LOUIS HENRY SULLIVAN

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.

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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. : 234,599Number of Floors: 10Year Built: 1891Year Purchased by Missouri: 1974Year Commissioned: 1981Height: 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.

SITE PLAN

ELEVATION

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

PLAN FOR UPPER FLOORS

SECTIONS

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

PLAN

ELEVATIONS

3 – D SECTION

AUDITORIUM THEATRE

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.

INTERIORS

GRAND STAIRWAYS

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.

GANZ 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.

SITE PLAN

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.

GROUND FLOOR PLAN

SECTIONAL ELEVATIONS

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.

PLAN

SECTION

INTERIORS

THANK YOU