ARCHITECT

LOUIS HENRY
SULLIVAN

Ar.Amal K Plakkat
ARCHITECT LOUIS SULLIVAN
Louis Henry Sullivan (September 3, 1856 – April
14, 1924)
An American architect
Called the “FATHER OF SKYSCRAPERS”
An influential architect and critic of
the Chicago School
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.
Sullivan is one of "the recognized trinity of
American architecture“
He posthumously received the AIA Gold
Medal in 1944.

Ar.Amal K Plakkat
 born to Irish and Swedish immigrants in 1856
 grew up at grandparent’s farm learning things about nature
 spent a lot of time around Boston
 exploring and looking at buildings
 studied architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
 entered at the age of 16
 he left MIT in a year to live in Pennsylvania
 then he went to Chicago, where he worked with the father of the
skyscraper, William Le Baron
 went to Paris in 1874
 studied at Ecole des Beaux-Arts
 returned to Chicago in 1875 got a job as a draftsman in the office of
Joseph S. Johnson & John Edelman
 left Johnson in 1879
 worked in the office of Dankmar Adler
 the firm of Adler & Sullivan designed over 180 buildings during its
existence

Ar.Amal K Plakkat
 Sullivan and the steel high-rise
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.
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.
Louis Sullivan coined the phrase "form ever follows function", which,
shortened to "form follows function," would become the great battle-cry
of modernist architects.

Ar.Amal K Plakkat
Philosophy
Louis Sullivan coined the phrase "form ever follows function",
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.

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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.
this office building in Buffalo, New York is in the Palazzo style, 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.

Ar.Amal K Plakkat
Louis Sullivan’s
Buildings
 Location: 430 S. Michigan
Auditorium Building
Avenue
Chicago Illinois 60605 United
States
Coordinates:
41°52′34″N 87°37′31″WCoordina
tes: 41°52′34″N 87°37′31″W
Built: 1889
Architect: Dankmar Adler; Louis
Sullivan
Architectural style: Late 19th
and Early 20th Century
American Movements
Governing body: Private
Significant dates
Added to NRHP: April 17, 1970
Designated NHL: May 15, 1975[
Designated CL: September 15,
1976
Ar.Amal K Plakkat
The Auditorium Building in Chicago is one of the best-known designs
of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan.
It was added to the National Register of Historic Places on April 17,
1970. It was declared aNational Historic Landmark in 1975, and was
designated a Chicago Landmark on September 15, 1976.
In addition, it is a historic district contributing property for the Chicago
Landmark Historic Michigan Boulevard District.
Since 1947, the Auditorium Building has been the home of Roosevelt
University.
The Auditorium Theatre is part of the Auditorium Building and is located at
50 East Congress Parkway. The theater was the first home of the Chicago
Civic Opera and theChicago Symphony Orchestra.

Ar.Amal K Plakkat
Origin and purpose
Ferdinand Peck, a Chicago businessman, incorporated the Chicago
Auditorium Association in December 1886 to develop what he wanted to
be the world's largest, grandest, most expensive theater that would rival
such institutions as the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. He
was said to have wanted to make high culture accessible to the working
classes of Chicago.
The building was to include an office block and a first class hotel.
"The Auditorium was built for a syndicate of businessmen to house a large
civic opera house; to provide an economic base it was decided to wrap
the auditorium with a hotel and office block.
The entrance to the auditorium is on the south side beneath the tall
blocky eighteen-story tower.
The rest of the building is a uniform ten stories, organized in the same way
as Richardson's Marshall Field Wholesale Store. The interior embellishment,
however, is wholly Sullivan's, and some of the details, because of their
continuous curvilinear foliate motifs, are among the nearest equivalents
to European Art Nouveau architecture."

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 Location: St.Louis, Missouri
WAINWRIGHT BUILDING Date: 1890 to 1891
Building Type: early
skyscraper, commercial
office tower
Construction System:
steel frame clad in
masonry
Climate: temperate
Context: urban
Style: Early Modern
Notes: An early tall
building (10 stories) with
an all steel frame. The
Chicago School.

Ar.Amal K Plakkat
"The eleven-storey Wainwright
Building represents Sullivan's first
attempt at a truly multi-storey format,
in which the device of the
suppressed transom taken from the
fa•ade of Richardson's Marshall Field
Store, Chicago of 1888, is used to
impart a decidedly vertical emphasis
to the building's overall form.
The two-storey base of the classical
tripartite composition is faced in fine
red sandstone set on a two-foot-high
string course of red Missouri granite.
While the middle section consists of
red brick pilasters with decorated
terra cotta spandrels, the top is
rendered as a deep overhanging
cornice faced in an ornamented
terra cotta skin to match the
enrichment of the spandrels and the
pilasters below."

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GUARANTY BUILDING
Year(s) of construction:1895-1896
Height:46 m
Floors:13
Location:28 Church Street, Buffalo,
New York, United States
Coordinates:42° 52' 59" N, 78° 52'
36" W

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NATIONAL FARMER’S BANK
Location:Owatonna, Minnes
ota
Date :1907 to 1908 timeline
Building Type :bank
Construction System: bearing
masonry
Climate: temperate
Context: urban, small city
Style :Early Modern
Notes: large arch in main
facade

Main facade, from west Corner view, from southwest

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 Interior, east wall Interior, east entrance wall South windows

Interior, ceiling/northwest corner Interior, ceiling/southeast corner Ceiling

Photo, exterior overview, historical

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The Carson Pirie Scott Building
 Location:Chicago, Illinois
 Coordinates:41°52′54.16″N87°37′39
.18″W
 Built:1899
 Architect:Louis Sullivan; Burnham,
Daniel H., & Co.
 Architectural style:Late 19th and
Early 20th Century American
Movements
 Governing body:Private
 NRHP Reference#:70000231
 Significant datesAdded to
NRHP:April 17, 1970
 Designated NHL:May 15, 1975
 Designated CL:November 5, 1970

Ar.Amal K Plakkat
mahogany and marble fixtures .
new combination arc and incandescent lights
the] largest and finest display windows in the world
reading, writing and rest rooms . . . telephone booths . . . [an] emergency
medical aid room . . . [an] exposition of oriental rugs . . . and 10,000
chrysanthemums
The Carson Pirie Scott building had the most clearly expressed
steel frame of any building in Chicago.
The frame, sheathed in glazed white terra cotta, allowed for some of the
largest windows ever seen and flexible, wide-open spaces.
Both of these features were key to a successful department store and
examples of Sullivan’s famous design philosophy, “Form follows Function.”
But what really makes Sullivan’s design stand out is the building’s lavish
foliate ornamentation. Every inch of the framework surrounding Carson’s
bottom story windows is covered in entirely original cast-iron, nature-
inspired embellishments

Ar.Amal K Plakkat
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Schlesinger and Mayer Department Store

Location: Chicago, Illinois

Date:1899 to 1904
Building Type: department store
Construction System: cast iron ground
floor storefront
Climate: temperate
Context: urban
Style: Early Modern

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 Section Drawing
Elevation Drawing

Plan Drawing Ar.Amal K Plakkat

Instead of a stack of undifferentiated office rooms, the department store
required broad horizontal open spaces where goods could be displayed;
at the ground floor the windows were to be showcases highlighting
selected wares.
Thus in the finished building, constructed in two phases in 1899 and 1903-4,
the horizontal line, rather than the vertical, is dominant, with the broad
spandrel panels brought up flush with the narrow vertical piers.
Nevertheless the tripartite division is present with (a) ground floor windows
richly encrusted with cast iron frames by Sullivan and his assistant Elmslie, (b)
midsection, and (c) the terminating attic and cornice slab. As in Burnham
and Root's Reliance Building, there is a change in color, away from the reds
and browns, to glazed white terra cotta.
"Originally built for the established firm of Schlesinger and Meyer, the first
three-bay, nine-storey phase of this department store was erected in 1899,
and the second, twelve-storey increment on the corner of Madison and
State Streets between 1903 and 1904

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St. Paul's Church
•L o c a t i o n : C e d a r
R a p i d s , I o wa
•D a t e : 1 9 1 0 T o 1 9 1 4
•B u i l d i n g T y p e : C h u r c h
• Construction System:
Brick Bearing Masonry
•C l i m a t e : T e m p e r a t e
•C o n t e x t : S u b u r b a n
•S t y l e : E a r l y M o d e r n

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A building quite devoid of ornament may convey a noble and dignified
sentiment by virtue of mass and proportion
That which exists in spirit ever seeks and finds its visible counterpart in
form, its visible image...a living thought, a living form
"...the architect who combines in his being the powers of vision , of
imagination, of intellect, of sympathy with human need and the power
to interpret them in a language vernacular and true—is he who shall
create poems in stone...

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Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral

Holy Trinity Orthodox

Cathedral ..
Address: 1121 N. Leavitt
St.
Year Built: 1903
Date Designated a
Chicago Landmark:
March 21, 1979 ...

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The church was commissioned by the growing Russian congregation of
Chicago ... Construction work, partly financed by Tsar St. Nicholas II of
Russia, lasted from 1899 to 1903.
The church retains many features of the Russian provincial architecture,
including an octagonal dome and a frontal bell tower.
It is believed that the emigrants wished the church to be "remindful of the
small, intimate, rural buildings they left behind in the Old World .
The cathedral's interior is based on the St Volodymyr's Cathedral in
Kiev. The church was elevated to a cathedral in 1923, and stands today
a proud member of the Orthodox community in Chicago.
The walls of the church are load-bearing brick covered with stucco; the
detailing of the two-story rectory repeats the same sinuous curve found in
the roofline of the church.

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 Location: Riverside, Illinois
Date:1907
Babson House Building Type: house
Construction System: brick
bearing masonry
Climate: temperate
Context: suburban
Style: Eclectic Romanesque
Revival, Richardsonian
Notes: Plan with main and
crossing axes

Ar.Amal K Plakkat
One quality consistent in the spaces of Sullivan's houses from the
Charnley House to the Babson House is their insertion in an embracing
rectangular prism through which the major and minor axes struggle.
Beginning in 1909, Sullivan's interior spaces finally freed themselves from
this restraining carapace, emerging in a series of cross-shaped plans in
the two Bradley House projects and the Bennett House design.
These compositions are no less processional, centering on a space just
beyond the entrance point, enclosed in thickened poched walls,
projecting dramatic axes forward and to each side, manifested
externally as juxtaposed volumes.
Sullivan's walls are thick, the windows deeply inset, and his masses can be
marked with cantilevers like those over the porches of the erected
Bradley House Ñnot floating in the manner of Wright's Prairie Style but
laboring with elaborate brackets to express the work of opening the
interior space outward."

Ar.Amal K Plakkat
Ar.Amal K Plakkat
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