Saturday, February 23, 2008

Louis Sullivan--Architect

In 2006, we celebrated architect Louis Sullivan's 150th birthday. Unfortunately, three of his dwindling number of Chicago structures burned down: the Wirt Dexter Building, George M. Harvey House and Pilgrim Baptist Church.

Sullivan approached architecture in unconventional ways with "form follows function." He was born in Boston in 1856. In 1879, he came to Chicago and joined the architect firm of Dankmar Adler (Adler Planetarium) and four years later the firm became Adler & Sullivan.

Two of their famous buildings in Chicago are the Auditorium Building and Chicago Stock Exchange. In 1887, they hired a young draftsman from Wisconsin named Frank Lloyd Wright, but fired him in 1893 for taking outside commissions.

In 1895, the partnership dissolved, but Sullivan continued designing the Schlesinger & Mayer department store, which later became Carson Pirie Scott & Co. in 1904. This building no longer houses that store, but has been completely renovated for other uses, fortunately.

Toward the end of his career he faced poverty, alcoholism, and small commissions building structures in small Midwest towns like Cedar Rapids, Clinton, and Grinnell, Iowa; Newark and Sidney, Ohio; Owatonna, Minn.; west Lafayette, Ind.; and Columbus, Wis. Each of these structures still stand.

He died in Chicago on April 14, 1924 at age 67 and is buried in Chicago's Graceland Cemetery.

From April 2007 LifeTimes "Louis Sullivan buildings: Going, going and gone" by Robert Goldsborough. Robert is an architecture aficionado and mystery novelist.

Quite an Amazing Man. --Da Coot

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