(b Boston, MA, 3 Sept 1856; d Chicago, IL, 14 April 1924). American architect and writer. He was the leading progressive architect in Chicago at its most revolutionary period in the 1890s, and a designer of amazing virtuosity. His executed buildings include tall office buildings, theatres, department stores and banks, some of them in partnership with DANKMAR ADLER. Sullivan accepted frankly the new creation of industrialized architecture, the steel-framed skyscraper building, but covered it with the most delicate ornament, also designed by him and executed in mass-produced terracotta slabs. He also wrote poetically of the position of the sensitive individual in the mechanized world.

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The Concise Grove Dictionary of Art. Copyright © 2002 by Oxford University Press, Inc.. All rights reserved.