Louis Sullivan's Influence on Early Modern Architecture
1. TIME , LIFE, WORKS AND
PHILOSOPIES OF Louis
Sullivan
Compiled by : FD Architects Forum
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Louis henry Sullivan
name | Louis henry Sullivan
lived | 1856-1924
style | Chicago School
Considered “The Father of
Modern Architecture”
“Form follows Function”
Mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright and
influence on the PRAIRIE SCHOOL
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Louis Sullivan works
Auditorium Building | 1886-1890
Chicago, Illinois USA
Wainwright Building | 1890-1891
St. Louis, Missouri USA
Guaranty Building | 1894-1895
Buffalo, New York USA
Carson, Pirie, Scott and Co. | 1899-1904
Chicago, Illinois USA
National Farmers' Bank | 1906-1908
Owatonna, Minnesota USA
Merchant's National Bank | 1913-1914
Grinnell, Iowa USA
People's Savings and Loan Association Bank | 1919
Sidney, Ohio USA
Farmers' and Merchants' Union Bank | 1919
Columbus, Wisconsin USA
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Chicago School of Architecture
the Chicago School was a school of architects active in
Chicago at the turn of the 20th
century. They were among
the first to promote the new technologies of steel-frame
construction in commercial buildings, and developed a
spatial aesthetic which co-evolved with, and then came to
influence, parallel developments in European Modernism.
While the term Chicago School is widely used to describe
buildings in the city during the 1880s and 1890s, this term
has been disputed by scholars, in particular in reaction to
Carl Condit's 1952 book
The Chicago School of Architecture.
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Chicago School of Architecture
One of the distinguishing features of the
Chicago School is the use of steel-frame
buildings with masonry cladding (usually
terra cotta), allowing large plate-glass
window areas and limiting the amount of
exterior ornamentation. Sometimes
elements of neoclassical architecture are
used in Chicago School skyscrapers.
Many Chicago School skyscrapers contain
the three parts of a classical column. The
first floor functions as the base, the middle
stories, usually with little ornamental detail,
act as the shaft of the column, and the last
floor or so represent the capital, with more
ornamental detail and capped with a
cornice.
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Chicago School of Architecture
The "Chicago window" originated in this
school . It is a three-part window
consisting of a large fixed center panel
flanked by two smaller double-hung sash
windows. The arrangement of windows
on the facade typically creates a grid
pattern, with some projecting out from
the facade forming bay windows. The
Chicago window combined the functions
of light-gathering and natural ventilation;
a single central pane was usually fixed,
while the two surrounding panes were
operable. These windows were often
deployed in bays, known as oriel
windows, that projected out over the
street.
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Chicago School of Architecture
Architects whose names are associated with the Chicago School including
Louis Sullivan.
Henry Hobson
Richardson,
Dankmar Adler Daniel
Burnham
Solon S.
Beman
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Auditorium Building
Plan
The Auditorium is a heavy, impressive structure externally, and was more
striking in its day when buildings of its scale were less common. When
completed, it was the tallest building in the city and largest building in
the United States.
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The Wainwright Building
1890
101 North 7th Street
St. Louis, Missouri, USA
Louis Sullivan & Dankmar Adler, architects
When it was built, the Wainwright Building
revolutionized American architecture. The first two
stories are unornamented except for the large, deep
windows. Uninterrupted piers extend through the next
seven stories. Horizontal panels between the piers
articulate the building's interior structure. Intertwined
ornaments and small round windows form the upper
story.
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The prudential Building
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
facade of Richardson's
Marshall Field Store, Chicago
of 1888, is used to impart a
decidedly vertical emphasis
to the building's overall
form...
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The prudential Building
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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The Bradley House
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 his 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—not floating in the manner of Wright's
Prairie Style but laboring with elaborate brackets to express the
work of opening the interior space outward.
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National Farmers' Bank
"...some of his (Sullivan's) finest work is from these last years, especially the banks in small
prairie towns. The best of these is the National Farmers' Bank...Though much smaller in
scale than the earlier skyscrapers, the bank is just as clearly expressed in its parts. The
main banking room is a single cubical space enclosed by a box, indicated by the wide
stained-glass lunette windows. The base is of red sandstone, with dark red brick walls.
Ornamentation is concentrated in panels, of bronze-green terra cotta, with intricate cast iron
escutcheons at the corners; the cornice is simply corbeled brick courses. To the rear is a
separate block housing offices and shops, a speculative venture by the bank, but clearly
related to the bank in materials and design."
— Leland M. Roth. A Concise History of American Architecture. p183.
"Stand back from the corner of Broadway and Cedar Streets in Owatonna, Minnesota. See
how Sullivan's National Farmers' Bank stands on the corner opposite the park. Massive and
stately—68 feet broad and about 53 feet tall—its silhouette and ornamental patterns strike
golden section rectangles. Great vaulted windows pierce the deep walls, and a row of dark
square windows punctures the base. Strength in concept; surprise and contradiction in
detail.
"The great ornamented mass anchors the lines of street facades, bringing sequences of
jumbled store fronts and one fine, arcaded office building (Sullivan's also) to a monumental
climax."
— Yukio Futagawa, ed. and photographs with Albert Bush-Brown, text. Global Architecture:
Louis H. Sullivan: National Farmers' Bank, Owatonna, Minnesota Merchants' National
Bank, Grinnell, Iowa, and Farmers' & Merchants' Union Bank, Columbus, Wisconsin. p2-5.
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Merchants National Bank Building
To honor one of the most influential American
architects of all time on the sesquicentennial of his
birth, the City of Grinnell and Grinnell College will co-
sponsor a series of events highlighting Sullivan and
his work, including lectures, films, music, and guided
tours
As part of the celebration of the 150th anniversary of
his birth on Sept. 3, 1856 in Boston, Mass., the tours
will focus on the Merchants National Bank building,
designed by Sullivan in 1913 and widely regarded as
one of his masterpieces. Grinnell buildings designed
by other famed architects, including Walter Burley
Griffin, George Washington Maher, Walter Netsch,
and Cesar Pelli, will also be featured.
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