Sullivan and his Wainwright Building Architect Louis Sullivan was born in 1856 and he died in 1924, and all that time he was never fully recognized for his importance. One problem was his failing sense of practical realities. In some architecture circles commenting on the turn of the century and Sullivan’s place in the world, Sullivan was not considered as a forerunner to a new century, but he was called the last great leader of the old. On the other hand, Sullivan can be called the world’s first modern architect because he was the father of the skyscraper. The world’s first skyscraper went up in 1884, but it was not by Sullivan. Still, he mastered the building type. The skyscraper he designed which carries the most importance is the 10-story Wainwright Building in St. Louis, built in 1891. Sullivan’s favorite employee for six years, 1887-1893, was Frank Lloyd Wright, who also worked on the Wainwright Building. Sullivan’s Wainwright is one of PBS’s 10 Buildings That Changed America, and my lecture on Friday, November 8, will cover both Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House in Chicago, another one of the 10, and Sullivan’s Wainwright Building in St. Louis. The one-hour lecture begins at 6:00 p.m. at the Capital City Club. Sullivan enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1872 to study architecture. MIT was America’s first school of architecture, starting in 1865. Sullivan dropped out after one year to take time in the profession in hopes of qualifying for acceptance at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In July 1874, Sullivan sailed for France and the Ecole, where he passed the admission exams at his first opportunity. He finished his studies and went to work for Dankmar Adler in Chicago. They formed a partnership, Adler & Sullivan, in 1881. Sullivan was the designer and Adler handled the nuts and bolts and ran the business. Their biggest and most important commission was Chicago’s Auditorium Building on Michigan Avenue, now part of Roosevelt University. The auditorium, finished in late 1887 with help from employee Wright, had 4,237 seats. The mixed-use structure, with its hotel and office wing and many other areas for other uses, cost $3,000,000 in 1887. Later according to Wright: “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.” In 1928 the opera moved to the Chicago Civic Opera House, which was built into the local power company headquarters building, letting the office rents paid by the power company absorb some of the overhead in running the opera. The birth of the skyscraper had to wait for the elevator’s safety brake, which was patented in 1854 by Otis. Most office buildings until then were four-story walk-ups. Before real height could be achieved, structural steel had to replace iron frames (1889) which replaced load-bearing masonry, all coming to a doable deal of building development that could attract tenants paying competitive rents. The skyscraper’s origins come from an irregular adoption of technology. Even after steel frames came of age, load-bearing masonry with a ground-floor wall thickness of 12 feet describes the 1891 16-story Monadnock Building in Chicago. The Chicago Fire of 1871 was also in the mix for the birth of skyscrapers. With so much demand for commercial office replacement floor area immediately following the fire, new buildings coming out of new directions in architecture and structural engineering were arriving in volume up to the 1873 Financial Panic, which was followed by an economic depression. The depression slowed everything. It was not until the 1884 design and erection of the Home Insurance Building in Chicago by Major William LeBaron Jenney did the first genuine skyscraper come along, and this one was with an iron frame, steel frames not catching on for another five years. Sullivan’s Wainwright in St. Louis in 1891 was called an immediate success in every way, and skyscraper commissions flowed into the office over the next few years. Adler retired in 1895 and died in 1900. Sullivan never recovered from the loss of partner Adler. By 1909, after so many years with an abject lack of design commissions, Sullivan auctioned off his library and many personal effects, just to eat. In 1924 his heart gave out and he died broke. Don’t forget: Lecture on Sullivan and Wright at 6:00 p.m., Friday, November 8, at the Capital City Club.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Nov 2013 03:17:40 +0000
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