In case you missed it, I had a chance to discuss the architecture of the great Louis Sullivan, who died 100 year ago yesterday, in an article for Discourse. Excerpt:
Taking inspiration from his favorite poet, Walt Whitman (Sullivan would even publish his own Whitmanesque free-verse poetry), he aimed for an architecture that would celebrate “Democracy,” a word he usually capitalized, and that to him meant “the immense growth in power of constructive imagination…the lifting of the eyelids of the World.” Sullivan defined Democracy as individualism multiplied by millions. As he put it in his idiosyncratic way:
[The] Ego—the “I am”—the unique—[is] the most precious of man’s powers, their source and summation…. It is the free spirit…the sign and symbol of man’s immense Integrity—the “I am that I am”…. It is this spiritual integrity that defines him human, that points true to his high moral power…. Our dream shall be of a civilization founded upon ideas thrillingly sane, a civilization, a social fabric squarely resting on man’s quality of virtue as a human being; created by man, the real, in the image of his fruitful powers of beneficence; created in the likeness of his aspirant emotions, in response to the power and glory of his true imagination, the power of his intelligence, his ability to inquire, to do, to make new situations befitting his needs. A civilization that shall reflect man sound to the core and kindly in the exercise of his will to choose aright. A civilization that shall be the living voice, the spring song, the saga of the power of his Ego to banish fear and fate, and in the courage of adventure and mastership to shape his destiny…. The living idea of man, the free spirit, master of his powers, shall find its form-image in a civilization which shall set forth the highest craftsmanship, the artistry of living joyously in stable equilibrium.
He thought this revolutionary flood of individual creativity rendered any architecture inherited from the Middle Ages or the Roman Empire obsolete—even pernicious, because such buildings perpetuated notions of hierarchy and authoritarianism that had no place in a free society. Thus when he returned to Chicago and, at the age of 28, took a job with engineer Dankmar Adler, a German immigrant a dozen years his senior, his mission was to create an architecture of liberty—a true American architecture.
Last year, I went on something of a Louis Sullivan pilgrimage. You can check out the photos here.
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