I've long been a fan of the great architect Louis Sullivan, the "father of the skyscraper," who is probably best remembered today as the mentor of Frank Lloyd Wright (and is known to Fountainhead fans as the model for the character of Henry Cameron). Sullivan didn't invent the skyscraper or the steel-frame building (the first of those was built by his friend, William LeBaron Jenney), but he invented the aesthetics of the tall building, insisting in his famous article "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered" that tall buildings should look tall, and not try to look like French castles or Roman temples. And he was, indeed, one of the greatest artists of American building. He's also one of the great tragic figures of American art; in the early 20th century, the architecture profession turned against his style and toward neo-classicism, and he ended up dying bankrupt and nearly forgotten by all but a few of his admirers (among whom was, of course, Wright).
This summer, I got a chance to see one of Sullivan's greatest achievements, the National Farmers Bank in Owatonna, Minnesota (1908), which is now a Wells Fargo and is probably the most beautiful room in America (click on pictures to enlarge):
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Sullivan built this and other, similar banks--known as the Jewel Box Banks--late in his career, after he had ceased to obtain important commissions in major cities.
Years earlier, however, he had been at the cutting edge, and his greatest early achievement was the Chicago Auditorium Building (1889), which I was lucky enough to get a chance to visit this week:
Unhappy, unable to get inside, this summer
Happy, inside the lobby, this week
This is the former hotel lobby, now the University's lobby
A classroom in the University, with a piano tutoring going on
When it was built, it was the largest building in the US, and the tallest building in Chicago. It was full of technological innovations such as light bulbs, evaporative cooling, and a hydraulic system to lift sections of the stage so that the sets could be swapped out more quickly during plays. It was also unusual in having a surprisingly plain lobby; at the time, theaters were designed to have very ornate lobbies, because they were intended for the Upper Crust. The Auditorium Building was intended to be accessible to the Working Class as much as the elites, and part of that was to reduce the ornate qualities in the lobby, without sacrificing elegance and glamour. I'd say Sullivan and his partner Dankmar Adler, succeeded in that. The Auditorium was such a beautiful success that it probably is what got Chicago chosen as the site of the epochal 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.
Wright, by the way, worked on the building as a budding young intern; the only thing we know for certain that he did is this design on the newel post, although he later claimed credit for a lot of other things.
The building was purchased by Roosevelt University in the 1940s. Today, the theater section is still used as an Auditorium, but the rest--which was originally a hotel and an office building--is used for classrooms and offices.
I am very grateful to the Chicago Architecture Center for going out of their way to let me see the inside of this fantastic building.
I also had the chance to visit a few of Sullivan's other buildings in the area. Only 21 Sullivan structures remain standing in Chicago, unfortunately, and even the bits and pieces of destroyed buildings are so beautiful that they're treasured artworks.
A fragment from a demolished Sullivan building, on display at the Chicago Art Institute
What's left of the Chicago Stock Exchange Building, for example, is on display at the Art Institute:
The former trading room of the Stock Exchange, now used as a banquet space in the Art Institute
But surely Sullivan's most striking Chicago building is the Carson-Pirie-Scott Building (1899) (now a Target) on Michigan Avenue.
The Jeweler's Building (1882), just a block away, was Sullivan's first building in Chicago. By comparison to the Auditorium and Carson-Pirie-Scott, it's quite tame.
And a block or so from there is one of his later commissions, the facade of the Gage Building (1890.)
I'm delighted to have had a chance to visit these glorious buildings, and it's just whetted my appetite to see more, especially his buildings in Buffalo, St. Louis, Manhattan, and, of course, the rest of the Jewel Box Banks. By the way, I wrote about Sullivan a while back for The Objective Standard.
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