Louis sullivan- "father of skyscrapers” "father of modernism“

LOUIS HENRI SULLIVAN
 an American architect,
 "father of skyscrapers”
 "father of modernism“
 Initially achieved fame as theatre architect.
 He is considered by many as the creator of
the modern skyscraper, was an influential
architect and critic of the Chicago School,
 A mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, and an
inspiration to the Chicago group of architects.
Louis Henri Sullivan
(Sept 3, 1856 – April 14, 1924)

BIOGRAPHY
• Louis Sullivan was born to an Irish-born father and
a Swiss-born mother, both of whom had
immigrated to the United States in the late 1840s.
• He grew up living with his grandmother.
• 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.

• After graduating from high school,
Sullivan studied architecture briefly at
the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology.
 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.

 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.
 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.

 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
 Prior to the late 19th century, the weight of a multi-storey
building had to be supported principally by the strength of its
walls. large designs meant massively thick walls on the
ground floors, and definite limits on the building's
height.

 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.

Price of Steel from 1867 to 1895 ($/ton)
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
1867 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895
PRICES/TON
PRICES/TON
The development of cheap, versatile steel in the second half of
the 19th century changed those rules. 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

 Louis Sullivan coined the phrase "form ever follows function",
which, shortened to "form 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.
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.
 In truth, many architects had been building skyscrapers before or
contemporarily with Sullivan.
 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

THE WAINWRIGHT
BUILDING
Architect: Louis Sullivan
Dankmar Adler
Location: 709 Chestnut Street,
St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Building Sq Ft. : 234,599
Number of Floors: 10
Year Built: 1891
Year Purchased by Missouri: 1974
Year Commissioned: 1981
Height: 44.81 meters / 147 feet

HISTORY
 The Wainwright Building (also known as the Wainwright
State Office Building) is a 10-story red brick office building.
 At 709 Chestnut Street in downtown St. Louis, Missouri.
 The Wainwright Building is among the first skyscrapers in
the world. It was designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis
Sullivan in the Palazzo style and built between 1890 and
1891.
 It was named after, building contractor, and financier Ellis
Wainwright.
 The building, listed as a landmark both locally and
nationally
 Architect Frank Lloyd Wright called the Wainwright
Building "the very first human expression of a tall steel
office-building as Architecture."
 The building is currently owned by the State of Missouri
and houses state offices
 The Wainwright building is credited for being the first
successful utilization of steel frame construction.
 The first two floors are faced in brown sandstone.
 The next seven stories rise in continuous brick piers.

HISTORY
 An architectural landmark of international
significance is the Wainwright Building, Louis
Sullivan´s masterpiece, which marked the
beginning of modern skyscraper design. Its
architects were Adler and Sullivan of Chicago,
associated with C.K. Ramsey of St. Louis.
 The building represented a revolt against
American dependence on European
antecedents in architecture, as expressed in
tall steel frame buildings.
 This structure was erected for Ellis Wainwright,
a wealthy St. Louis brewer.
 Upon its initial completion, the Wainwright
Building was "popular with the people" and
received "favourably" by critics.
 In 1968, the building was designated as
a National Historic Landmark and in 1972 it
was named a city landmark

ABOUT THE WAINWRIGHT
BUILDING The first two stories are
unornamented brown sandstone
with large, deep windows.
 Uninterrupted red brick piers extend
through the next seven stories.
Between the piers are horizontal
panels decorated with leaf
ornaments.
 The top story is decorated with
round windows and terra cotta leaf
scroll ornaments inspired by the
Notre-Dame de Reims in France.

 Architect Frank Lloyd Wright called
the Wainwright Building "the very
first human expression of a tall steel
office-building as Architecture."
 The Wainwright Building is of crucial
importance in that it demonstrates
how an architect, by casting aside
historic styles as the inspiration for
his designs, might use an original or
modern style to give visual unity to a
tall building.
 Sullivan unified the facades of the
Wainwright by treating them as grids
of vertical and horizontal members.
He emphasized the vertical
members by broadening the corner
piers and allowing them to rise freely
to the cornice.

 Between the windows Sullivan
introduced thin vertically-oriented piers
that serve as visual connections
between the base and cornice.
 Below these piers are ornamental
spandrels which also become unifying
features.
 It is through this method of knitting the
facade together with vertical lines
played against a counterpoint of
horizontal lines that Sullivan managed
to do what no one else had
accomplished: “provide a parading for
attaining visual unity in the tall
building.”
 After falling victim to poor economic
times, the building was rescued from
demolition when the National Trust for
Historic Preservation took an option on
the structure. It was eventually
acquired by Missouri as part of a state
office complex.

COMMISION, DESIGN AND
CONSTRUCTION
 The Wainwright building was
commissioned by Ellis
Wainwright.
 Wainwright needed office space
to manage the St Louis Brewers
Association.
 It was the second major
commission for a tall building
won by the Adler & Sullivan firm,
which had grown to international
prominence after the creation of
the ten-story Auditorium
Building in Chicago
 (designed in 1886 and
completed in 1889).

 As designed, the first floor of the
Wainwright Building was intended
for street-accessible shops,
 with the second floor filled with
easily accessible public offices.
 The higher floors were for
"honeycomb" offices, while the top
floor was for water tanks and
building machinery.

ARCHITECTURE
 Aesthetically, the Wainwright
Building exemplifies Sullivan's
theories about the tall building,
which included a tripartite (three-
part) composition
 Base
 Shaft
 Attic
based on the structure of the
classical column, and his desire to
emphasize the height of the
building.
 Despite the classical column
concept, the building's design was
deliberately modern, featuring
none of the neoclassical style that
Sullivan held in contempt

 The base contained retail stores that
required wide glazed openings;
 Sullivan's ornament made the
supporting piers read as pillars.
 Above it there were semi-public nature
of offices up a single flight of stairs.
 A cornice separates the second floor
from the grid of identical windows of
the screen wall, where each window is
like a cell in a honeycomb.
 The building's windows and
horizontals were inset slightly behind
columns and piers, as part of a
“vertical aesthetic” to create what
Sullivan called “a proud and soaring
thing.”

 This perception has since been
criticized as the skyscraper were
designed to make money, not to
serve as a symbol.
 The ornamentation for the building
includes a wide frieze below the
deep cornice, which expresses the
formalized yet naturalistic celery-
leaf foliage typical of Sullivan and
published in his System of
Architectural Ornament,
 decorated spandrels between the
windows on the different floors
and an elaborate door surround at
the main entrance.

 "Apart from the slender brick
piers, the only solids of the wall
surface are the spandrel panels
between the windows..... They
have rich decorative patterns in
low relief, varying in design and
scale with each story."
 The frieze is pierced by
unobtrusive bull's-eye windows
that light the top-story floor,
originally containing water tanks
and elevator machinery.
 The building includes
embellishments of terra cotta, a
building material that was gaining
popularity at the time of
construction.

 One of Sullivan's primary concerns was
the development of an architectural
symbolism consisting of simple
geometric, structural forms and organic
ornamentation.
 The Wainwright Building where he
juxtaposed the objective-tectonic and
the subjective-organic was the first
demonstration of this symbolism.
 Unlike Sullivan, Adler described the
building as a "plain business structure"
stating: “In a utilitarian age like ours
it is safe to assume that the real-estate
owner and the investor in buildings will
continue to erect the class of buildings
from which the greatest possible
revenue can be obtained with the least
possible spend...The purpose of
erecting buildings other than those
required for the shelter of their owners
is specifically that of making
investments for profit.”
LOUIS H. SULLIVAN
Dankmar Adler

Some architectural elements from the building have been removed in
renovations and taken to the Sauget, Illinois storage site of the St. Louis
Building Arts Foundation.

AUDITORIUM BUILDING
,CHICAGO
SOUTH – EAST VIEW
MODEL OF THE BUILDING

DETAILS
• PERIOD OF CONSTRUCTION:
1886-1890
• LOCATION : CHICAGO
• CHIEF ARCHITECTS: LOUIS
SULLIVAN

DANKMAR ADLER
• ASSISTANT ARCHITECT :
FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT
• CLIMATE: TEMPERATE
• CONTEXT: URBAN
• STYLE: ROMANESQUE
REVIVAL SOUTH WEST VIEW

PURPOSE AND USAGE
 The auditorium building is a
complex multiple use building .It
was built for a syndicate of
businessmen to house:
• a large opera house
• To provide an economic base ,
hotels and offices were included
 The auditorium is a 10 storey
building with a 17 storey tower.It
was originally a three part
structure comprising of:
• A 400 room L shaped hotel
• An office building of 136 individual
offices
• A theatre

DESIGN OF THE RAFT
FOUNDATION
•The immense unevenly distributed weight of the load-bearing
granite and sandstone walls required an ingenious
foundation system which was devised by Adler to equalize the
settlement of the structure. It is called the Raft foundation.
It consisted of:
•At the bottom a floating mat of crisscrossed railroad ties was
laid.
•Topped with a double layer of steel rails embedded in concrete

FEATURES
• The theatre was spanned
by great arches overhead
almost every inch of them
covered with floral
ornament bathed in gold
leaf and brilliant in the
steady golden glow of
thousands of electric
lights.
• The auditorium building
has an upward slope from
front to back. The seats
rise 15 inches for every
two rows. THE AUDITORIUM THEATRE

• The progressively widening
arches shaped like a cone or
speaking trumpet helped in
maximizing amplification and
minimizing echoes.
• The auditorium is filled with
art as well as it being incased
in it .Lavish mosaics , murals
,plaster castes , stencils , art
glass and iron casts are
among the art elements
housed in the theatre.
• It has a capacity of 4237.
THE GRAND INTERIORS

THE THEATRE HAS A SEATING CAPACITY OF 4237 PEOPLE.

TIMELINE
• The auditorium played an important role in Chicago`s cultural life
and helped change the image of the city from an isolated prairie
town to a center of American culture.
• 1905 :Sullivan himself presented a plan to eliminate the theatre and
construct an entirely separate building inside the present one, but
the plan was rejected.
• During the second world war , it was used as a servicemen`s centre.
• 1908:The building was on the verge of bankruptcy.
• 1928:The auditorium finally went bankrupt.
• 1946: After years of neglect and progressive deterioration the
building was purchased by Roosevelt University .
• 1947: Hotel rooms were converted into classrooms , faculty offices ,
and various other University facilities.
• 1953: The University undertook the restoration and renovation of
many of the auditorium`s most important spaces including the
banquet hall and the ball room which were converted into Ganz
memorial recital hall.

 1960: The auditorium theatre council was established to restore
the theatre and operate it .
 1967: By this time , the theatre was brought back to full splendor .
 Over the years the University has tried to restore the building
although it has repurposed the rooms.
 The former dining hall on the 10th floor is a prime example. In
today's date it serves as the building`s library.
THE LIBRARY WHICH WAS PREVIOUSLY A DINING HALL.

TODAY’S SCENARIO
THE AUDITORIUM BUILDING TODAY IS BEING USED BY ROOSEVELT UNIVERSITY

ST. PAUL CHURCH,
CEDAR RAPIDS,
LOWA This is a perfect
example where
Louis Sullivan has
combined his
powers of vision ,
of imagination, of
intellect, of
sympathy with
human need and
the power to
interpret them in a
vernacular
language.

DETAILS
 ARCHITECT - Louis H. Sullivan
 LOCATION - Cedar Rapids, Iowa
 DATE - 1910 to 1914
 CONSTRUCTION PERIOD - Load brick
bearing masonry
 STYLE- Early Modern
 In 1923 the church was elevated to a
cathedral.

CONSTRUCTION DETAILS
• The church is
characterized by an
octagonal dome and
frontal bell tower.
• It has load bearing
walls which have
been covered with
stucco.
• Arches included in
the bell tower.
• The golden color
imparts a sense of
richness to the
church.

INTERIORS
• The interiors are
decorated using
murals, plaster
reliefs.
• windows on all
the sides of the
octagonal dome.
• Walls covered with
colorful
representations.

ST. VOLODYMYR`S CATHEDRAL,
KIEV
ST. PAUL CHURCH, CEDAR RAPIDS,
LOWA
THE INTERIORS OF ST.PAUL`S CHURCH ARE BASED ON THE INTERIOR
OF ST.VOLODYMYR`S CATHEDRAL, KIEV

NATIONAL FARMER’S
BANK
 LOCATION : OWATONA
 BUILT 1908
 ARCHITEACT: LOUIS H SULLIVAN
• ONE OF THE 1st TO BREAK FREE FROM THE INFLUENCE OF
CLASSICAL REVIVAL STYLE.
• LOUIS SULLIVAN COMPLETED A SERIES OF EIGHT BANKS IN SMALL
MIDWEST TOWNS DURING THE LAST YEAR OF HIS CAREER.

• THE NATIONAL FARMERS
BANK IS THE BEST
SULLIVAN KNOWN FOR A
FORM FOLLOWS
FUNCTIONS, PHILOSOPHY
IN HIS PROTO TYPE
SKYSCRAPER DESIGN.
• APPLIED THESE PRINCIPLES
TO THE SMALLER SCALE OF
THE PRAIRIE SCHOOL
BANKS STIIL MOMUMENTAL
FORM.
• THE BUILDING IS BATHED
IN A SYMPHONY OF
COLOUR AS SULLIVAN
DESCRIBED IT.

 GREEN AND BROWN TERRACOTTA PANELS AND BLUE AND GOLD GLASS
MOSAIC BANDS CONTRAST WITH THE REDDISH BRICK AND RED SAND
STONE BASE THAT ANCHORS THE BANK TO ITS SITE.
 ARCHED STAINED GLASS WINDOWS ARE MIRRORED ON THE INTERIOR
BY MURALS OF DAIRY AND HARVEST SCENES PAINTED BY CHICAGO
ARIST OSKAR GROSS.
 THE LAVISH ORAGANIC ORNMENTATION DESIGNED LARGELY BY
SULLIVAN’S PARTNER GEORGE, CARRIES THROUGH ALL INTERIOR
ELEMENTS FROM 18 FOOT TALL HIGH FIXTURE DOWN TO THE TELLESR’S
WINDOW GRILLS.

Louis sullivan- "father of skyscrapers” "father of modernism“

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