). 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 309 

"Wherefore the Poet?" Poetry, vol. 7, pp. 305-307, March, 1916. 

"Development of Construction." A paper read before the Illinois 
Chapter of the A.LA. Published in The Economist, vol. 55, no. 
26, p. 1252, June 24, 1916; and vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 39-40, July 1, 
1916. 

The Autobiography of an Idea. Published serially in the Journal of 
the American Institute of Architects, June, 1922-August, 1923. 
Published in book form by the Press of the A.I. A., 1924; re- 
printed in the "White Oak Library" series, W. W. Norton, 1934. 

A System of Architectural Ornament According with a Philoso- 
phy of Man's Powers. A series of nineteen plates drawn from 
January, 1922, to May, 1923. Published in folio by the Press of 
the American Institute of Architects, 192,4. 

"The Chicago Tribune Competition." Architectural Record^ vol. 
53, no. 2, pp. 151-157, February, 1923. 

"Concerning the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo." Architectural Record, 
vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 333-352, April, 1923. 

"Reflections on the Tokyo Disaster." Architectural Record, vol. 55, 
no. 2, pp. 113-117, February, 1924. 



GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY 



BOOKS 

Bragdon, Claude: Architecture and Democracy, Knopf (N.Y.) 
1926. Ch. 4: "Louis Sullivan, Prophet of Democracy." 

Dredge, James: A Record of the Transportation Exhibits of the 
World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, John Wiley & Sons 
(N.Y.) 1894. 

Gilbert, Paul, and Bryson, Charles Lee: Chicago and Its Makers, 
Felix Mendelsohn (Chicago) 1929. 

Glover, Lynian B.: The Story of a Theatre, R. R. Donnelley & Sons 
(Chicago) N.d. (ca. 1898). 

Goodspeed PubFg. Co,: Industrial Chicago, vols. I & II: The Build- 
ing Interests. Chicago, 1891. 

Meites, Hyman L. (ed.): History of the Jews in Chicago, Jewish 
Historical Society of Illinois (Chicago) 1924, 

Monroe, Harriet: John Wellborn Root, Houghton, Mifflin & Co, 
(Boston) 1896. 

Moore, Charles H.: Daniel H. Burnham, Architect, Planner of 
Cities, Houghton, Mifflin & Co. (Boston) 1921. 

Mujica, Francisco: History of the Skyscraper, Archaeology and 
Architecture Press (Paris) 1929. 

Mumford, Lewis: The Brown Decades, Harcourt Brace (N.Y.) 
1931. 

310 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 311 

Schuyler, Montgomery: Studies in American Architecture, Harper 
&Bros. (N.Y.) 1892. 

Tallmadge, Thomas E.: The Story of Architecture in America, 
W. W. Norton (N.Y.) 1927. 

Woltersdorf, Arthur (ed.) : Living Architecture, Kroch's (Chicago) 
1930. 

World's Columbian Exposition: Memorial Volume, Dedicatory and 
Opening Ceremonies, Stone Kastler & Painter (Chicago) 1893. 

Wright, Frank Lloyd: An Autobiography, Longmans Green (N.Y.) 
1932. 

PERIODICAL LITERATURE 

Anonymous: "Characteristics and Tendencies of American Archi- 
tecture," a Note on a Paper Read Before the Western Association 
of Architects by Louis H. Sullivan. Inland Architect & Builder, 
vol. 7, no. 1, p. 6, February, 1886. 

: "The Standard Club's New Building." American Architect 

& Building News, vol. 25, no. 691, p. 137, March 23, 1889. 

: "The Chicago Auditorium." American Architect & Build- 



ing News, vol. 26, no. 724, pp. 223-224, November 9, 1889. 
: "The Auditorium Building." American Architect & Build- 



ing News, vol. 26. no. 731, pp. 299-300, December 28, 1889. 
: "Structures Designed by Louis H. Sullivan." Interstate 



Architect & Builder, vol. 2, no. 44, pp. 11-20, December 22, 
1900. 

: "A Departure from Classic Tradition: Two Unusual 

Houses by Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright." Architec- 
tural Record, vol. 30, no. 4, pp. 327-338, October, 191 L 



312 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

: "A Unique Church Building." American Contractor, vol. 

32, no. 44, pp. 92-93, November 4, 1911. 
: "Louis Sullivan, the First American Architect." Current 



Literature, vol. 52, no. 6, pp. 703-707, June, 1912. 
: "A Sullivan Design That Is Not Sullivan's." Western 



Architect, vol. 20, no. 8, p. 85, August, 1914. 
: "St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church." Western Archi- 



tect, vol. 20, no. 8, pp. 87-88, August, 1914. 
: "The Merchants' National Bank, Grinnell, Iowa." Western 



Architect, vol. 23, no. 2, p. 20, February, 1916. 
: "The 33d Annual Chicago Architectural Exhibition." 



Western Architect, vol. 29, no. 4, pp. 33-34, April, 1920. 
: Louis Sullivan, Obituary. Architectural Record, vol. 55, 



no. 5, p. 503, May, 1924. 
: A Review of "A System of Architectural Ornament." 



American Architect, vol. 126, no. 2455, pp. 14-16, September 
24, 1924. 

: "Memorial to Louis H. Sullivan." American Magazine of 

Art, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 276-277, May, 1928, 

: "Memorial to Louis Sullivan." Western Architect, vol. 38, 



no. 6, p. 100, June, 1929. 

Barker, A. W.: "Louis H. Sullivan, Thinker and Architect." Archi- 
tectural Annual, 2nd edition, pp. 4966, 1901, 

Bennett, Carl K.: "A Bank Built for Farmers." The Craftsman, vol. 
15, no. 2, pp. 176-185, November, 1908. 

Bouilhet, Andre: "L'Exposition de Chicago." Rvue des Arts D&c- 
oratifs, vol. 14, p. 68, 1893-94. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 313 

Bragdon, Claude: "Letters from Louis Sullivan." Architecture, 
vol. 64, no. 1, pp. 7-10, July, 1931. 

Caffin, Charles H.: "Louis H. Sullivan, Artist Among Architects, 
American Among Americans." The Criterion (N.Y.) vol. 20, no. 
471, p. 20, January 28, 1899. Reprinted in Architectural An- 
nual, 2nd edition, pp. 67-68, 1901. 

Dean, George R.: "A New Movement in American Architecture.' 9 
Brush and Pencil, vol. 5, no. 6, pp. 254-259, March, 1900. 

Desmond, H. W.: "Another View What Mr. Louis Sullivan Stands 
For." Architectural Record, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 61-67, July, 1904. 

Ferree, Barr: "The High Building and Its Art." Scribner's, vol. 15, 
no. 3, pp. 297-318, March, 1894. 

: "The Modern Office Building." Inland Architect & News 

Record, vol. 27, nos. 1-5, pp. 4, 12, 23, 34, 45, February-June, 
1896. 

Grey, Elmer: "Indigenous and Inventive Architecture for America." 
Inland Architect & News Record, vol. 35, no. 5, p. 36, June, 1900. 

Hamlin, A. D. F.: "The Ten Most Beautiful Buildings in the United 
States." Brochure Series of Architectural Illustrations, vol. 6, 
no. 1, January, 1900. 

: L'Art Nouveau. The Craftsman, vol. 3, p. 129. 

Kimball, S. Fiske: "Louis Sullivan, an Old Master." Architectural 
Record, vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 289-304, April, 1925. 

McLean, Robert Craik: "Architects and Architecture in the United 
States." Inland Architect & News Record, vol. 28, no. 6, pp. 58- 
62, January, 1897. 

: "Dankmar Adler," Inland Architect & News Record, vol. 

35, no. 4, p. 26, May, 1900. 



314 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

: "Louis Henry Sullivan, Sept. 3, 1856-April 14, 1924; 

An Appreciation." Western Architect, vol. 33, no. 5, pp. 53-55, 

May, 1924. 

Millett, Louis J.: "The National Farmers' Bank of Owatonna, 
Minn." Architectural Record, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 249-254, Octo- 
ber, 1908. 

Pond, Irving K.: "Louis Sullivan's The Autobiography of an Idea, 
a Review and an Estimate." Western Architect, vol. 33, no. 6, 
pp. 67-69, June, 1924. 

Rebori, A. N.: "An Architecture of Democracy." Architectural 
Record, vol. 39, no. 5, pp. 437-465, May, 1916. 

: "Louis H. Sullivan, an Obituary." Architectural Record, 

vol. 55, no. 6, p. 587, June, 1924. 
Rice, Wallace: "Louis Sullivan as Author." Western Architect, vol. 

33, no. 6, pp. 70-71, June, 1924. 
Robertson, Howard: "The Work of Louis H. Sullivan." Architect's 

Journal, vol. 59, no. 1537, pp. 1000-1009, June 18, 1924. 

Root, John W.: "Architects of Chicago." Inland Architect & News 
Record, vol. 16, no. 8, pp. 91-92, January, 189L 

Sabine, Paul E.: "Acoustics of the Chicago Civic Opera House." 
Architectural Forum, vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 599-604, April, 1930. 

Schopfer, Jean: "American Architecture from a Foreign Point of 
View: New York City." Architectural Review, vol. 7 old series, 
vol. 2 new series, no. 3, pp. 25-30, March, 1900. 

Schuyler, Montgomery: "A Critique of the Works of Adler & Sul- 
livan." Architectural Record, Great American Architects Series, 
no. 2 (published separately), December, 1895. 

: "The 'Skyscraper' Up To Date." Architectural Record, 

vol. 8, no. 3, pp. 231-257, January-March, 1899. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 315 

: "The People's Savings Bank of Cedar Rapids, Iowa/' 

Architectural Record, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 45-56, January, 1912. 

Smith, Lyndon P. : "The Schlesinger & Mayer Building An At- 
tempt to Give Functional Expression to the Architecture of a 
Department Store." Architectural Record, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 53- 
60, July, 1904. 

: "The Home of an Artist-Architect Louis H. Sullivan's 

Place at Ocean Springs, Miss." Architectural Record, vol. 17, 
no. 6, pp. 471-490, June, 1905, 

Sturgis, Russell: "Good Things in Modern Architecture." Architec- 
tural Record, vol. 8, no. 1, pp. 92-110, July-September, 1898. 

Tallmadge, Thomas E.: "The Chicago School." Architectural Re- 
view, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 69-74, April, 1908. 

: "The People's Savings & Loan Association Building of 

Sidney, Ohio." American Architect, vol. 114, no. 2235, pp. 477- 
482, October 23, 1918. 

: "The Farmers' & Merchants' Bank of Columbus, Wis- 
consin." Western Architect, vol. 29, no. 7, pp. 63-65, July, 1920. 

: "Louis Henri Sullivan, His Claim to Fame." Building for 

the Future series publ. by Peoples Gas Light & Coke Co. Chicago, 
July, 1933. 

Winkler, Franz K.: "Building in Salt Lake City." Architectural 
Record, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 15-37, July, 1907. 

Woltersdorf, Arthur: "Dankmar Adler" (A Portrait-Gallery of 
Chicago Architects, II) . Western Architect, vol. 33, no. 7, pp. 75- 
79, July, 1924. 

Wright, Frank Lloyd: "Louis Sullivan, Beloved Master." Western 
Architect, vol. 33, no. 6, pp. 64-66, June, 1924. 



316 BIBLIOGRAPHY 

: "Louis H. Sullivan His Work." Architectural Record, 

vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 28-32, July, 1924. 

PAMPHLETS 

Auction Catalogue: Catalogue of Auction of Household Effects, 
Library, Oriental Rugs, Paintings, Etc., of Mr. Louis Sullivan. 
November 29, 1909. Williams, Barker & Severn Company, 
Chicago. 

Fraternity Temple: An Announcement to the Independent Order of 
Odd Fellows of Chicago and the State of Illinois, by Wm. C. 
McClintock, President, J. P. Ellacott, Vice-President, and Nor- 
man Totten, Secretary-Treasurer; published in brochure, Sep- 
tember, 1891. 

Mercantile Club: An Announcement to the Members of the Mer- 
cantile Club, St. Louis, by W. A. & A. E. Wells, Chicago, June 1, 
1891. 

St. Paul's Church: St. Paul's Methodist Episcopal Church at Cedar 
Rapids, Iowa. Descriptive pamphlet, with history of the project 
and account of the dedication ceremonies, May 31, 1914. 

Schiller Building: Rental pamphlet publ. by C. P. Dose & Co. 
Chicago, 1892. 

Wainwright Building: Rental pamphlet pubL by the Wainwright 
Real Estate Co. St. Louis, 189L 

NEWSPAPER ARTICLES 

Auditorium: The Dedication of the Auditorium. Chicago Tribune, 
December 10, 1889. 

-: Auditorium Supplement. Sunday Inter-Ocean (Chicago), 



December 8, 1889, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 317 

Exposition Building: The Remodelling of the Exposition Building 
in Grant Park into an Opera Hall. Chicago Sunday Tribune., 
March 1, 1885. 

McVicker's Theatre: The Restoration of the McVicker's Theatre. 
Evening News (Chicago), November 22, 1890. 

: Opening of the New McVicker's. Daily Inter-Ocean (Chi- 
cago), March 31, 1891. 

Sullivan, Louis: America's Foremost Architect and Some of His 
Work. New York Press, Sunday, January 7, 1912. 



PLATES 




, Rothschild Store, Chicago. 1880-81. (Fuermann) 



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(F uermann) 



324 




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328 




12. Auditorium, Chicago. Preliminary design, 1886. (Faerniami) 




13. Auditorium, Chicago. Preliminary design, 1886. (Fuwmtmn] 



329 




14, Auditorium, Chicago. Exterior from East. 



(F uermann) 




IS. Auiiitoriutti, Chicago. Exterior from Southwest. (Rarnum & Barnurn) 



330 




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18. Auditorium Hotel, Chicago. Main dining-room. 

(Chicago Architectural Photograph Co.) 




19. Auditorium Hotel, Chicago. Main dining-room, detail, (Fuermann) 



332 




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334 




22. Cottage, Ocean Springs, Mississippi. 1890. 



(F uerrnann) 




23. Stables, Ocean Springs, Mississippi. 1890. 



(F 



335 





336 




26. Standard Club, Chicago. Addition, 1893. 

(From the Inland Architect & News Record, vol. 22, no. 4, Nov. 1803. 



337 




27. Walker Warehouse, Chicago. 1888-89. 

(Chicago Architectural Photograph Co.) 



338 




28. Marshall Field Wholesale Building, Chicago, by H. H. Richardson. 
1885-87. (Chicago Architectural Photograph Co. ) 




29. Dooly Block, Salt Lake City. 1890-91. 



(Harry Shi pi 



339 




30. Opera House Block, Pueblo, Colorado. 1890. 




31. Victoria Hotel, Chicago Heights, Illinois. 1892^93. (Fuermann) 



340 




32. McVicker's Theatre, Chicago. Proscenium wing and boxes. 1800-91. 

(Barn um & K am urn } 



341 




33. St. Nicholas Hotel St. Louis. 1892-93. (St. Louis Historical Society) 



343 




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36. Anshe Ma'ariv Synagogue, Chicago. Interior. 

{Chicago Architectural Photograph Co.) 



344 




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345 




38. Ryerson Tomb, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago. 1889. (Fuermann) 




39. Getty Tomb, Gnu-eland Cemetery, Chicago, 1890. (Fuermami) 



346 




40. Getty Tomb, Chicago. Door. 



( Fu&rmann ) 



347 




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348 




349 




43. Albert Sullivan Residence, Chicago. 1892. (Fuermann) 



350 




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351 




352 





355 




1-8. Woman's IVmple, Chicago, by Btirnliam & Root. 1891. 

(Chicago Architectural Photograph Co.) 



354 




49. Wainwright Building, St. Louis. 189091. (Keystone-Underwood) 



355 




50. Sdhiller Building, Chicago. 1891-92. Borden Block (1879-80) in 
foreground. ((Chicago Architectural Photograph Co,) 



356 




'"A,"';; 1 ',' 

51. Design for Fraternity Temple, Chicago. 1891. 



357 




52. Dr-Ign for Trust & Savings Bank Building* St. Louis. 1893. 

(F Hermann) 



358 







O 



.c 
^g 



PQ 



359 




54. Stock Exchange Building, Chicago. 1893-94. (Barnum & Barnum} 



360 




55. Guaranty Building, Buffalo. 1894-95. 



( F uermann ) 



361 




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362 




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363 




58. Bayard Building, New York. 1897-98. 

(PTurts Bros.) 



364 




365 




60. Carson Pine Scott Store, Chicago. 1899-1904. 

(Chicago Architectural Photograph Co.) 



366 







>'-.'* * J : s * I i * v i \\ I '< \ t. * 4\ 
61. Carson Pirie Scott Store, Chicago. Detail of fagade. 



367 







i K h, 



368 




63. Crane Company Building, Chicago. 1903-04. 




64. Felsenthal Store, Chicago. 1905. 



(Barron) 



369 




65. Bahson Residence, Riverside, Illinois. 1907. 



(F Hermann) 




66. Babsou Evidence, Riverside, Illinois. Garden facade. (Fuermann) 



370 




67. Bradley Residence, Madison, Wisconsin. 1909. 




68. Bradley Residence, Madison, Wisconsin. Balcony. (Barron) 



371 




.3 






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II 

fl o 



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6* 

ef 

o 
-5S 






372 




373 




71. National Farmers" Bank, Owatonna, Minn. Detail of cornice. 

(Fuermann) 



374 




I 



JS 

o 



pq 



375 





376 




:'. 1 

')^ ' : '''*'" "^ 1 



75. People's Savings Bank, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. 1911. 

(Wm. Baldridge, Cedar Rapids} 




76. St. Paul's Church, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1913-14. 

( Wm. Baldridge, Cedar Rapid* > 



377 




77. Van Allen Store, Clinton, Iowa. 1913-15. (Beil Studio, Clinton) 




78. Adams Building, Algona, Iowa. 1,913. 



(Barron) 



378 




^p 

I I 

ON 



O 



PQ 



379 




HO* Moi-chants* National Bank, Grinnell, Iowa. Interior. (Fuermann) 



380 





381 




I 
c2 



-2 
O 











I 

"S 



co 
00 



383 




384 




86. Farmers' and Merchants' Union Bank, Columbus, Wisconsin. 1919. 

( F Hermann ) 




87. Farmers' and Merchants' Union Bank, Columbus, Wisconsin. Interior. 

{Fuermann ) 



INDEX 



INDEX 



Adams Building, Algona, Iowa, 217, 304, 
PL 78 

Adler, Dankmar, described by Sullivan, 
49-50 ; by Wright, 80-81 ; last years and 
death, 175-176; biographical sketch, 
283-292; writings, 292-293 

Adler, Liebman, 124, 283, 284 

Adler Residence, Chicago, 74, 299, fig. 4 

Adler & Sullivan, partnership formed, 51; 
relationship between the two men, 83- 
84; office staff, 84-85; offices in Audi- 
torium tower, 96; business reverses, 
174-175; partnership dissolved, 175 

Algona, Iowa, see Adams Building 

Anshe Ma'ariv Synagogue, Chicago, 124- 
125, 301, Pis. 34-36 

Apartment-hotel, Chicago, design for, 
301 

Atelier Vaudremer, Paris, 32, 44-45 

Auditorium Building, Chicago: Audito- 
rium Association, 86, 89 ; early designs, 
87, Pis. 12, 13; Richardson's influence, 
87-89; dates of construction, 89, 96, 
108; foundations, 89-90, 92; structure, 
90, 93, 103, fig. 5; exterior design, 94- 
96, Pis. 14, 15; Hotel, 96-98, Pis. 16- 
19; business portion, 98; Theatre, 99- 
105, Pis. 20, 21; acoustics, 101-103; 
stage and equipment, 105-107 

Babson Residence, Riverside, 111., 202- 
204, 304, Pis. 65, 66 

Banks, see Adams Building, Algona, 
Iowa; Farmers' & Merchants' Union 
Bank, Columbus, Wis.; Home Build- 
ing Association Bank, Newark, Ohio; 
Merchants' National Bank, Grinnell, 
Iowa; National Farmers' Bank, Owa- 
tonna, Minn.; People's Savings & Loan 



Association Bank, Sidney, Ohio; Peo- 
ple's Savings Bank, Cedar Rapids, 
Iowa; Purdue State Bank, West La- 
fayette, Ind.; Trust & Savings Bank 
Building, St. Louis 

Barbe Residence, Chicago, 73, 297 

Baumann, Frederick, 48, 54 

Bayard Building, New York, 191-194, 
303, PL 58 

Beman, Solon Spencer, 59 

Bennett, Carl K., 207 

Bloomenfeld Residence, Chicago, 72, 296, 
PL 9 

Bock, Richard, 160 

Borden Block, Chicago, 57-58, 84, 294, 
PL 50 

Borden Residence, Chicago, 71-72, 295, 

- PL 8 

Boston fire of 1872, 32 

Bouilhet, Andre, 188 

Bourget, Paul, 189-190 

Boyington, W. W., 37, 54, 67 

Bradley Residence, Madison, Wis., 204- 
205, 304, Pis. 67-69 

Bragdon, Claude, 140, 226, 235, 270 

Brand Building, Chicago, 297 

Brand Store, Chicago, 296 

Brunswick & Balke Factory, Warehouse, 
and Lumber-Drying Plant, Chicago, 
295 

Buffalo, New York, see Guaranty Build- 
ing 

Buffington, Leroy S., 78 

Burling & Adler, 37, 49, 50, 285 

Burnham, Daniel H., 181-183, 187, 198 

Burnham Library, Chicago, 239, 260 
387 



388 



INDEX 



Burnham & Root, 37, 54, 64, 65, 141, 142, 
144, 169, PL 48 

Carnegie Hall, New York, 289 

Carson Pirie Scott Store, Chicago, 197- 
201, 303, Pis. 60-62 

Carter, Drake & Wight, 37 

Cedar Rapids, Iowa, see People's Savings 
Bank; St. Paul's Church 

Central Music Hall, Chicago, 286-288, 
294 

Charnley Residence, Chicago, 132-133, 
302, PL 42 

Chicago Cold Storage Exchange Ware- 
house, 126, 301, PL 37 

Chicago School, The, 269-270 

Church, see St. Paul's Church 

Clinton, Iowa, see Van Allen Store 

Clopet, Monsieur, 42, 43, 48 

Columbus, Wis., see Farmers' & Mer- 
chants' Union Bank 

Condict Building, New York, see Bayard 
Building 

Crane Company Factory, Chicago, 300; 
Foundry & Machine Shop, Chicago, 
303; Office Building, Chicago, 201, 304, 
PL 63 

Crane, Richard T., 175, 176 

Daily Times Building, Chicago, see Troe- 

scher Building 

Das Deutsche Haus, Milwaukee, 301 
Dexter Building, Chicago, 62-63, 299, PL 

5 

Dexter Residence, Chicago, 300 
Diemal Residence, Chicago, 299 
Dooly Block, Salt Lake City, 116, 121, 

301, PL 29 
Dunning, Max, 190, 226 

Ecole des Beaux Arts, 32, 34, 40, 44, 46, 

47 

Edelmann, John, 39, 49, 50, 59 
Eliel Residence, Chicago, 299 
Elmslie, George G., 51, 81, 82, 174, 200, 

203, 204, 205, 210, 213, 226 
English High School, Boston, 28, 29, 31 
Euston & Company Factories, Chicago, 

303 



Factories, see Brunswick & Balke Facto- 
ry, Chicago; Crane Company Factory, 
Chicago; Euston & Company Factories, 
Chicago; Felsenthal Building, Chica- 
go; Kennedy Bakery, Chicago; Knise- 
ly Building, Chicago; Selz, Schwab & 
Company Factory, Chicago; Scoville 
Building, Chicago; Wright & Lowther 
Factory, Chicago 

Falkenau, Victor, residences for, 130- 
131, 301, fig. 9 

Farmers' & Merchants' Union Bank, Co- 
lumbus, Wis., 223-224, 305, Pis. 86, 87 

Felsenthal Building, Chicago, 300 

Felsenthal Residence, Chicago, 74, 299, 
fig. 4 

Felsenthal Store, Chicago, 202, 304, PL 
64 

Fleury, murals for Auditorium, 104 

Frankenthal Building, Chicago, 296 

Fraternity Temple, Chicago, design for, 
162-165, 301, PL 51 

Furneas, Frank, 35 

Furness & Hewitt, 36, 40 

Gage Building, Chicago, 194-197, 303, 

PL 59 
Garrick Theatre, Chicago, see Schiller 

Building 
Getty Tomb, Chicago, 128-129, 300, Pis. 

39, 40 

Gilbert, Bradford, 141 
Gilbert, Cass, 236 

Goodman Residence, Chicago, 74, 299 
Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, 128, 129, 

227 

Grand Opera House, Chicago, 66, 295 
Grinnell, Iowa, see Merchant*** National 
Bank 

Gross, Oskar, mural for Owatorma bank, 
209 

Guaranty Building, Buffalo, 172-174, 303, 
Pis. 55-57 

Halsted, Mrs. N, residences for, 297 
Hammond Library, Chicago, 296 
Hattabough, Margaret, 224 
Heath Residence, Chicago, 1 13-114, 300, 
PL 25 



INDEX 



389 



Hewitt, George, 36 

Hewitt, John, 36 

Hitchcock, Henry-Russell, 271 

Holabird & Roche, 39, 141, 194, 195, 197 

Holabird & Root, 109 

Holloway, Charles, 101 

Holzheimer Residence, Chicago, 299 

Home Building Association Bank, New- 
ark, Ohio, 219-220, 304, Pis. 81, 82 

Hooley's Theatre, Chicago, 66, 298 

Hotel Ontario, Salt Lake City, 118, 121, 
301 

Hotel, design for a, 121, 301, fig. 7 
Hotels, see Auditorium Building, Chica- 
go; Hotel Ontario, Salt Lake City; St. 
Nicholas Hotel, St. Louis; Victoria Ho- 
tel, Chicago Heights 
Hunt, Richard Morris, 34, 52, 140, 182 
Hyman Residence, Chicago, 296 

Illinois Central Railroad Station, New 
Orleans, 126, 302, fig. 8 

Illinois Central Railroad Suburban Sta- 
tions, Chicago, 299 

Interstate Exposition Building, Chicago, 
67, 85 

Isaiah Temple, Chicago, 291 

Jenney, William LeBaron, 37, 38, 54, 57, 

59, 78, 140, 141 

Jewelers' Building, Chicago, 60, 295 
Jewish Training School, Chicago, 300 

Kauffmann Store, Chicago, 297 
Kennedy Bakery, Chicago, 296 
Kimball, Fiske, 262 
Kimball Residence, Chicago, 296 
Knisely Building, Chicago, 64-65, 298, 

PL 6 

Knisely Store, Chicago, 296 
Kohn Residence, Chicago, 74, 298, fig. 4 
Kranz Building, Chicago, 300 
Krause Music Store, Chicago, 224, 305 
Kuh Residence, Chicago, 298 

Land & Loan Office, Algona, Iowa, see 

Adams Building 
Lautrup, Paul, 124 



Leopold Residence, Chicago, 296 
Letang, Eugene, 32 
Lindauer Residence, Chicago, 74, 298 
Lively Residence, Chicago, 300 

Madison, Wis., see Bradley Residence 

Marshall Field Wholesale Building, Chi- 
cago, 88, 94, 114-116, PI. 28 

Martin Ryerson Charities Trust Build- 
ing, Chicago, 299 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 
31, 33, 35 

McCormick Building, Chicago, see Gage 
Building 

McKim, Mead & White, 142, 187, PL 47 
McVicker's Theatre, Chicago, 67, 118- 
121, 298, 301, PL 32 

Mercantile Club, St. Louis, design for, 
301 

Merchants' National Bank, Grinnell, 
Iowa, 217-219, 304, Pis. 79, 80 

Meyer Building, Chicago, 168-169, 303, 
PL 53 

Millett, Louis J., 221 

Monadnock Block, Chicago, 56, 64, 65, 
144, 229 

Morgan Park Military Academy, 291 

Mormon Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, 288 

Mueller, Paul, 57, 80, 81, 84, 85, 106 

Mumford, Lewis, 229 

National Farmers' Bank, Owatonna, 
Minn,, 207-210, 304, fig. 15, Pis. 70-74 

Newark, Ohio, see Home Building Asso- 
ciation Bank 

New Orleans, see Illinois Central Rail- 
road Station 

New York Life Insurance Building, Kan- 
sas City, 143-144, PL 47 

New York World Building, New York, 
143, PL 46 

Norton, John, 210 

Oakley Building, Chicago, 302 
Ocean Springs, Miss., 111-112 
Office buildings, early, 55-63; middle, 
116; skyscraper, 145-174; late, 201-202 



390 



INDEX 



Opera Festival Auditorium, Chicago, 67- 

71, 298, fig. 3 
Opera House Block, Pueblo, Col., 117- 

118, 301, PL 30 
Opera House Block, Seattle, Wash., 118, 

301, fig. 6 
Owatonna, Minn., see National Farmers' 

Bank 

Pabst Theatre, Milwaukee, 289 

Peck Building, Chicago, 299 

Peck, Ferdinand W., 62, 67, 70, 85, 86, 

88, 108 

People's Savings & Loan Association 
Bank, Sidney, Ohio, 180, 220-223, 305, 
Pis. 83-85 
People's Savings Bank, Cedar Rapids, 

Iowa, 210-212, 304, PL 75 
Pond, Irving K., 39, 162 
Post, George B., 88, 142, PL 46 
Presto, William C., 224 
Prudential Building, Buffalo, see Guar- 
anty Building 

Pueblo, Col., see Opera House Block 
Pulitzer Building, New York, 143, PL 46 
Purdue State Bank, West Lafayette, Ind., 
220, 305 

Railroad Station, New Orleans, see Illi- 
nois Central Railroad 

Ramsey, Charles K., 165 

Residences, early, 71-74; middle, 113-114, 
130-133; late, 202-205, 224 

Revell Building, Chicago, 59-60, 295, PL 
2 

Richardson, Henry Hobson, 52, 62, 87- 

89, 94, 113-116, 124, 129-131, 187, 229 
Riverside, 111., see Babson Residence 
Root, John Wellborn, 88, 182, 187, 229, 

287 

Rosenfeld Building, Chicago, 295 
Rothschild, Max M., residences for, 72- 

73, 296, 297, PL 10 

Rothschild Store, Chicago, 58-59, 295, PL 
1 

Rubee Store, Chicago, 297 
Ryerson Building, Chicago, 60-61, 297, 
PL 3 



Ryerson, Martin, 59-62, 114, 128 
Ryerson Tomb, Chicago, 128-129, 300, 
PL 38 

St. Louis, see St. Nicholas Hotel, Trust 

& Savings Bank Building, Union Trust 

Building, Wainwright Building, Wain- 

wright Tomb 

St. Nicholas Hotel, St. Louis, 121-122, 

302, PL 33 
St. Paul's Church, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 

213-216, 304, fig. 16, PL 76 
Salt Lake City, see Dooly Block, Hotel 

Ontario 

Scarab Fraternity, 235 
Schiller Building, Chicago, 156-162, 302, 

fig. 11, PL 50 
Schlesinger & Mayer Building, Chicago, 

see Carson Pirie Scott Store 
Schneider, Kristian, 200 
Schoolhouse, Marengo, 111., 297 
Schuyler, Montgomery, 64, 84, 121, 162, 

163, 191-193, 210, 212, 291 
Schwab Residence, Chicago, 73, 297 
Scoville Building, Chicago, 298 
Seattle, Wash., see Opera House Block 
Selz Residence, Chicago, 73, 297 
Selz, Schwab & Company Factory, Chi- 
cago, 65, 299, PL 7 
Sidney, Ohio, see People's Savings & 
Loan Association Bank 

Sinai Temple, Chicago, 302 
Skyscrapers, early history of, 54, 78, 140, 

141; by Adler & Sullivan, 1,45-174; by 

Sullivan, 191-201 
Smith, General Wm. Sooy, 169 
Smith, Lyndon P., 191 
Springer Building, Chicago, 299 
Standard Club, Chicago, 113, 300, Pis. 

24,26 

Stearns Residence, Chicago, 298 
Steele, WUliam L, 179, 237 
Stern, Henry, Residence, Chicago, 298 
Stern, Samuel, Residence, Chicago, 298 

Stock Exchange Building, Chicago, 169- 
172, 303, PL 54 

Strauss Residence, Chicago, 73, 297 



INDEX 



391 



Sturgis, Russell, 191, 193 

Sullivan, Albert Walter, 24; residence of, 
133, 302, PL 43 

Sullivan, Andrienne List, 23, 24 

Sullivan, Louis, parentage, 23-24; in- 
fancy, 24-26; schooling, 26-27; early 
interest in architecture, 27-28; English 
High School, 28-30; Mass. Inst. of 
Tech., 31-34; work in Phila., 34-37; 
work in Chicago, 37-40; Ecole des 
Beaux Arts, 40-47; return to Chicago, 
47-50 ; partnership with Adler, 50-51 ; 
early style, 76-78; described by Wright 
and Elrnslie, 81-83; home at Ocean 
Springs, 111-112; style compared with 
Richardson's, 114-116; approach to the 
problem of skyscraper design, 147-151; 
theory of funeiiomilism as applied to 
the skyscraper, 151-154; dissolution of 
partnership with Adler, 175; decline 
of popularity, 178-182; European ap- 
preciation, 188-191; marriage, 224; 
late years, 225-226; death, 227 

Sullivan, Patrick, 23-24, 28 

Sullivanls (to tt ages at Ocean Springs, 
MIHH., 112, 300, Pis. 22, 23 

Synagogues, see Anshe Ma'ariv Syna- 
gogue, Chicago; Isaiah Temple, Chi- 
cago; Sinai Temple, Chicago; Zion 
Temple, Chicago 

TallmadN Thomas E., 206, 223 
Theatres, early, 65-71; Auditorium, 99- 
108; middle period, 117-121 

Thompson, George, 31 
Thompnon, John A,, 30 
To nibs, $w Ct'Uy Tomb, Chicago; Ryer- 

son Tomb, Chicago; Wainwright Tomb, 
St, LCHIIH 

Transportation Building, World's Colum- 
bian Kxponition, 133- 138, 206, 303, Pis. 
'VK 45 

Tro<wrh<T Building, Chicago, 61-62, 297,. 
PL 4 



Trust & Savings Bank Building, St. Louis, 
designs for, 166-168, 302, PL 52 

Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs, 137, 
188, 189 

Union Trust Building, St. Louis, 165-166, 
302, fig. 12 

Van Allen Store, Clinton, Iowa, 216-217, 

304, PL 77 

Van Osdel, John M., 37, 53, 54 
Victoria Hotel, Chicago Heights, 122-124, 

302, PL 31 

Viollet-le-Duc, 265, 266 

Wainwright Building, St. .Louis, 145-155, 

301, fig. 10, PL 49 

Wainwright Tomb, St. Louis, 129-130, 

302, PL 41 

Walker Warehouse, Chicago, 114-116, 

300, PL 27 

Ware, William, 31, 87 
Warehouses, see Brunswick & Balke 

Warehouse, Chicago; Chicago Cold 

Storage Exchange Warehouse; Wal- 

ker Warehouse, Chicago 
West Chicago Club, Chicago, 76, 299, PL 

11 

West Lafayette, Ind., see Purdue State 

Bank 

Whitaker, Charles H., 238 
Woman's Temple, Chicago, 144, PL 48 
Woolson, Moses, 29 
World's Columbian Exposition, 133-138, 

182-186, 206 
Wright, Frtnk UayV$% $1, 85, 101, 130, 

132, 133,, 14$t 226, 240 

Wright & Chicago, 296 



Zion 
Zorn, 



14-76, 298 



, ISl 



116885