Louis Sullivan

(click to enlarge)
Louis Sullivan, detail of an oil painting by Frank A. Werner, 1919; in the collection of the … (credit: Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society)

(born Sept. 3, 1856, Boston, Mass., U.S. — died April 14, 1924, Chicago, Ill.) U.S. architect, the father of modern U.S. architecture. Sullivan was accepted at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris but was a restless student. After working for several Chicago firms, he joined the office of Dankmar Adler (1844 – 1900) in 1879, becoming Adler's partner at age 24. Their 14-year association produced more than 100 buildings, many of them landmarks. Their first important work was the Auditorium Building in Chicago (1889), a load-bearing stone structure with a 17-story tower, unadorned on the arcaded exterior and dazzlingly rich on the interior. Their most important skyscraper is the 10-story steel-framed Wainwright Building, St. Louis, Mo. (1890 – 91); above its two-story base, the vertical elements are stressed and horizontals recessed, and it is capped by a decorative frieze and cornice. During this period the young Frank Lloyd Wright spent six years as apprentice to Sullivan, who would be a major influence on the younger architect. In 1895 Sullivan's partnership with Adler dissolved, and his practice began a steady decline. One of his few major commissions was the Carson Pirie Scott store in Chicago (1898 – 1904), noted for its broad windows and exuberant ornamentation. Sullivan's ornamentation was based not on precedent but on geometry and natural forms. He considered it obvious that building design should indicate a building's functions and that, where the function does not change, the form should not change; hence his influential dictum "Form follows function."

For more information on Louis Henry Sullivan, visit Britannica.com.

Louis Henri Sullivan (1856-1924), American architect, was the link between Henry Hobson Richardson and Frank Lloyd Wright in the development of modern American architecture.

Louis Sullivan was born in Boston on Sept. 3, 1856. Always impatient with classroom education, he spent only a year at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied with William Ware, the well-known High Victorian Gothic architect. At the end of 1873, Sullivan went to Philadelphia and spent a short time in the office of architect Frank Furness. He soon set out for Chicago, where his parents and brother were living. In Chicago he was employed by William Le Baron Jenney. In 1874 he went to Paris and was admitted to the École des Beaux-Arts. He stayed about 6 months, returning to Chicago in March 1875. His training had introduced him to High Victorian Gothic, an extension of which had been boldly and imaginatively expressed in American architecture by Furness.

Sullivan's early work in Chicago suggests a continuation of modified High Victorian Gothic developments, especially the Rothschild Store (1880-1881) and the Ryerson Building (1884). Many of Chicago's buildings of the 1870s reflected High Victorian Gothic, particularly after the completion of Richardson's impressive and trendsetting American Merchants' Union Express Company Building (1872). In 1881 Sullivan formed a partnership with Dankmar Adler, and the firm contributed to the sprawling, burgeoning city of Chicago some of its finest buildings.

Partnership with Adler, 1881-1895

Adler's earlier architectural contributions date from the mid-1860s, when he entered into partnership with Ashley Kinney. From 1871 to 1879 he associated with Edward Burling, and in 1879 he opened his own firm, D. Adler and Co. During these years Adler's designs developed from structures ornamented with classical or Italianate detailing to a more utilitarian style. Sullivan met Adler in 1879, joined Adler's firm in 1880, and became a partner the following year. In their collaboration Sullivan provided the designs while Adler provided the clients and solved the engineering and acoustical problems.

One of their most brilliant efforts was the Auditorium Building in Chicago (1886-1889). Sullivan's designs for this complex structure - which combined theater, hotel, and office building - passed through three stages: first, a block with pitched roof and squat towers; second, a raised tower with a pyramidal cap; and third, a massive, unornamented block with a tower rising seven stories above the larger structure. The third design was influenced by Richardson's Marshall Field Wholesale Store in Chicago (1885-1887). The acoustical perfection of the theater, which Frank Lloyd Wright described as "the greatest room for music and opera in the world bar none, " was only part of Adler's contribution. Since the building was being constructed on a moving bed of mud, with basements 7 feet below the water level of Lake Michigan, Adler paid particular attention to the foundation design. By using artificial loading, he prevented uneven subsidence between the tower, which weighed 15, 000 tons, and the lighter and lower remainder of the block.

The Auditorium Building was the showplace of Chicago until the Great Depression, when it lay idle and only the exorbitant cost of demolition prevented it from being razed. Roosevelt University moved into the building in 1947, and an Auditorium Theater Council was established to restore the theater. On Oct. 31, 1967, after the theater had been closed for a quarter century, the New York City Ballet performed for an audience that was as enthusiastic about the architecture as they were about the ballet.

The Schiller Building in Chicago (1891-1892; demolished), a 17-story, towerlike structure with nine-story wings by Adler and Sullivan, also housed a theater. Because the theater was relatively narrow, cantilever construction was employed, providing a total space uninterrupted by intermediate columns.

Adler and Sullivan's practice expanded outside Chicago in the 1890s. Sullivan designed two of his most famous skyscrapers - the Wainwright Building in St. Louis, Mo. (1890-1891), and the Guaranty Building in Buffalo, N. Y. (1894-1895). In these buildings, as on the Getty Tomb in Chicago (1890) and the Wainwright Tomb in St. Louis (1892), Sullivan's ornamentation, which had become an integral part of his designs, developed from the geometric to the naturalistic. So organic is the work on the Guaranty Building that the foliage appears to be sprouting from the terra-cotta facing. The most famous example of Sullivan's ornamentation was on the Transportation Building (1893) for the World's Columbian Exposition, held in 1893 in Chicago. Amid a series of classical structures, Sullivan's building stood for rational architecture, and its "Golden Door, " a brightly decorated, massive arch, was the exposition's most unique motif.

The Adler and Sullivan partnership dissolved in 1895, when Adler wanted to introduce his two sons into the firm. Sullivan rejected Adler's overtures to restablish their partnership the following year.

Sullivan's Architecture, 1895-1924

Sullivan's last big commercial building was the Schlesinger and Meyer Department Store (now the Carson Pirie Scott and Company Building) in Chicago (1899-1904). It has an abundance of cast-iron Art Nouveau decoration, especially around the entrances in the curved corner pavilion. His last years were mainly spent designing a series of small but architecturally outstanding banks for towns of the midwest.

Carl Bennett, vice president of the National Farmers' Bank at Owatonna, Minn., had been impressed by an article in a trade journal written by Sullivan in 1906 entitled "What is Architecture: A Study of the American People of Today." Bennett commissioned him to design new premises for his bank (1907-1908). In this bank Sullivan produced what has been considered one of his major works. Other similar commissions came from bankers at Newark, Ohio (1914), Algona and Grinnell, lowa (both 1914), Sidney, Ohio (1917), and Columbus, Wis. (1919).

Sullivan's last commission was for the Krause Music Store in Chicago (1922). He died on April 14, 1924, in Chicago.

Writings and Philosophy

Sullivan's writings incorporate philosophy, music, and biological evolutionary theories. Frank Lloyd Wright in his Autobiography says of Sullivan, "He adored [Walt] 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 to read…." Sullivan's philosophy was expounded in the autobiographical Kindergarten Chats (1901-1902), reprinted from the Interstate Architect and Builder, and in his The Autobiography of an Idea (1926). In these two books Sullivan's hero is the architect with a "poetic imagination … broad sympathy, human character, common sense and a thoroughly disciplined mind … a perfect technique and… a gracious gift of expression." His unpublished manuscript of 1905, "Natural Thinking: A Study in Democracy, " upheld the meaning and dignity of the individual man. "It is my profound conviction that every infant born in what is generally called normal health, is gifted by Nature with normal receptivity … too much importance is attached to heredity and too little to environment…. In a human and democratic philosophy there is no room for such a thing as an unfit human being."

Frank Lloyd Wright, who worked for Adler and Sullivan from 1887 to 1893, had called Sullivan lieber Meister. The historian Henry Steele Commager described Sullivan as "the most philosophical of American architects … a disciple of Walt Whitman … [who] sought to make architecture a vehicle for democracy as Whitman had made for poetry."

Further Reading

Although not definitive, Hugh Morrison, Louis Sullivan: Prophet of Modern Architecture (1935), is the best and most comprehensive study. Sherman Paul, Louis Sullivan: An Architect in American Thought (1962), analyzes Sullivan's writings and philosophy and contains a complete Sullivan bibliography of 37 works. Other studies include Charles H. Caffin, Louis H. Sullivan: Artist among Architects (1899); Chicago Art Institute, Louis Sullivan: The Architecture of Free Enterprise, edited by Edgar Kaufmann, Jr. (1956); John Szarkowski, The Idea of Louis Sullivan (1956); Albert Bush-Brown, Louis Sullivan (1960); and Willard Connely, Louis Sullivan as He Lived (1960). See also Frank Lloyd Wright, Genius and the Mobocracy (1949), and Hugh D. Duncan, Culture and Democracy (1965).

Additional Sources

Twombly, Robert C., Louis Sullivan: his life and work, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987, 1986.

physician; educator; administrator

Personal Information

Born Louis Wade Sullivan, November 3, 1933, in Atlanta, GA; son of Walter Wade, Sr. (an undertaker) and Lubirda Elizabeth (a schoolteacher; maiden name, Priester) Sullivan; married Eve Williamson (an attorney), September 30, 1955; children: Paul, Shanta, Halsted.
Education: Morehouse College, B.S. (magna cum laude), 1954; Boston University, M.D. (cum laude), 1958.
Memberships: National Academy of Sciences, American Society of Hematology, American Society for Clinical Investigation, American Federation for Clinical Research, Society for the Exploration of Biology and Medicine, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Phi Beta Kappa, Alpha Omega Alpha.

Career

Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, MA, instructor, 1963-64; New Jersey College of Medicine, assistant professor of medicine, 1964-66; Boston University School of Medicine, assistant professor and co-director of hematology, 1966-68, associate professor, 1968-74, professor of medicine and physiology, 1974-75; Morehouse College, Atlanta, GA, founder and dean of medical college, 1975-81, dean of Morehouse School of Medicine, 1981-89, 1993--; Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC, secretary, 1989-93.

Life's Work

Louis Sullivan, the head of Morehouse School of Medicine, was the highest-ranking black in the George Bush administration from 1989 until 1993. Sullivan, who had helped to create the Morehouse medical program, served as Secretary of Health and Human Services during Bush's term in office, presiding over the largest conglomerate of agencies in the federal government.

Sullivan's tenure in the cabinet-level position for Health and Human Services (HHS) began amidst controversy on his positions regarding abortion, fetal tissue research, and other emotionally-charged health related issues, but he gradually drew respect from conservatives and liberals alike for his strong stance on preventative health care, cigarette advertising, minority health issues, and health care reform. In 1993 Sullivan returned to Morehouse School of Medicine to continue his career as "an elder statesman on health matters," according to Emerge magazine.

Assessing Sullivan's impact as the lone black in the Bush cabinet, Business Week correspondent Susan B. Garland wrote in 1992 that Sullivan "was a rare commodity in Washington.... He brought with him a passion for helping the poor and a reputation for integrity.... He was one of the few Cabinet members who worked tirelessly to help Bush keep his promise of a kinder, gentler America. Sullivan ... used his bully pulpit to promote preventive health measures. And he ... raised the visibility within HHS of minority health issues and the social problems of black males--areas neglected in the past." Sullivan continues to address these issues from his position at Morehouse, noting in Emerge that he is dedicated to "training more minorities to serve not only as health professionals in their communities, but to serve as leaders in their communities."

Louis Sullivan was born in Atlanta in 1933, the younger of two sons of Walter and Lubirda Sullivan. While he was still quite young, his family moved from Atlanta to the much smaller town of Blakely, Georgia. There Sullivan's father worked as an undertaker, while his mother taught school. The Sullivans faced much bigotry and discrimination in rural Georgia, but they stubbornly insisted upon their rights. Together Walter and Lubirda Sullivan founded the Blakely chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and they ran the chapter even after suffering from assaults and other violence. Louis Sullivan's brother Walter told New York Times reporter Ronald Smothers that the parents "stayed in that little town for twenty more years to prove a point: that whites couldn't run them out."

The parents stayed, but the sons--Walter and Louis--were sent back to Atlanta in order to receive a better education. The boys lived with family friends while attending public schools in the city. Both of them became top-ranking scholars who sought college educations. In Louis Sullivan's case, he enrolled at Morehouse College in 1950 and graduated magna cum laude in 1954. He then won a scholarship to Boston University Medical School and completed his medical studies in 1958, the only black in his graduating class. Sullivan was well-liked at Boston University; twice he was named class president, and he served despite the pressure of his studies and his part-time jobs waiting tables to help defray his expenses.

After he received his medical degree, Sullivan completed his internship and residency at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center in New York City. He then spent a year on a pathology fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and two years in a research fellowship program at Thorndike Memorial Laboratory. In 1963 he embarked on a teaching/research career that took him to Harvard Medical School as an instructor in 1963, New Jersey College of Medicine as an assistant professor in 1964, and back to his alma mater, Boston University, in 1966. There he became a nationally renowned hematologist, specializing in blood disorders caused by vitamin deficiencies.

Sullivan stayed at Boston University as a professor of medicine and physiology until 1975. That year, he and a group of Morehouse College alumni were invited to create a two-year medical education program at the all-black Atlanta college. Sullivan became dean of the fledgling Morehouse College School of Medicine and presided over its first year of operations in 1978. He accepted the position despite a significant pay decrease because it offered him an opportunity to train black physicians to serve poor black clients.

Between 1978 and 1981, Sullivan used his powers of persuasion to raise funds and recruit personnel for a fully accredited, four-year program of medical education. In 1981 his dream became the Morehouse School of Medicine, an independent entity and only the third predominantly black medical school in the nation. Sullivan headed the Morehouse project throughout the 1980s, soliciting funds from the federal government, the state government of Georgia, private individuals, and corporations.

Sullivan's personal charisma and unbounded energy won him many friends in high places, including Vice President George Bush and his wife Barbara, who became a member of the school's board of trustees. As Mrs. Bush lent her own speechmaking talents to the Morehouse cause, she and Sullivan forged a close friendship that helped strengthen Sullivan's ties to Republican politics. At the 1988 Republican National Convention, Sullivan introduced Mrs. Bush on her scheduled night to address the assembly.

George Bush won the presidential election of 1988 and immediately began considering Sullivan for the cabinet-level position of Secretary of Health and Human Services. Sullivan's credentials as a hematologist, researcher, and physician, as well as his ground-breaking work at Morehouse, seemed ample qualification for the high-profile HHS job. Controversy erupted, however, almost as soon as Bush announced his intention to nominate Sullivan for the post. The problem was the issue of abortion-upon-demand. A 1989 Atlanta Journal and Constitution article indicated that Sullivan was in favor of a woman's right to choose abortion as an option, although he opposed federal funding for abortions. Even so, in an article in the same paper the following day, Sullivan noted that he would be willing to put his personal feelings aside and follow the course of action recommended by President Bush.

This statement was enough to pose a serious threat to Sullivan's nomination, as Bush was an anti-abortion candidate who had been elected with the help of the Right to Life movement. Sullivan saved his nomination by writing a statement in which he declared that he opposed abortion except in cases of rape, incest, or protection of the life of the mother. After the statement appeared in national newspapers, the nomination proceeded as planned. Sullivan further clarified his position on abortion during meetings with top Republican leaders in the Senate and House of Representatives. His formal confirmation hearing was held in February of 1989, and then he was approved as Secretary of Health and Human Services by a Senate vote of 98-1.

Sullivan's tenure as a member of the Bush cabinet was almost as controversial as his nomination had been. In the summer of 1989 he endorsed local programs that gave drug addicts clean needles in an effort to curb the spread of AIDS, but later reversed his opinion after consultations with other Bush officials and members of Congress. Sullivan also appeared to reverse his opinion on the charged issue of fetal tissue research, at first seeming to approve studies that would seek to use cells from aborted fetuses to retard or cure certain diseases, then continuing a ban on federal funding for such research.

At one point late in 1989, Time correspondent Richard Lacayo offered the opinion that Sullivan had become "a virtual figurehead, hemmed in by Administration pro-lifers who have made opposition to abortion a litmus test in hiring and policy decisions." Lacayo concluded: "Sullivan may have lost control of HHS even before he was confirmed as its chief."

In the remaining years of the Bush administration, Sullivan proceeded to alter his reputation as a political fence-straddler. He presided over the vast Health and Human Services network with its $500 billion budget and saw to it that budget-cutting measures did not eliminate health care programs for the poor and minorities. He also directed the implementation of new labeling requirements for food that more clearly stated nutritional values and fat content.

Sullivan will probably be best remembered, though, for his public stance on smoking and the advertising tactics used by the tobacco industry. A virulent Sullivan speech in 1990 caused the R. J. Reynolds company to cancel a new brand of cigarettes--to be known as "Uptown"--that were expected to sell primarily to blacks. Sullivan also attacked cigarette manufacturers' sponsorship of professional sporting events, calling their actions misleading to the public. In the wake of Sullivan's anti-smoking campaign, Newsweek contributor Tom Morganthau wrote: "For a man who once seemed determined to avoid controversy at any cost, Dr. Louis W. Sullivan ... has lately been displaying a notable zest for combat."

The later years of the Bush administration witnessed an increasing public awareness that some sort of universal health care coverage was needed. Sullivan became a principal contributor to the plans for expanded health care benefits proposed by the administration and became perhaps the most important spokesman for the Bush plan. Rollins noted: "Sullivan's philosophy on national health care revolves around the concept of balanced responsibilities that 'requires actions by government and our corporate community of making health insurance available and strategies to bring costs under control. But it also requires actions by individual citizens' who can maintain healthy lifestyles and behaviors, he said."

Sullivan returned to the private sector in 1993 after George Bush was defeated in his bid for a second presidential term. The former cabinet member's fame and reputation were such that he might have chosen any one of a number of high-profile jobs. He opted to return to Morehouse School of Medicine and resume his directorship of the program there. "This is where I wanted to be," he told Emerge upon his return to Atlanta. "It was that simple." Nevertheless, Sullivan is still sought out for his opinions on health care reform, preventive medicine, and ways to curb tobacco use, especially among minorities and youngsters.

Sullivan's mission at Morehouse remains the same--training medical professionals to serve in poor and minority communities--and his commitment to health care reform has not ebbed since he left public service. Sullivan told Emerge that health care reform "is not something that can be announced today and implemented tomorrow." He added: "Realistically, we will always want to do more than our resources allow. But I am convinced, we will be better off at the end of this process than we are now."

Further Reading

Sources

• Business Week, January 20, 1992, pp. 43-4; February 17, 1992, pp. 141-42.
• Ebony, March 1990.
• Emerge, January 1994, pp. 26-7.
• Modern Maturity, August-September 1992, p. 8.
• Newsweek, March 5, 1990, p. 19.
• New York Times, December 23, 1988.
• People, March 26, 1990.
• Science, August 2, 1991, p. 502.
• Time, December 4, 1989, pp. 43-4; December 14, 1992, pp. 23-4.

— Anne Janette Johnson

American architect of Irish and German descent. He worked briefly with F. Furness in Philadelphia, PA (1872–3), before moving to Chicago, IL, and the office of W. Le Baron Jenney (1873–4). He was in Paris in 1874 at the École des Beaux-Arts under Vaudremer before returning to Chicago in 1875. He entered the office of Dankmar Adler c.1879, and became a full partner in the firm of Adler & Sullivan in 1883. Their first joint work was the Auditorium Building, Chicago (1886–90) containing a 4,000-seat theatre, hotel, and office-building, the exterior showing the influence of H. H. Richardson and the interior an eclectic mix of flowing foliate forms containing elements of Arts-and-Crafts invention as well as Art Nouveau themes. Even more Richardsonian was the powerful St Nicholas Hotel, St Louis, MO (1892–4—destroyed), with its massive round arches.

From 1888 to 1893 Adler & Sullivan employed the young Frank Lloyd Wright, who was devoted to Sullivan, calling him Lieber Meister (Dear Master), but designed work on his own account in violation of his contract while working for the firm, which led to his leaving to establish his own practice. However, Adler & Sullivan continued to prosper. Their two best-known skyscrapers, the Wainwright Building, St Louis, MO (1890–1), and the Guaranty Building, Buffalo, NY (1894–5), adhere to Classical principles in that each has a plain plinth-like base; a series of identical floors above expressed by bands of windows and panels set within recessed strips between piers, with large corner-piers acting as antae; and crowning cornices (the Wainwright Building cornice is particularly lushly enriched). Some critics, however, have seen these buildings as expressing the framed structures behind the external skins.

In 1898–1904 Sullivan (having set up on his own (1895) after the partnership with Adler was dissolved in) built the Schlesinger & Mayer (later Carson, Pirie, Scott, & Co.) Store, Chicago, which marked a change of direction, in that it did not emphasize the vertical, but created a series of horizontal openings framed by the skeleton structure of floors and vertical supports. However, he still treated the two lower storeys as a massive plinth enriched with ornament, clad the upper storeys with white faïence, filled the voids in with Chicago windows, and capped the whole with an overhanging cornice-like roof. It is the paradigm of the Chicago School (but see Purcell & Elmslie).

In spite of his de rigueur remarks in the Engineering Magazine (1892) suggesting that ornament should be eschewed for a while, he was an inventive and uninhibited user of architectural enrichment combined with powerful simple geometries and blocky masses, as in the Getty Mausoleum, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago (1890), and the Wainwright Tomb, Bellefontaine Cemetery, St Louis, MO (1891–2). At the Getty Mausoleum the arch motif looks back to Richardson's work, and strong, simple geometrical forms with well-integrated ornament were themes Sullivan explored in the elegant and colourful series of Banks he designed (e.g. National Farmers' Bank, Owatonna, MN (1906–8), Merchants' National Bank, Grinnell, IA (1913–14), People's Savings & Loan Association Bank, Sidney, OH (1919), and Farmers' & Merchants' Union Bank, Columbus, WI (1919) ). Sullivan's ebullient ornament became part of American Mid-West commercial architecture in the early decades of C20, especially in works of the Midland Terra Cotta Company and other firms: its inventiveness is inconvenient for those who insist he was a ‘prophet’ or ‘pioneer’ of Modern Architecture.

Sullivan was a prolific writer, his output covering the period 1885–1924, but his prolix texts lack clarity, and his obfuscatory style has been interpreted as indicative of profound thought. In 1896, in his ‘The Tall Building Artistically Considered’, published in Lippin-cott's Magazine, he announced that ‘form follows function’, a dictum eagerly grasped by the protagonists of the International Modern Movement. However, a careful reading of Sullivan's own texts makes clear that his concept of Functionalism embraces and calls for emotional, expressive, spiritual, and creative values that later Modernists wholly rejected. His built work shows very clearly that it had virtually nothing in common with the teachings of the Bauhaus or with the apologists for the style that was to be almost universally embraced after 1945.

Bibliography

• Bush-Brown (1960)
• Condit (1952, 1964)
• Connely (1960)
• EM, iii (1892), 633–44
• Frei (1992)
• D.Hoffmann (1988)
• Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, xx/4 (Dec. 1961), 3–19; xxvi/4 (Dec. 1967), 250–8, 259–68, and xxxix/4 (Dec. 1980) 297–303
• Ed.Kaufmann (1956)
• Lippincott's Magazine, lvii (1896), 403–9
• Manieri-Elia (1997)
• H. Morrison (1998)
• Placzek (ed.) (1982)
• Paul (1962)
• P&J (1970–86)
• Schmitt (2002)
• M. Schuyler (1961)
• Sprague (1979)
• Sullivan (1956, 1967, 1980)
• Szarkowski (2000)
• C. Taylor et al. (2001)
• Twombly (1986)
• Twombly et al. (2000)
• van Zanten (2000)
• Zukowsky (ed.) (1987, 1993)

The full bibliography for this book is available to download as a pdf file.
Download the bibliography for A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (PDF: 1.2MB)

(1856-1924), architect. Sullivan developed a unique system of ornament, which he applied as the first architect to define a rational skyscraper aesthetic and bring bank design into the twentieth century. He pioneered the attempt to remove historical reference from American architecture, the creation of which he saw as a social as opposed to an artistic act. Sullivan was the teacher of Frank Lloyd Wright, whom he employed from 1888 to 1893.

Born in Boston of Irish and Swiss/French lineage, Sullivan studied architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1872-1873, worked briefly in Philadelphia for the eccentric design genius Frank Furness and in Chicago for William Le Baron Jenney, an innovator in high-rise metal frame construction, and then studied in Paris (1874-1875) at the École des Beaux-Arts.

Settling in Chicago, Sullivan established a partnership in 1879 with Dankmar Adler, a brilliant acoustical and structural engineer. So successful was their collaboration that for the next twelve years their firm represented the cutting edge of American design.

The partners achieved fame before 1886 for their theater designs and concert hall renovations, Sullivan attracting attention for his bold use of color and his luxurious, organically based ornamentation within which he placed lighting and ventilating fixtures. Their acoustical, aesthetic, and lighting successes led in 1886 to their grandest commission, the Chicago Auditorium Building, a $3.2 million theater, hotel, and commercial complex, at the time the largest building in volume in the United States. Sullivan's theater, banquet hall, dining room, and other interior spaces were applauded as masterpieces, and he was regarded as the premier ornamentalist, if not architect, in the nation.

The building's fame generated major commissions of all sorts from around the country, but after 1890, Adler and Sullivan's reputation was primarily based on skyscrapers. In the Wainwright Building (St. Louis, 1890), the Schiller Building (Chicago, 1891), and the Guaranty Building (1894-1895, Buffalo), Sullivan developed a "vertical aesthetic" in which windows and horizontals were inset slightly behind columns and piers, creating what he called "a proud and soaring" image that was noticeable in the work of other architects--at Rockefeller Center, for example--as late as the 1930s, and even in 1965 on Eero Saarinen's cbs Building, also in New York. On the other hand, in the Chicago Stock Exchange (1893), the Schlesinger and Mayer (now Carson Pirie Scott) department store (Chicago, 1898, 1902), and several unrealized but well-publicized 1890s projects, Sullivan developed a frame-expressing aesthetic that allowed the directionally neutral network of steel members to determine façade composition, an organizing principle still evident in much modernist work of the 1960s. Although Sullivan actually built only seven of his twenty-five or so high-rise schemes, his influence was lasting.

By 1895, when Adler and Sullivan dissolved their partnership, they had collaborated on 180 commissions. Barely 30 stand today. For a variety of personal and professional reasons, Sullivan's career declined not in design brilliance but in his ability to get work. After 1895, he procured a mere 57 projects, of which 33 were built and only 19 remain. Seven of these were small-town midwestern banks, the best known of which--the National Farmers' (Owatonna, Minnesota, 1906-1908), Merchants' National (Grinnell, Iowa, 1913-1914), and the People's Savings and Loan (Sidney, Ohio, 1917)--exemplify Sullivan's dictum, "form follows function," by expressing interior program on the exterior and by imposing a new banking image--the strongbox--on the façade. The banks are still praised for their artistic elegance, their excellent climate controls, and their efficient internal organization.

Although Sullivan died in poverty, he remained for many a "Lieber Meister," in Wright's words, inspiring later generations with his lush ornament, his commitment to architectural consistency, and his refusal to compromise philosophical principle.

Bibliography:

Louis Sullivan, The Autobiography of an Idea (1924); Robert Twombly, Louis Sullivan: His Life and Work (1986).

Author:

Robert Twombly

See also Architecture.

Quotes:

"Form ever follows function."

• Born: November 08, 1944, New York, NY
• Active: '70s, '80s, '90s
• Genres: Jazz
• Instrument: Trumpet
• Representative Albums: "Genesis," "Kamau," "Re-Entry"

Biography

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)

For other persons named Louis Sullivan, see Louis Sullivan (disambiguation).

Louis Henri Sullivan
Born	September 3, 1856 Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.
Died	April 14, 1924 (aged 67) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation	Architect

Louis Henri Sullivan (September 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924) was an American architect, and has been called the "father of modernism." He is considered by many as the creator of the modern skyscraper, was an influential architect and critic of the Chicago School, was a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an inspiration to the Chicago group of architects who have come to be known as the Prairie School.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Sullivan and the steel high-rise 3 Later career and decline 4 Preservation 5 Selected projects 6 The banks 7 Lost Sullivans 8 Images 9 See also 10 References 11 Sources 12 External links

Biography

Louis Sullivan^[1] was born to an Irish-born father and a Swiss-born mother, both of whom had emigrated to the United States in the late 1840s. He grew up living with his grandmother in South Reading (now Wakefield), Massachusetts. Louis spent most of his childhood learning about nature while on his grandparent’s farm. In the later years of his primary education, his experiences varied quite a bit. He would spend a lot of time by himself wandering around Boston. He explored every street looking at the surrounding buildings. This was around the time when he developed his fascination with buildings and he decided he would one day become a structural engineer/architect. While attending high school Sullivan met Moses Woolson, whose teachings made a lasting impression on him, and nurtured him until his death. After graduating from high school, Sullivan studied architecture briefly at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Learning that he could both graduate from high school a year early and pass up the first two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by passing a series of examinations, Sullivan entered MIT at the age of sixteen. After one year of study, he moved to Philadelphia and talked himself into a job with architect Frank Furness.

The Depression of 1873 dried up much of Furness’s work, and he was forced to let Sullivan go. At that point Sullivan moved on to Chicago in 1873 to take part in the building boom following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. He worked for William LeBaron Jenney, the architect often credited with erecting the first steel-frame building. After less than a year with Jenney, Sullivan moved to Paris and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts for a year. Renaissance art inspired Sullivan’s mind, and he was influenced to direct his architecture to emulating Michelangelo's spirit of creation rather than replicating the styles of earlier periods. He returned to Chicago and began work for the firm of Joseph S. Johnston & John Edelman as a draftsman. Johnston & Edleman were commissioned for interior design of the Moody Tabernacle, which was completed by Sullivan.^[2] In 1879 Dankmar Adler hired Sullivan; a year later, he became a partner in the firm. This marked the beginning of Sullivan's most productive years. And it was at this firm that Sullivan would deeply influence a young designer named Frank Lloyd Wright, who came to embrace Sullivan's designs and principles as the inspiration for his own work.

Prudential Building, also known as the Guaranty Building, Buffalo, New York, 1894

Adler and Sullivan initially achieved fame as theater architects. While most of their theaters were in Chicago, their fame won commissions as far west as Pueblo, Colorado, and Seattle, Washington (unbuilt). The culminating project of this phase of the firm's history was the 1889 Auditorium Building in Chicago, an extraordinary mixed-use building which included not only a 3000-seat theater, but also a hotel and office building. Adler and Sullivan reserved the top floor of the tower for their own office. After 1889 the firm became known for their office buildings, particularly the 1891 Wainwright Building in St. Louis and the 1899 Carson Pirie Scott Department Store on State Street in Chicago, Louis Sullivan is considered by many to be the first architect to fully imagine and realize a rich architectural vocabulary for a revolutionary new kind of building: the steel high-rise.

Sullivan and the steel high-rise

Prior to the late 19th century, the weight of a multistory building had to be supported principally by the strength of its walls. The taller the building, the more strain this placed on the lower sections of the building; since there were clear engineering limits to the weight such "load-bearing" walls could sustain, large designs meant massively thick walls on the ground floors, and definite limits on the building's height.

The development of cheap, versatile steel in the second half of the 19th century changed those rules. America was in the midst of rapid social and economic growth that made for great opportunities in architectural design. A much more urbanized society was forming and the society called out for new, larger buildings. The mass production of steel was the main driving force behind the ability to build skyscrapers during the mid 1880s. As seen with the data below the prices dropped significantly during this period.

Price of Steel at Bessemer Steel Rails from 1867-1895 ($/ton)

1867- $166; 1870- $107; 1875- $69; 1880- $68; 1885- $29; 1890- $32; 1895- $32

The people in Midwestern America felt less social pressure to conform to the ways and styles of the architectural past. By assembling a framework of steel girders, architects and builders could suddenly create tall, slender buildings with a strong and relatively delicate steel skeleton. The rest of the building's elements — the walls, floors, ceilings, and windows — were suspended from the steel, which carried the weight. This new way of constructing buildings, so-called "column-frame" construction, pushed them up rather than out. The steel weight-bearing frame allowed not just taller buildings, but permitted much larger windows, which meant more daylight reaching interior spaces. Interior walls became thinner, which created more usable floor space.

Chicago's Monadnock Building (which was not designed by Sullivan) literally straddles this remarkable moment of transition: the northern half of the building, finished in 1891, is of load-bearing construction, while the southern half, finished only two years later, is column-frame. (While experiments in this new technology were taking place in many cities, Chicago was the crucial laboratory. Industrial capital and civic pride drove a surge of new construction throughout the city's downtown in the wake of the 1871 fire.)

The technical limits of weight-bearing masonry had always imposed formal as well as structural constraints; those constraints were suddenly gone. None of the historical precedents were any help, and this new freedom created a kind of technical and stylistic crisis.

Sullivan was the first to cope with that crisis. He addressed it by embracing the changes that came with the steel frame, creating a grammar of form for the high rise (base, shaft, and pediment), simplifying the appearance of the building by breaking away from historical styles, using his own intricate flora designs, in vertical bands, to draw the eye upwards and emphasize the building's verticality, and relating the shape of the building to its specific purpose. All this was revolutionary, appealingly honest, and commercially successful.

Louis Sullivan coined the phrase "form ever follows function," which, shortened to "form follows function," would become the great battle-cry of modernist architects. This credo, which placed the demands of practical use above aesthetics, would later be taken by influential designers to imply that decorative elements, which architects call "ornament," were superfluous in modern buildings. But Sullivan himself neither thought nor designed along such dogmatic lines during the peak of his career. Indeed, while his buildings could be spare and crisp in their principal masses, he often punctuated their plain surfaces with eruptions of lush Art Nouveau and something like Celtic Revival decorations, usually cast in iron or terra cotta, and ranging from organic forms like vines and ivy, to more geometric designs, and interlace, inspired by his Irish design heritage. Terra cotta is lighter and easier to work with than stone masonry. Sullivan used it in his architecture because it had a malleability that was appropriate for his ornament. Probably the most famous example is the writhing green ironwork that covers the entrance canopies of the Carson Pirie Scott store on South State Street. These ornaments, often executed by the talented younger draftsman in Sullivan's employ, would eventually become Sullivan's trademark; to students of architecture, they are his instantly-recognizable signature.

Another signature element of Sullivan's work is the massive, semi-circular arch. Sullivan employed such arches throughout his career — in shaping entrances, in framing windows, or as interior design.

All of these elements can be found in Sullivan's widely-admired Guaranty Building, which he designed while partnered with Adler. Completed in 1895, this office building in Buffalo, New York was 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 rising unimpeded across nine upper floors to emphasize the building's height; and an ornamented cornice perforated by round windows at the roof level, where the building's mechanical units (like the elevator motors) were housed. The cornice crawls with Sullivan's trademark Art Nouveau vines; each ground-floor entrance is topped by a semi-circular arch.

Because of Sullivan's remarkable accomplishments in design and construction at such a critical point in architectural history, he has sometimes been described as the "father" of the American skyscraper. In truth, many architects had been building skyscrapers before or simultaneously with Sullivan. Chicago itself was replete with extraordinary designers and builders in the late years of the 19th century, including Sullivan's partner Dankmar Adler, as well as Daniel Burnham, and John Wellborn Root. Root was one of the builders of the Monadnock Building (see above). That and another Root design, the Masonic Temple Tower (both in Chicago), are cited by many as the originators of skyscraper aesthetics of bearing wall and column-frame construction respectively.

It may be that Sullivan's prominence in skyscraper history can be credited not only to his brilliance, but in some degree to the myth-making skills of his disciple, Frank Lloyd Wright, and to the impact of Sullivan's own book, The Autobiography of an Idea. He may also owe some of his legend to the tragic tint of his later years, which lend this great innovator's story a poignancy which has captured the imagination of student and historian alike.

Later career and decline

In 1890 Sullivan was one of the ten architects, five from the Eastern U.S. and five from the Western U.S., chosen to build a major structure for the "White City", the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. Sullivan's massive Transportation Building and huge arched "Golden Door" stood out as the only forward-looking design in a sea of Beaux-Arts historical copies, and the only gorgeously multicolored facade in the White City. Sullivan and fair director Daniel Burnham were vocal about their displeasure with each other. Sullivan was later (1922) to claim that the fair set the course of American architecture back "for half a century from its date, if not longer."^[3] His was the only building to receive extensive recognition outside America, receiving three medals from the Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs the following year.

Like all American architects, Adler and Sullivan saw a precipitous decline in their practice with the onset of the Panic of 1893. According to Charles Bebb, who was working in the office at that time, Adler borrowed money to try to keep employees on the payroll.^[4] By 1894, however, in the face of continuing financial distress with no relief in sight, Adler and Sullivan dissolved their partnership. The Guaranty Building was considered the last major project of the firm.

By both temperament and connections, Adler had always been the one who brought in new business to the partnership, and after the rupture Sullivan received few large commissions after the 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 in 1922 appeared as a critic of Raymond Hood's winning entry for the Tribune Tower competition, a steel-frame tower dressed in Gothic stonework that Sullivan found a shameful piece of historicism. He and his former understudy Frank Lloyd Wright reconciled in time for Wright to help fund Sullivan's funeral after he died, poor and alone, in a Chicago hotel room on April 14, 1924. He left a wife and four children. A modest headstone marks his final resting spot in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood. Only yards away from his resting-place, some of Chicago's lesser-known but much wealthier dead are entombed in handsome and distinctive tombs designed by Sullivan himself. A monument (shown) was later erected in Sullivan's honor, a few feet from his headstone.

Graceland Cemetery, Chicago, Illinois, USA

Sullivan's legacy is contradictory. Some consider him the first modernist. His forward-looking designs clearly anticipate some issues and solutions of Modernism. However, his embrace of ornament makes his contribution distinct from the Modern Movement that coalesced in the 1920s and became known as the "International Style." To experience Sullivan's built work is to experience the irresistible appeal of his incredible designs, the vertical bands on the Wainwright Building, the burst of welcoming Art Nouveau ironwork on the corner entrance of the Carson Pirie Scott store, the (lost) terra cotta griffins and porthole windows on the Union Trust building, the white angels of the Bayard Building. Except for some designs by his long time draftsman George Grant Elmslie, and the occasional tribute to Sullivan such as Schmidt, Garden & Martin's First National Bank in Pueblo, Colorado (built across the street from Adler and Sullivan's Pueblo Opera House), his style is unique. A visit to the preserved Chicago Stock Exchange trading floor, now at The Art Institute of Chicago, is proof of the immediate and visceral power of the ornament that he used so selectively. Original drawings and other archival materials from Sullivan are held by the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries in the Art Institute of Chicago and by the Drawings and Archives Department in the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University. Fragments of Sullivan buildings are also held in many fine art and design museums around the world.

Preservation

During the postwar era of urban renewal, Sullivan's works fell into disfavor, and many were demolished. In the 1970s growing public concern for these buildings finally resulted in many being saved. The most vocal voice was Richard Nickel, who even held one-man protests of demolitions. Nickel and others sometimes rescued decorative elements from condemned buildings, sneaking in during demolition. This practice led to Nickel's death inside Sullivan's Stock Exchange building, when a floor above him collapsed.

Selected projects

Transportation Building, Chicago 1893-94

Buildings through 1895 are by Adler & Sullivan.

• Martin Ryerson Tomb, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago (1887)
• Auditorium Building, Chicago (1889)
• Carrie Eliza Getty Tomb, Graceland Cemetery, Chicago (1890)
• Wainwright Building, St. Louis (1890)
• Charlotte Dickson Wainwright Tomb, Bellefontaine Cemetery, St. Louis (1892)

Wainwright Tomb

• Union Trust Building (now 705 Olive), St. Louis (1893; street-level ornament heavily altered 1924)
• Guaranty Building (formerly Prudential Building), Buffalo (1894)
• Bayard Building, (now Bayard-Condict Building), 65–69 Bleecker Street, New York City (1898). Sullivan's only building in New York, with a glazed terra cotta curtain wall expressing the steel structure behind it.
• Carson Pirie Scott store, Chicago (1899)
• Virginia Hall of Tusculum College, Greeneville, Tennessee, 1901^[5]
• Van Allen Building, Clinton, Iowa (1914)
• St Paul's Methodist Church, Cedar Rapids, Iowa
• Krause Music Store, Chicago (final commission 1922; front façade only)

The banks

A portion of the National Farmer's Bank's west face, Owatonna, Minnesota (1908)

By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, Sullivan's star was well on the descent 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 clearly reveals 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 have replied, "A thousand architects could design those buildings. Only I can design this one." He got the job. Today these commissions are collectively referred to as Sullivan's "Jewel Boxes." All are still standing.

• National Farmer's Bank, Owatonna, Minnesota (1908)
• Peoples Savings Bank, Cedar Rapids, Iowa (1912)
• Henry Adams Building, Algona, Iowa (1913)
• Merchants' National Bank, Grinnell, Iowa (1914)
• Home Building Association Company, Newark, Ohio (1914)
• Purdue State Bank, West Lafayette, Indiana (1914)
• People's Federal Savings and Loan Association, Sidney, Ohio (1918)
• Farmers and Merchants Bank, Columbus, Wisconsin (1919)

Lost Sullivans

Entrance from the 1893 Chicago Stock Exchange building, reinstalled at The Art Institute of Chicago

• Grand Opera House, Chicago. 1880–1927
• Pueblo Opera House, Pueblo, Colorado. 1890–1922. Destroyed by fire.
• New Orleans Union Station, 1892. Demolished 1954.
• Dooly Block, Salt Lake City, Utah. 1891 Demolished 1965.
• Chicago Stock Exchange Building. Adler & Sullivan. 1893–1972

The Trading room from the Stock Exchange was removed intact prior to the building's demolition and was subsequently restored in the Art Institute of Chicago in 1977; the entryway arch (seen at right) stands outside on the northeast corner of the AIC site.

• Zion Temple, Chicago. 1884–?
• Transportation Building, World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago. Adler & Sullivan. 1893–94. An exposition building, it was only built to last a year.
• Louis Sullivan Bungalow, destroyed in Hurricane Katrina. Frank Lloyd Wright also claimed credit for the design.
• Schiller Building (later Garrick Theater), Chicago. Adler & Sullivan. 1891–1961.
• Third McVickers Theater, Chicago. Adler & Sullivan. 1883?–1922.
• Thirty-Ninth Street Passenger Station, Chicago. Adler & Sullivan. 1886–1934.
• Standard Club, Chicago. Adler & Sullivan. 1888–1910.
• Pilgrim Baptist Church. Adler & Sullivan. 1891–2006. Destroyed by fire, Jan. 6, 2006.
• Wirt Dexter Building. Adler & Sullivan. 1887–2006. Destroyed by fire, Oct. 24, 2006.
• George Harvey House. Adler & Sullivan. 1888–2006. Destroyed by fire, Nov. 4, 2006.

Images

Auditorium Building	Wainwright Building	Wainwright Building cornice	Wainwright Building detail
Getty Tomb	Bayard-Condict Building	Carson Pirie Scott store	The Van Allen Building
The Van Allen Building, Column Capital	Detail of ornamentation of the Van Allen Building	Gage Building (on right)	Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Cathedral, exterior
Holy Trinity Russian Orthodox Cathedral, interior	National Farmer's Bank of Owatonna	People's Federal Savings and Loan Association	Merchants' National Bank
Peoples Savings Bank	Harold C. Bradley House, Wisconsin	Louis Sullivan Jewel Box, Grinnell, Iowa

See also

• Richard Bock

References

1. ^ Hugh Morrison, Louis Sullivan: Prophet of Modern Architecture (New York: Norton, 1998), 2.
2. ^ Louis Sullivan at www.prairiestyles.com
3. ^ Sullivan, Louis (1924). Autobiography of an Idea. New York City: Press of the American institute of Architects, Inc.. p. 325. 
4. ^ Jeffrey Karl Ochsner and Dennis Alan Andersen, Distant Corner: Seattle Architects and the Legacy of H.H. Richardson (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2003), 287-288.
5. ^ http://www.tusculum.edu/tour/campus/tvirginia.html

Sources

• Columbian Gallery – A Portfolio of Photographs of the World’s Fair, The Werner Company, Chicago, IL, 1894.
• Condit, Carl W., The Chicago School of Architecture, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL, 1964.
• Connely, Willard, Louis Sullivan as He Lived, Horizon Press, Inc., NY, 1960.
• Engelbrecht, Lloyd C., "Adler and Sullivan’s Pueblo Opera House: City Status for a New Town in the Rockies", The Art Bulletin, Published by the College Art Association of America, June 1985.
• Gebhard, David, in Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, May 1960.
• Morrison, Hugh, Louis Sullivan – Prophet of Modern Architecture, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc. New York City, 1963.
• Sullivan, Louis, The Autobiography of an Idea, Press of the American institute of Architects, Inc., New York City, 1924.
• Sullivan, Louis, Kindergarten Chats and Other Writings, Dover Publications, Inc., New York City, 1979.
• Sullivan, Louis H. Louis Sullivan: The Public Papers Ed. Robert Twombly, Chicago University Press, Chicago & London, 1988
• Thomas, Cohen and Lewis, Frank Furness – The Complete Works, Princeton Architectural Press, New York City, 1991.
• Twombly, Robert, Louis Sullivan – His Life and Work, Elizabeth Sifton Books, New York City, 1986.
• Vinci, John, The Art Institute of Chicago: The Stock Exchange Trading Room, The Art Institute of Chicago, 1977.
• Weingarden, Lauren S. "Louis H. Sullivan: A System of Architectural Ornament" [1924]. Co-published by the Art Institute of Chicago and Ernst Wasmuth Verlag (Germany); distributed by Rizzoli International (U.S.), Wasmuth (Germany), Mardaga (France), 1990.
• Weingarden, Lauren S. "Louis H. Sullivan: The Banks". Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Louis Sullivan

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Louis Sullivan

• Lieber-Meister - The Louis Sullivan Page
• Sullivan at 150 - extensive list and photos
• Tribute to Louis Sullivan - 150 Years
• Article on fragments of Adler and Sullivan Buildings in Chicago
• Louis Sullivan at the Open Directory Project
• Louis Sullivan at www.prairiestyles.com
• "Sullivan's Banks" documentary by Heinz Emigholz
• Louis Sullivan at Find a Grave
• Graceland Cemetery Biography
• Louis Sullivan Collection - images, bio
• Louis Sullivan Buildings Extant in Chicago - photographs, descriptions, maps

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)