Emily Mitchell

March 10th, 2017

Period 7

Compare and contrast: #124 vs. #152

The Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building, now known as the Sullivan Center, is

located in Chicago, Illinois. It was designed by Louis Sullivan for the retail firm Schlesinger &

Mayer in 1899 and expanded from there. The building has been used for retail purposes since

1899, has been a Chicago Landmark since 1975, and is part of the Loop Retail Historic District.

Leopold Schlesinger and David Mayer hired Sullivan to do further remodeling and add a new

entrance on the corner of State and Madison. In 1898, Schlesinger and Mayer decided to remove

the original building located on State and Madison replace it with a new building designed by

Sullivan. Sullivan had both a nine and twelve-story proposal made up for this new building. The

building is remarkable for its steel-framed structure, which allowed a dramatic increase in

window area created by bay-wide windows, which allowed for the greatest amount of daylight

into the building interiors. Sullivan designed the corner entry to be seen from both State and

Madison and that the ornamentation situated above the entrance would be literally attractive,

which would give the store an elegant unique persona important to the competitiveness of the

neighboring stores.

Robert Venturi's House in New Castle County offers a modest but instructive example of

the Post-Modern style set in rural north Delaware. Venturi studied architecture at Princeton

University and attended the American Academy in Rome during the mid-1950s, where he

developed a bias towards post-Renaissance architecture. The front faade of the New Castle
County House incorporates a floating arched screen that rises somewhat awkwardly from the

lower edge of the gable, like a billboard. It functions as a sign, identifying the structure as a

residence. Venturi never liked the stylistic term postmodern, but his buildings and critical

writings helped propel late 20th-century architecture in a new direction.