ARCHITECT LOUIS HENRY SULLIVAN

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.

▪ Born to Irish and Swedish immigrants in 1856▪ Grew up on his grandparents’ farm learning about

nature▪ Spent a lot of time around Boston, exploring and

looking at buildings▪ Studied architecture at Massachusetts Institute of

Technology (MIT), entering at the age of 16▪ Left MIT in a year to live in Pennsylvania▪ Then went to Chicago, where he worked with the

father of the skyscraper, William Le Baron▪ Went to Paris in 1874 and studied at Ecole des Beaux-

Arts’▪ Returned to Chicago in 1875 and 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

TIMELINE

Becoming an architect…▪ Louis Sullivan decided on his career when he was only

twelve.

▪ He saw a well-dressed man walking out of a building in downtown Boston and discovered that, as Robert Twombly writes, he “was an architect, that many structures had architects, and...they invented buildings in their heads and bossed everyone else on the job.”

▪ After this experience, Sullivan never had any goal but to become an architect, and since he was already a hard-working student, he was able to achieve his goal in a very short time.

▪ He left high school early and entered the newly-founded Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a third-year student. After finishing his degree, he went to Europe to study for one year at the Ecole de Beaux-Arts in Paris and explore the art of Italy.

▪ By age twenty-five, he was a junior partner at Adler & Company, an established Chicago architecture firm headed by Dankmar Adler. 

Sullivan and the Steel High-rise▪ The taller the building, the more strain

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.

▪ 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.

IMPORTANT BUILDINGS

The Wainwright Building

The Guaranty Building

The Guaranty Building

NATIONAL FARMER’S BANK

Corner view, from southwest

Main facade, from west

The Bradley House

People’s Federal Savings & Loan

References

▪ http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/572949/Louis-Sullivan

▪ http://myhero.com/go/hero.asp?hero=Sullivan

▪ http://architecture.about.com/od/greatarchitects/p/sullivan.htm

▪ http://www.infoplease.com/encyclopedia/people/sullivan-louis-henry.html