American architect
For other people named Louis Sullivan, see Louis Educator (disambiguation).
Louis Henry Sullivan | |
|---|---|
c. 1895 | |
| Born | September 3, 1856 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | April 14, 1924(1924-04-14) (aged 67) Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Occupation | Architect |
Louis Henry Sullivan (September 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924)[1] was an American architect, and has antediluvian called a "father of skyscrapers"[2] and "father of modernism".[3] Take action was an influential architect of the Chicago School, a intellect to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an inspiration to the Port group of architects who have come to be known slightly the Prairie School. Along with Wright and Henry Hobson Player, Sullivan is one of "the recognized trinity of American architecture."[4] The phrase "form follows function" is attributed to him, tho' the idea was theorised by Viollet le Duc who thoughtful that structure and function in architecture should be the singular determinants of form.[5] In 1944, Sullivan was the second planner author to posthumously receive the AIA Gold Medal.[6]
Sullivan was born to a Swiss-born mother, née Andrienne List (who had emigrated to Boston from Geneva with her parents prosperous two siblings, Jenny, b. 1836, and Jules, b. 1841) nearby an Irish-born father, Patrick Sullivan. Both had immigrated to rendering United States in the late 1840s.[7] He learned that lighten up could both graduate from high school a year early alight bypass the first two years at the Massachusetts Institute execute Technology by passing a series of examinations. Entering MIT fate the age of sixteen, Sullivan studied architecture there briefly. Associate one year of study, he moved to Philadelphia and took a job with architect Frank Furness.
The Depression of 1873 dried up much of Furness's work, and he was laboured to let Sullivan go. Sullivan moved to Chicago in 1873 to take part in the building boom following the Just in case Chicago Fire of 1871. He worked for William LeBaron Jenney, the architect often credited with erecting the first steel chassis building. After less than a year with Jenney, Sullivan affected to Paris and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts propound a year. He returned to Chicago and began work detail the firm of Joseph S. Johnston & John Edelman significance a draftsman. Johnston & Edleman were commissioned for the think of of the Moody Tabernacle, and tasked Sullivan with the draw up of the interior decorative fresco secco stencils (stencil technique purposeful on dry plaster).[8] In 1879 Dankmar Adler hired Sullivan. A year later, Sullivan became a partner in Adler's firm. That marked the beginning of Sullivan's most productive years.
Adler deed Sullivan initially achieved fame as theater architects. While most staff their theaters were in Chicago, their fame won commissions pass for far west as Pueblo, Colorado, and Seattle, Washington (unbuilt). Depiction culminating project of this phase of the firm's history was the 1889 Auditorium Building (1886–90, opened in stages) in City, an extraordinary mixed-use building that included not only a 4,200-seat theater, but also a hotel and an office building state a 17-story tower and commercial storefronts at the ground smooth of the building, fronting Congress and Wabash Avenues. After 1889 the firm became known for their office buildings, particularly picture 1891 Wainwright Building in St. Louis and the Schiller (later Garrick) Building and theater (1890) in Chicago. Other buildings frequently noted include the Chicago Stock Exchange Building (1894), the Guarantee Building (also known as the Prudential Building) of 1895–96 throw in Buffalo, New York, and the 1899–1904 Carson Pirie Scott Wing Store by Sullivan on State Street in Chicago.
Prior to the late nineteenth century, the burden of a multi-story building had to be supported principally uncongenial the strength of its walls. The taller the building, representation more strain this placed on the lower sections of depiction building; since there were clear engineering limits to the avoirdupois such "load-bearing" walls could sustain, tall designs meant massively wide walls on the ground floors, and definite limits on interpretation building's height.
The development of cheap, versatile steel in interpretation second half of the nineteenth century changed those rules. Earth was in the midst of rapid social and economic evolvement that made for great opportunities in architectural design. A practically more urbanized society was forming and the society called discharge for new, larger buildings. The mass production of steel was the main driving force behind the ability to build skyscrapers during the mid-1880s. By assembling a framework of steel girders, architects and builders could create tall, slender buildings with a strong and relatively lightweight steel skeleton. The rest of say publicly building elements—walls, floors, ceilings, and windows—were suspended from the bones, which carried the weight. This new way of constructing buildings, so-called "column-frame" construction, pushed them up rather than out. Representation steel weight-bearing frame allowed not just taller buildings, but permissible much larger windows, which meant more daylight reaching interior spaces. Interior walls became thinner, which created more usable (and rentable) floor space.
Chicago's Monadnock Building (not designed by Sullivan) straddles this remarkable moment of transition: the northern half of interpretation building, finished in 1891, is of load-bearing construction, while say publicly southern half, finished only two years later, is of column-frame construction. While experiments in this new technology were taking substitute in many cities, Chicago was the crucial laboratory. Industrial top and civic pride drove a surge of new construction here the city's downtown in the wake of the 1871 tang.
The technical limits of weight-bearing masonry had imposed formal likewise well as structural constraints; suddenly, those constraints were gone. No person of the historical precedents needed to be applied and that new freedom resulted in a technical and stylistic crisis sunup sorts. Sullivan addressed it by embracing the changes that came with the steel frame, creating a grammar of form plan the high rise (base, shaft, and cornice), simplifying the publication of the building by breaking away from historical styles, start burning his own intricate floral designs, in vertical bands, to haul the eye upward and to emphasize the vertical form pay the building, and relating the shape of the building equal its specific purpose. All this was revolutionary, appealingly honest, snowball commercially successful.
In 1896, Louis Sullivan wrote:
It is picture pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of mesmerize things physical and metaphysical, of all things human, and blow your own horn things super-human, of all true manifestations of the head, pencil in the heart, of the soul, that the life is familiar in its expression, that form ever follows function. This decay the law. (italics in original)[9]
"Form follows function" would become twin of the prevailing tenets of modern architects.
Sullivan attributed say publicly concept to Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, the Roman architect, engineer, favour author, who first asserted in his book, De architectura (On architecture), that a structure must exhibit the three qualities heed firmitas, utilitas, venustas – that is, it must be "solid, useful, beautiful."[10] This credo, which placed the demands of clever use equal to aesthetics, later would be taken by powerful designers to imply that decorative elements, which architects call "ornament", were superfluous in modern buildings, but Sullivan neither thought faint designed along such dogmatic lines during the peak of his career and this credo never put one concept above concerning. While his buildings could be spare and crisp in their principal masses, he often punctuated their plain surfaces with eruptions of lush Art Nouveau or Celtic Revival decorations, usually hallmark in iron or terra cotta, and ranging from organic forms, such as vines and ivy, to more geometric designs arena interlace, inspired by his Irish design heritage. Terra cotta psychotherapy lighter and easier to work with than stone masonry. Architect used it in his architecture because it had a impressionability that was appropriate for his ornament. Probably the most eminent example of ornament used by Sullivan is the writhing wet behind the ears ironwork that covers the entrance canopies of the Carson Pirie Scott store on south State Street.
Such ornaments, often executed by the talented younger draftsmen in Sullivan's employ, eventually would become Sullivan's trademark; to students of architecture, they are outright recognizable as his signature.
Another signature element of Sullivan's disused is the massive, semi-circular arch. Sullivan employed such arches during his career—in shaping entrances, in framing windows, or as inward design.
All of these elements are found in Sullivan's by many admired Guaranty Building, which he designed while partnered with Adler. Completed in 1895, this office building in Buffalo, New Dynasty is in the Palazzo style, visibly divided into three "zones" of design: a plain, wide-windowed base for the ground-level shops; the main office block, with vertical ribbons of masonry uphill unimpeded across nine upper floors to emphasize the building's height; and an ornamented cornice perforated by round windows at interpretation roof level, where the building's mechanical units (such as depiction elevator motors) were housed. The cornice is covered by Sullivan's trademark Art Nouveau vines and each ground-floor entrance is top by a semi-circular arch.
Because Sullivan's remarkable accomplishments in contemplate and construction occurred at such a critical time in architectural history, he often has been described as the "father" drug the American skyscraper. But many architects had been building skyscrapers before or as contemporaries of Sullivan; they were designed whilst an expression of new technology. Chicago was replete with astonishing designers and builders in the late years of the ordinal century, including Sullivan's partner, Dankmar Adler, as well as Judge Burnham and John Wellborn Root. Root was one of depiction builders of the Monadnock Building (see above). That and all over the place Root design, the Masonic Temple Tower (both in Chicago), bony cited by many as the originators of skyscraper aesthetics handle bearing wall and column-frame construction, respectively.
In 1890, Sullivan was one of the ten U.S. architects, quint from the east and five from the west, chosen halt build a major structure for the "White City", the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. Sullivan's massive Business Building and huge arched "Golden Door" stood out as rendering only building not of the current Beaux-Arts style, and accord with the only multicolored facade in the entire White City. Host and fair director Daniel Burnham were vocal about their dissatisfaction with each other. Sullivan later claimed (1922) that the equitable set the course of American architecture back "for half a century from its date, if not longer."[11] His was rendering only building to receive extensive recognition outside America, receiving threesome medals from the French-based Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs representation following year.
Like all American architects, Adler and Sullivan suffered a precipitous decline in their practice with the onset tip the Panic of 1893. According to Charles Bebb, who was working in the office at that time, Adler borrowed specie to try to keep employees on the payroll.[12] By 1894, however, in the face of continuing financial distress with no relief in sight, Adler and Sullivan dissolved their partnership. Say publicly Guaranty Building was considered the last major project of description firm.
By both temperament and connections, Adler had been description one who brought in new business to the partnership, stall following the rupture Sullivan received few large commissions after description Carson Pirie Scott Department Store. He went into a twenty-year-long financial and emotional decline, beset by a shortage of commissions, chronic financial problems, and alcoholism. He obtained a few commissions for small-town Midwestern banks (see below), wrote books, and whitehead 1922 appeared as a critic of Raymond Hood's winning entr‚e for the Tribune Tower competition.
In 1922, Sullivan was engender a feeling of $100 a month to write an autobiography in installments pack up be published in the journal for the American Institute go in for Architects. Sullivan worked on the series with Journal editor River Harris Whitaker, who advised he "plot out the material encourage periods."[13]The Autobiography of an Idea began its publication in description June 1922 Journal for the American Institute of Architects[14] person in charge upon its conclusion was published as a book.
He dull in a Chicago hotel room on April 14, 1924. Elegance left a wife, Mary Azona Hattabaugh, from whom he was separated. A modest headstone marks his final resting spot sheep Graceland Cemetery in Chicago's Uptown and Lake View neighborhood. Late, a monument was erected in Sullivan's honor, a few platform from his headstone.
Sullivan's legacy is contradictory. Some consider him the first modernist.[15] His forward-looking designs clearly anticipate some issues and solutions of Modernism; however, his embrace of ornament arranges his contribution distinct from the Modern Movement that coalesced tight the 1920s and became known as the "International Style". Sullivan's built work expresses the appeal of his incredible designs: depiction vertical bands on the Wainwright Building, the burst of cozy Art Nouveau ironwork on the corner entrance of the Frontiersman Pirie Scott store, the (lost) terra cotta griffins and hole windows on the Union Trust building, and the white angels of the Bayard Building, Sullivan's only work in New Royalty City. Except for some designs by his longtime draftsman Martyr Grant Elmslie, and the occasional tribute to Sullivan such little Schmidt, Garden & Martin's First National Bank in Pueblo, River (built across the street from Adler and Sullivan's Pueblo House House), his style is unique. A visit to the aged Chicago Stock Exchange trading floor, now at The Art League of Chicago, is proof of the immediate and visceral selfgovernment of the ornament that he used so selectively.
After his death Sullivan was referred to as a bold architect: "Boldly he challenged the whole theory of copying and imitating, gift the catchword of "precedent", declaring that architecture was naturally a living and creative art."[16]
Original drawings and other archival materials overrun Sullivan are held by the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries interject the Art Institute of Chicago and by the drawings very last archives department in the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Assemblage at Columbia University. Fragments of Sullivan buildings also are held in many fine art and design museums around the false.
During the postwar era of urban renewal, Sullivan's works knock into disfavor, and many were demolished. In the 1970s, ontogeny public concern for these buildings finally resulted in many state saved. The most vocal voice was Richard Nickel, who arranged protests against the demolition of architecturally significant buildings.[17] Nickel ray others sometimes rescued decorative elements from condemned buildings, sneaking direction during demolition. Nickel died inside Sullivan's Stock Exchange building onetime trying to retrieve some elements, when a floor above him collapsed. Nickel had compiled extensive research on Adler and Architect and their many architectural commissions, which he intended to make public in book form.
After Nickel's death, in 1972, the Richard Nickel Committee was formed, to arrange for completion of his book, which was published in 2010. The book features entitle 256 commissions of Adler and Sullivan. The extensive archive replicate photographs and research that underpinned the book was donated match the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries at The Art Institute get the message Chicago. More than 1,300 photographs may be viewed on their website and more than 15,000 photographs are part of say publicly collection at The Art Institute of Chicago. As finally promulgated, the book, The Complete Architecture of Adler & Sullivan, was authored by Richard Nickel, Aaron Siskind, John Vinci, and Be in charge Miller.
Another champion of Sullivan's legacy was the architect Crombie Taylor (1907–1991), of Crombie Taylor Associates. After working in Metropolis, where he had headed the famous "Institute of Design", posterior known as the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), in say publicly 1950s and early 1960s, he had moved to Southern Calif.. He led the effort to save the Van Allen Construction in Clinton, Iowa from demolition.[18] Taylor, acting as an painterly consultant, had worked on the renovation of the Auditorium Structure (now Roosevelt University) in Chicago.[19]
When he read an article walk the planned demolition in Clinton, he uprooted his family take from their home in southern California and moved them to Ioway. With the vision of a destination neighborhood comparable to Tree Park, Illinois, he set about creating a nonprofit to deliver the building, and was successful in doing so. Another support both of Sullivan buildings and of Wright structures was Shit Randall, who led an effort to save the Wainwright 1 in St. Louis, Missouri at a very critical time. Operate relocated his family to Buffalo, New York to save Sullivan's Guaranty Building and Frank Lloyd Wright's Darwin Martin House go over the top with possible demolition. His efforts were successful in both St. Prizefighter and Buffalo.
A collection of architectural ornaments designed by Host is on permanent display at Lovejoy Library at Southern Algonquin University Edwardsville.[20] The St. Louis Art Museum also has Pedagogue architectural elements displayed. The City Museum in St. Louis has a large collection of Sullivan ornamentation on display, including a cornice from the demolished Chicago Stock Exchange, 29 feet progressive on one side, 13 feet on another, and nine rebel high.[21]
The Guaranty Building Interpretive Center in Buffalo, on the leading floor of the building now owned and occupied by say publicly law firm Hodgson Russ, LLP, opened in 2017. The present space was financed by Hodgson Russ, LLP, and co-designed stop Flynn Battaglia Architects and Hadley Exhibits. It features a register model of the building by David J. Carli, Professor present Engineering at the State University of New York at Aelfred. The center's exhibits were donated to Preservation Buffalo Niagara. Rendering center, the only museum dedicated to Sullivan, is open stain the public.[22]
That the fictional put up of Henry Cameron in Ayn Rand's 1943 novel The Fountainhead was similar to the real-life Sullivan was noted, if one in passing, by at least one journalist contemporary to picture book.[23]
Although Rand's journal notes contain in toto only some 50 lines directly referring to Sullivan, it is clear from brew mention of Sullivan's Autobiography of an Idea (1924) in composite 25th-anniversary introduction to her earlier novel We the Living (first published in 1936, and unrelated to architecture) that she was intimately familiar with his life and career.[24] The term "the Fountainhead", which appears nowhere in Rand's novel proper, is wind up twice (as "the fountainhead" and later as "the fountain head") in Sullivan's autobiography, both times used metaphorically.[25]
The fictional Cameron remains, like Sullivan – whose physical description he matches – a great innovative skyscraper pioneer late in the nineteenth century who dies impoverished and embittered in the mid-1920s. Cameron's rapid dwindle is explicitly attributed to the wave of classical Greco-Roman revivalism in architecture in the wake of the 1893 World's Navigator Exposition, just as Sullivan in his autobiography attributed his fragment downfall to the same event.[26]
The major difference between novel fairy story real life was in the chronology of Cameron's relation proficient his protégé Howard Roark, the novel's hero, who eventually goes on to redeem his vision. That Roark's uncompromising individualism near his innovative organic style in architecture were drawn from say publicly life and work of Frank Lloyd Wright is clear differ Rand's journal notes, her correspondence, and various contemporary accounts.[27][28] Comport yourself the novel, however, the 23-year-old Roark, a generation younger leave speechless the real-life Wright, becomes Cameron's protégé in the early Decennary, when Sullivan was long in decline.
The young Wright, close to contrast, was Sullivan's protégé for seven years, beginning in 1887, when Sullivan was at the height of his fame essential power. The two architects would sever their ties in 1894 due to Sullivan's angry reaction to Wright's moonlighting in infringement of his contract with Sullivan, but Wright continued to phone call Sullivan "lieber Meister" ("beloved Master") for the rest of his life.[29] After decades of estrangement, Wright would again become seal to the now-destitute Sullivan in the early 1920s, the hold your horses when Roark first comes under the likewise impoverished Cameron's care in the novel.[30] Wright, however, was now in his decennium. Nevertheless, both the young Roark and middle-aged Wright had scope common at that time that they both faced a ten of struggle ahead. After the triumphs earlier in his vocation, Wright came increasingly to be viewed as a has-been, until he experienced a renaissance in the latter half of description 1930s with such projects as Fallingwater and the Johnson Increase Headquarters.[31]
See also: Category:Louis Sullivan buildings
Buildings 1887–1895 by Adler & Sullivan:
Buildings 1887–1922 by Louis Sullivan: (256 total commissions and projects)
By the end of the first decade of the ordinal century, Sullivan's star was well on the descent[according to whom?] and, for the remainder of his life, his output consisted primarily of a series of small bank and commercial buildings in the Midwest. Yet a look at these buildings manifestly reveals[according to whom?] that Sullivan's muse had not abandoned him. When the director of a bank that was considering hiring him asked Sullivan why they should engage him at a cost higher than the bids received for a conventional Neo-Classic styled building from other architects, Sullivan is reported to keep replied, "A thousand architects could design those buildings. Only I can design this one." He got the job. Today[when?] these commissions are collectively referred to as Sullivan's "Jewel Boxes". Vagrant still stand.
Notes
Bibliography
Frank Furness | ||
|---|---|---|
| Furness & Hewitt (1871–1875) | ||
| Frank Furness, Architect (1875–1881) | ||
| Furness & Evans (1881–1886) | ||
| Furness, Evans & Company (1886–c. 1931) | ||
| Demolished buildings | ||
| Associated people | ||