Chicago's Auditorium Building: Opera or Anarchism

Joseph M. Siry

The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 57, No. 2. (Jun., 1998), pp. 128-159.

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Chicago's Auditorium Building Opera or Anarchism

JOSEPH M. SIRY, Weskyan University

Few buildings in the modern period have been as closely

identified with a city's architectural culture as Adler and

Sullivan's Auditorium Building in Chicago, designed and built

from 1886 to 1890 (Figure 1). Regarded as a definitive monu-

ment for its place and period, it is a work that did much to

launch Chicago's reputation as a major center for modern

architecture. The Auditorium Building has always figured

centrally in accounts of Adler and Sullivan's oeuvre because of

its technical and aesthetic virtuosity, both as a construction

and as a theater.' This study attempts to situate the Auditorium

Building within the social history of Chicago in the 1880s,

when the city's theatrical and musical culture was part of a

larger ongoing struggle between Chicago's leading capitalists

and property owners and a local working-class political move-

ment for socialistic anarchism.

As an ideologically calculated response to its historic mo-

ment, Chicago's Auditorium adapted traditions of theater

architecture and urban monumentality as these had devel-

oped in both Europe and the United States in the late nine-

teenth century. The building's planning and design answered

to its social purpose. Such analysis of this pivotal work provides

a different perspective on the phenomenon of the Chicago

School of architecture with which the Auditorium is linked in

the modern movement's historiography. The case of the Audi-

torium points up the need to examine not only the protomod-

ern construction and expression of Chicago's commercial

buildings from 1880 to 1900 but also their pa t r~nage .~

NEW YORK CITY'S METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE As its patron and architects later commented, Chicago's Audi-

torium Theater was designed partly in opposition to New

York's original Metropolitan Opera House of 1881-1883. Un- like the Auditorium, the Metropolitan was paid for by indi-

vidual stockholders who purchased boxes in the projected theater for their private use. As the Met's architect, Josiah

Cady, explained: "In this country, where the government is not 'paternal,' aid has been found in another quarter: the

wealthy, fashionable classes, who, even if not caring especially

128 JSAH / 57:2,JUNE 1998

for, nor appreciating deeply the music, find [the opera house]

a peculiar and valuable social feature. Its boxes afford a rare

opportunity for the display of beauty and toilet[te]s. They also

give opportuniw for the informal exchange of social courte- A A

sies, being opened to select callers through the evening; the

long waits between the acts especially favoring such inter-

change."3 This method of financing "in no small degree

determines the size and character of the house," where provi-

sion had to be made "for accommodating liberally and el-

egantly the boxholders who have built this house, guarantee it

against loss, and receive their special accommodations as a

return for the same."4

Appointed after a competition in 1880, Cady designed the

original Metropolitan Opera House for a site 200 feet wide

from Thirty-ninth to Fortieth Streets and 260 feet long from its

front on Broadway back to Seventh Avenue (Figure 2). For this

site, as Edith Wharton recalled, New Yorkers wanted "a new

Opera House which should compete in costliness and splen-

dor with those of the great European capitals."j The chairman

of the Metropolitan's building committee wrote that "there is

not a Theater or Opera House in the country that can be

taken as a model for what we intend to have."6 Before he

became the Metropolitan's architect, Cady, although an accom-

plished organist and musician, had never designed a theater

nor seen an opera and had never traveled to Europe. His

appointment prompted him to tour European opera houses

in 1881 prior to executing his final plans.'

In Cady's built plan for the Met, the auditorium housed a

ring of equally sized boxes in the tradition of La Scala in Milan

(1776-1778) and Edward M. Barry's Covent Garden in Lon-

don (1856-1858). However, the Met's larger auditorium was a

slightly modified version of their horseshoe-shaped plans. To

ensure good sight lines from boxes near the stage, Cady

shaped the boxes as a lyre in a plan that flared outward where it met the stage. Indeed he named his original competition

project "Lyre," alluding to the musical instrument of Apollo,

the god of music, whose image appeared in the mural over the

proscenium. The auditorium's large overall area and its dis-

tended curvature enabled Cady to include a total of 122 boxes in three full tiers around the horseshoe and an additional half

FIGURE I: Adler and Sullivan, Auditorium Building, Michigan Avenue and Congress Street, Chicago, 1886- 1890, from southwest, showing houses on Congress Street (lower right)

tier of boxes beneath the lowest full tier. This half tier of baignoire (meaning bathtublike) boxes was near the stage, where the lowering of the parquet permitted its insertion (Figure 3). As in La Scala, each box at the Met had an anteroom or salon for receiving visitors. The box itself seated at most six persons, yielding a total capacity of 732 persons in boxes. Stockholders purchased outright only the boxes on the two lower full tiers. Those on the lowest half tier and the upper full tier were rented, at first for $12,000 a season. When the Metropolitan opened, newspapers printed diagrams showing who owned each of the boxes. To ensure adequate ticket revenues, the entire auditorium was to seat 3,045, making it larger than major European theaters such as the Paris OpGra, which had 2,156 permanent seats.8

To avoid competition among patrons, the Met omitted visually prominent boxes close to the stage in the side walls of the proscenium, which were characteristic of earlier opera houses. To make all the boxes equally desirable, "sight lines were drawn from every part of the house in each tier [of

boxes] to the sides and the rear of the stage, to ascertain how much of the view of the stage would be lost from that point, and the contour of the auditorium and the pitch of each tier [of boxes] were modified in conformity with the results of these studies to the arrangement actually ad~pted."~ In opti- mizing sight lines from boxes, the Metropolitan converted its wealthiest patrons "into a republic of oligarchs with no prece- dence among themselves, nodding on equal terms all around Olympus. "lo

In 1966, before its closing and demolition, accounts of the old Metropolitan praised its acoustics, especially for the voice. Yet in its first season (1883-1884), the theater was deemed too large to be an acoustically optimal space because its huge volume made it difficult to hear performers (especially those with less strong voices) in the uppermost galleries." In addi- tion, although Cady's office prepared 700 drawings to adjust sight lines, such studies did not perfect the quality of views from seats in the balcony and top gallery above the three tiers of boxes. In the topmost gallery, only a fourth of the seats had

SIRY: CHICAGO'S AUDITORIUM BUILDING 129

FIGURE 2: Cady, Berg and See, Metropolltan

Opera House, New Yo& City, I88 I - 1883,

half-plans of (nght) first story and (left) sec-

ond story. From Harper's Monrhly 67 (Novem-

ber 1883) 1

a view of the stage, while in the theater overall, 700 seats had

only partial views of the stage. At the close of the Met's first

season, one editor concluded that "the problem of providing

over three thousand good seats-that is to say, seats in which

all the occupants can hear well and see well-in a theater of

which three tiers are given up to less than seven hundred

people [in boxes] is an insoluble problem. The Metropolitan

Opera-house is probably the last attempt that will be made at

its s~lut ion." '~

The Met's concept of audience determined the volumetric

form of the auditorium. When viewed from the stage, the

house appeared as an encompassing wall of box tiers. On the

parquet, the seating rose in a shallow curve up from the stage.

The total volume of space was largely determined by the three

tiers of boxes. Above these, the old Met had a gallery and an

uppermost balcony around three sides. Above the upper

balcony, the ceiling had a height of 80 feet over the stage. The

high ceiling demanded a tall frontal opening or proscenium

consistent with the overall proportions of the room. Thus

Cady's proscenium was as tall as it was wide, or about 50 feet in

130 JSAH / 572, JUNE 1998

both directions, crowned by an attic, as shown in Figure 4. As one contemporary wrote, the need for boxes in many tiers

increased the theater's height to create "an enormous unoccu-

pied space within the auditorium." As a result, "the voice

becomes diluted, its quality changes, and as the singer forces

his tones to make them reach his distant hearers, half the

pleasure is lost."13 Demands of patronage had resulted in a

functionally compromised hall.

The style chosen for the Metropolitan's exterior conveyed

its institutional program. The building cost almost $1.8 mil-

FIGURE 3: Metropolitan Opera House, origi-

nal interior showing parquet rows, lowest

half-tier (baignoire) boxes, three full tiers of

boxes, and balcony below gallery. From New

York Daily Graphic (23 October 1883)

lion, exclusive of the land. No opera house of its size, or

pretension, had previously been built in the United States. In

Cady's view, the interiors of such a building were so complex

and costly in construction, equipment, and ornament that

"there is little money left with which to make it a noble work of

art, or a monumental work."14 Thus it would be best "if the

architect acknowledges the situation frankly, and meets it in a

simple manner. . . following some honored and appropriate

style, especially adapted to the economy he must e~ercise."'~

For the exterior, Cady chose a round-arched style centered on

SIHY: CHICAGO'S AUDITORTUM BUILDING 131

FIGURE 4: Metropolitan Opera House, view of

original stage and proscenium, showing frieze with

central mural of Apollo flanked by individual

figural portraits of the muses and paintings of

"The Ballet" and 'The Chorus" by Francis May-

nard to either side of the frieze above topmost

gallery. From Century Magazine 28 (July 1884)

a portico of three bays as the main frontal entrance on

Broadway (Figure 5). To the sides were corner blocks that rose

to seven stories. Only the first two stories were internally part

of the opera house, articulated as such by larger windows. The

corner blocks' ground floors contained shops, with ballrooms and restaurants above on the second floor. Their rents were to

supplement income from the theater, whose operations alone

were not expected to be profitable. Additional income was also

expected from the corner blocks' upper stories, which were

initially identified as apartments for bachelors.16 The residential

corner blocks were crowned by a bracketed cornice and balus-

trade, so that the round-arched exterior style was distinctly

italianate, considered appropriate for a theater initially intended

for Italian opera. Since funds were insufficient to allow employ-

ment of costly stone and marble, Cady's walls were of a pale yellow brick with ornamental terra-cotta trim of the same

Cady's fronts for the Metropolitan signified the idea of

opera as a legitimate entertainment. In New York, opera was

popular, with audiences acclaiming leading musical artists

imported from Europe to perform Italian works since the

1850s.18 Yet some regarded these operas as so emotional in

tone as to border on the disreputable as a form of public

amusement. This view became dominant with changing reper-

toires of the 1860s, when plots of new operas gave greater

emphasis to personal mores.lg To c e r q the Met's social

acceptability, its sober fronts were meant to contrast with those

of the Casino Theater of 1882 (Figure 6), standing opposite on

the southeast comer of Thirty-ninth Street and Broadway.

Designed by Francis H. Kimball and Thomas Wisedell, the

Casino was Manhattan's main center for light opera and

burlesque. This theater's exterior was highly eclectic and

picturesque. Its round corner tower and bowed loggia curving

out above the arched entrance on Thirty-ninth Street com-

bined with Islamic motifs to evoke exotic fantasy that bespoke

the productions within. The loggia signaled the presence of a

roof garden-the first space of its kind in Manhattan-

intended for informal musical performance^.^^ By contrast,

the Metropolitan was deliberately restrained to convey its

purpose of housing grand opera. Communicating an appropri-

ate urban character was a central issue for the Chicago Audito-

rium's design, yet its founders had a different theater in mind,

one shaped by their city's social and cultural situation.

132 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

FIGURE 5: Metropolitan Opera House, on west side of Broadway between Thirtyninth and Fortieth Streets, 1 881 - 1883; demolished 1966; from the southeast, showing New York

Times Building (1904) at right. Photograph (c. 1905) by Detroit Publishing Co.

CHICAGO'S GRAND OPERA FESTIVAL AND ANARCHIST DEMONSTRATIONS The old Met's completion quickly stirred Chicagoans to act.

Dankmar Adler recalled: "The wish of Chicago to possess an

Opera House larger and finer than the Metropolitan, a hall for

great choral and orchestral concerts, a mammoth ball-room, a

convention hall, an auditorium for mass meetings, etc., etc., all

under the same roof and within the same walls, gave birth to

the Auditorium proper."21 As Adler implied, Chicago's build-

ing was to be broader in its program and range of purposes

than the Metropolitan's. It was also intended to be a theater

and a monument responding to local urban conditions as

these were interpreted by the project's chief patron, Ferdi-

nand W. Peck (1848-1924). His vision was a frame of refer-

ence within which Adler and Sullivan created the Auditori-

um's interiors and monumental exterior.

Peck was the youngest son of Mary Kent Peck and Philip F.

W. Peck, who came to Chicago from Rhode Island in the 1830s

and gradually acquired a series of centrally located properties

whose values rose with the city's growth. When their father

died, Ferdinand and his brothers, who were also instrumental

in building the Auditorium, took over management of the

Peck properties. By 1890 these holdings constituted most of

the fourth largest private fortune in Chicago, with the Peck

wealth estimated at $10 million.22 Devoted to a series of civic

causes, Ferdinand Peck was a major supporter and president

of the first Chicago Athenaeum, an urban college and culwral

center for working people, which in 1890 moved into a build-

ing close to the A~ditorium.~~ By all accounts, Peck showed an

unusual degree of concern for workers' lives. His fortune was

based on the rental values of family-owned urban real estate, so

he was not a socialist. However, unlike many wealthier Chicage

ans, he was neither an industrialist nor a merchant who dealt

directly with workers or their associations. This relative dis

tance from confrontations between capital and labor may have

fostered his more charitable outlook. He had "always been

SIRY CHICAGO'S AUDlTORIUM BUILDING 133

FIGURE 6: Kimball and Wisedell, Casino Theater, southeast comer, Broadway and

Thirty-ninth Street, New York City, 1 882; demolished

outspoken in his defense of the rights of workingmen, and he

heartily despises all forms of snobbish aristocracy."24 Another

observer wrote that Peck was "very sympathetic towards the

man who could not afford to indulge his propensities in the

direction of culture without pecuniary aid."Z5 This concern

shaped his vision of the Auditorium, which drew on a broadly

informed knowledge of theaters.

As the Auditorium was being completed in June 1888, Peck

noted that "the thing had been in my mind a long time."26

How long is unknown, although Peck was said to have traveled

repeatedly to Europe, where he cultivated his lifelong enthusi-

asm for Italian grand opera.27 He was not the only wealthy

Chicagoan to acquire culture from European travel. For ex-

ample, Philo T. Otis, one of the key supporters of the Chicago

Symphony Orchestra and author of its history, noted the

operas he had attended in an account of his Europeanjourney

of 1873-1874. For Otis, as for many of his American contempu

raries, the productions of the Royal Italian Opera Company at

London's Covent Garden were a prime link to European

operatic culture. By the 1870s this was the home of the

premier vocalist of the period, Adelina Patti, who also sang in

New York and at the Auditorium's 0pening.2~

Peck's emphasis on democratic access to high culture in

music and theater, especially opera, may have been based in

part on familiarity with comparable European efforts that

predated Chicago's Auditorium. In France the revolution of

1789 had initiated a prolific development of popular theater

in Paris, where numerous new buildings for public commer-

cial theater were built before the Restoration. By 1847 the

growth of Parisian popular theater had led to the creation of

the OpCra National, whose repertoire, staging, seating, and pricing were intended to attract workers. A democratic ideal

also informed Charles Garnier's building for the Paris Opera

of 1861-1875, wherein the architect carefully orchestrated the

spatial system of arrival and circulation to accommodate a

range of ti~ketholders.2~ A comparable goal informed the

design of Parisian municipal theaters built under the Second

Empire for popular audiences, where auditoriums were en-

cased by rented shops and apartments. These included Gab-

riel Davioud's Thtiitre du Chiitelet and the ThCiitre Lyrique

(the latter built for a reincarnated OpCra National) sited on

the Place du Chiitelet, commissioned in 1859 and inaugurated

in 1862. Early in the Third Republic, Davioud designed the

large TrocadCro Theater (1876-1878) as a popular concert

hall where opera could also be staged.30 Built for the Paris

International Exposition of 1878, the Trocadtro recalled the

program and scale of the Royal Albert Hall (1867-1871) in

South Kensington, London. This hall had a vast metal dome

that recalled the scale of the Crystal Palace built for the Great Exhibition of 1851. When rebuilt at Sydenham in 1854, the

Crystal Palace had also housed large-scale popular ~oncerts.~' As Roula Geraniotis has shown, perhaps the most direct

architectural and ideological precedent for Chicago's Auditu

rium was one of the most innovative new European opera houses, Richard Wagner's Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. Its archi-

tects, Otto Bruckwald and Carl Runkwitz, worked with the

theater's technical director, Carl Brandt, to design a setting

specifically for Wagner's musical dramas. The project grew

from the composer's earlier collaboration with architect

Gottfried Semper to design a comparable theater in Munich,

which was never built.32 At Bayreuth, Wagner selected the site

and specified the Festspielhaus's plan. Built from 1872 to 1876, this famed hall featured an amphitheater-like sweep of

seating designed to give spectators a broad view of the stage

(Figure 7). The theater seated about 1,500, including the rear

boxes and a rear gallery above. Bayreuth had neither a main

foyer nor aisles running to the stage between seating groups.

Instead, the audience entered through five doors on the right

and five on the left. Each of these led to a certain number of

seating rows entered from the sides, leaving an unbroken

curvature of seating in front of the stage. As with Semper's

projects for Munich, the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth explicitly

recalled the amphitheater-like shape of ancient Greek the-

aters. On one level, the architecture's Classical allusion was

consistent with Wagner's ideal of musical drama rooted not in Italian court opera but in ancient Greek theater. On another

134 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

level, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus's deemphasis of boxes in loges or tiers fulfilled Wagner's aim to provide a more demu cratic and unified experience for the audience. In this goal, he was carrying forward Semper's earlier intentions for his Court Opera House at Dresden (1837-1841). Similar democratic impulses had underlain the amphitheater-like main floor of Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Royal Theater, or Schauspielhaus at Berlin (1818-1824), although both there and at Dresden, loges of boxes still predominated around the theater interior.33

The opening of Wagner's Festspielhaus in August 1876 was

an international event described in detail in NewYork newspa- pers. At least one project for the Metropolitan Opera House incorporated ideas from Bayreuth's design, and, after its first season in 1883-1884, the Met adopted a program of German opera modeled closely on Bayreuth's, hiring Wagner's protege to conduct performances in New However, the Met's directors did not choose to build a theater whose form imi- tated Wagner's at Bayreuth. Instead, by modeling the Met on Covent Garden and La Scala, Manhattan patrons chose the earlier tradition of court opera houses to which Bayreuth's Festspielhaus had been opposed.

Peck was familiar with the major opera houses of Europe, many of which he visited with Adler during the late summer of 1888. Their itinerary included Bayreuth, among other Ger- man theaters. Louis Sullivan greatly admired Wagner, and many Americans traveled to see performances at Bayreuth. Yet Sullivan also presumably knew the Paris Op6ra from his period of study at the ~ c o l e des Beaux-Arts in 1874-1875. Its exterior had been visible from 1867, near the rue de la Paix, where he recalled his pleasure in strolling and window shopping. The Paris Opera's opening as a theater on 5 January 1875 was a major national event, occurring before Sullivan sailed back to the United States in May. He later acquired Charles Garnier's folio monograph on the building and similar publications on

FIGURE 7: Otto Bruckwald and Carl Runkwii, with Carl Brandt, Festspielhaus,

Bayreuth, 1872- 1876, showing scene from Richard Wagner, Das Rheingold, at

theater's opening night, 13 August 1876. Drawing by L. Bechstein

the opera houses of Vienna and Franl~furt.~~ As Peck stated in 1888, "We've had the plans of all the leading opera houses and theaters of Europe in our architects' offices from the begin- ning of the [Auditorium] enterpri~e."~~ He was ideologically opposed to the concept of an opera house primarily for the privileged classes, with its space dominated by private boxes. On 7 December 1889, two days before its theater opened, he wrote to the Auditorium's 180 stockholders, who constituted the city's capitalist elite, stating that the great opera houses of Europe, those of Paris, Vienna, Frankfurt, Dresden, Berlin, and Milan, "are all smaller in capacity, exclusive boxes occupy- ing much of the space. They are built rather for the few than for the masses-the titled and the wealthy rather than for the people-lacking the broad democratic policy of providing for all which prevails in the arrangement of your Auditorium, thereby lessening the gulf between the classes."37

This last phrase was rooted in Chicago's deeply troubled social history of the years 1883-1886. A recession starting in 1883, with its sudden layoffs and wage reductions in many trades, had been the stimulus for a series of local labor actions, beginning with a city-wide bricklayers' strike in the summer of that year. The focus of the strike was Chicago's new Board of Trade Building then under construction at La Salle and Jack- son Streets, the cornerstone of which had been laid in Decem- ber 1882. Designed by William Boyington, the Board of Trade Building was then Chicago's most massive commercial monu- ment, with the city's tallest tower (Figure 8). The building housed a legendary trading floor for grain and other commodi- ties, while the leaders of its board controlled Chicago's railway systems and manufacturing plants. This structure "was by all odds the most important project then under way, and the strike was looked upon as a challenge to the industrial and financial might of the

Although the bricklayers' strike was unsuccessful, it did help to initiate a rapidly growing labor movement in the city. The most politically radical and visible arm of this movement was the International Working People's Association ( M A ) , whose leaders included Albert Parsons, publisher of Chicago's main English-language socialist newspaper, The Alam Parsons and his allies advanced a utopian ideal of anarchism as an alternative postcapitalist society based on freedom, brother- hood, and equality. As a part of the international anarchist movement, the IWPA opposed not only oppression of working people by propertied classes but also ideas of authority, privi- lege, and hierarchy in culture as in politics. An important part of the MA's program in Chicago was the nurturing of a workingclass counterculture that would provide a prerevolu- tionary model of the future utopia they envisioned. Toward this end, the IWPA organized orchestras, choral groups, the- ater clubs, concerts, dances, lectures, and plays as politically motivated alternatives to their bourgeois counterparts. For

SIRY CHICAGO'S AUDITORIUM BUILDING 135

indoor events, workers rented local auditoriums, especially Turner Hall on the North Side and Vodrts Turner Hall on the West Side, both located outside the central city, where middle-class theater buildings and music halls predominated. In workers' halls, an ongoing series of musical and theatrical fetes focused on revolutionary rhetoric and anarchistic speeches. The events were consciously intended as socialistic rituals, offering politicized working people a collective identity not found in bourgeois theater and music.39

The IWF'A's cultural program was not only an alternative to capitalistic entertainment but also to the nonpolitical and much decried amusements and leisure activities prevalent among workers throughout Chicago. These were detailed in the writings of religiously inspired middle- and upperclass social reformers, such as George Wharton James's Chicago's Dark Places (1891). There were politically conservative trade unions with their own programs of socially conventional enter- tainment. Yet James and others described a widespread pov- erty and demoralization represented by saloons, brothels, and general public immorality throughout the city's peripheral districts where most workers lived. These areas housed many smaller theaters and music halls that were closely tied to alcohol and prostitution. James painted a bleak picture of the lewd entertainments staged at these theaters as evidence of an alarming degree of social degradati0n.4~

FIGURE 8: William Boyington, Chicago Board of Trade Building, 1882- 1885, with

Jenney's Home lnsurance Building (I 883- 1884), left foreground; Bumham and Root's

Rookery (1885- 1887). left background, opposite Bumham and Root's lnsurance

Exchange Building ( 1 884- 1885) right background

Capitalists like Peck and anarchists like Parsons both sought to provide alternatives to cheap, nonpoliticized, and depraved amusements for Chicago's workers. Both also valued the syrn- bolic dimension of control over highly visible public space in the city. Their alternative visions were apparent in two events that took place in late April 1885. The first, organized by Peck, was the Chicago Grand Opera Festival, inspired partly by the new Metropolitan Opera Company's performances in Chi- cago in January 1884. The Met's manager, Henry Abbey, had brought a large orchestra and chorus. To support his touring productions, he had charged what were widely regarded as "unreasonable and extortionate" prices "which in Europe no one would have the temerity to demand," for "in older countries the lover of music, however poor in this world's goods, may hear great singers at a trifling expense."41 One editor asked why Chicago should not "have constantly within the easy reach of all classes of its citizens these ennobling divertis[s]ements? Music halls and art galleries, accessible to the poorest, promote peace and good order, elevate the gen- eral social tone and abound in all exalting infl~ences."~~

In this context, Peck was a leader in incorporating the Chicago Grand Opera Festival Association in April 1884. A key ally was a local composer, Silas G. Pratt, editor of a booklet that described the association's aims. Presumably alluding to the Metropolitan's opening in October 1883, Pratt wrote: "Those who have observed operatic events for the last decade in America, have noted the gradual withdrawal of Grand Italian Opera from the enjoyment and patronage of the masses, and its limitation as a luxury to the hvored few of wealth and fi~shion."~~ Peck's association was organized "primarily to remedy this evil, and provide Grand Opera for the pqbb at popular prices, within the reach of all, and, at the same time, to raise the performances to a higher standard of excel- lence."+'

The only building in Chicago able to provide seating for an audience large enough to allow the festival to cover its costs was the Inter-state Industrial Exposition Building in Lake Park, on Michigan Avenue at Adams Street. Constructed in 1873, this building had repeatedly been identified with the city's capitalistic elite as a site for commercial expositions, music festivals, and national political c0nventions.4~ However, the hall's enormous interior dissipated the sound of vocal artists. Such poor acoustics inhibited its ability to fulfill the social goals of music festivals, whose large choruses were intended to provide a spiritually upliing experience for audience^.^^

For the Opera Festival of 1885, Peck hired Adler and

Sullivan to refit the Exposition Building's north end. Adler built new interior walls to lessen the room's volume, so that "the entire opera hall will be inclosed, and also the stage."47 He also built a massive sounding board extending upward from the stage's arched proscenium and outward 80 feet into

136 JSAH / 572, JUNE 1998

the auditorium (Figure 9). Fan-shaped seating focused on the stage. Adler's sounding board ensured that the least strong voices of singers would carry to the rear of the house, so that, as Peck asserted, "the seats most remote from the stage are in as good hearing as those near the stage."48 Sullivan designed ornamental art for the sounding board in papier-&hi as

extensions of the elaborate theatrical scenes on the stage, thus making "the auditorium itseyan attractivefeature ofthe f ~ ~ t i v a l " ~ ~

In this setting, two weeks of grand opera were staged, including Italian, French, and German works. More than 8,000 people attended each performance, including Chica- go's wealthy citizens as well as those with modest incomes. Peck and the festival's guarantors were "prominent citizens who are willing to assume any loss which may occur in order that the people may have opera at reasonable prices." The lowest-priced ticket for a reserved seat in the main balcony cost one dollar for a single performance. During the Met's opera tours before 1885, Chicagoans had "constantly complained that they have been kept away by the high prices, and that they could not afford to pay all the way from $3 to $6 for a seat." For the Grand Opera Festival, "the action of the association and the public spirit of the guarantors have now made it possible for them to attend fourteen performances for $12 by buying season seats, and to obtain the best seats in the house for the season for a little over $2 a performance. If they fail to avail themselves of this extraordinary privilege they will have no right to complain in the future."50 With such low-priced tickets for general admission, the festival attracted a total of 115,000 people, yielding receipts in excess of $170,000, which enabled the association to cover costs of the productions and to refit

FIGURE 9: Adler and Sullivan, Chicago Grand

Opera Festival Hall, 1885, in north end of Inter-

state Industrial Exposition Building, 1873, by

William Boyington. From First Chicago Grand

Opera Festival (Chicago, 1 885)

the hall?l Local taste was educated, and the audience for grand opera broadened. At the end of the last performance, Peck, in response to repeated calls to the stage, came forward and declared that the festival "had shown what Chicago would and could do, and he hoped that people would look upon this as a stepping stone to a great permanent hall where similar enterprises would have a home. The continuation of this annual festival, with magnificent music, at prices within the reach of all, would have a tendency to diminish crime and Socialism in our city by educating the masses to higher things."52

Peck spoke those words on 18 April, just ten days before Parsons and others led the most dramatic socialistic demonstra- tion Chicago had yet seen. Since 1883, the IWPA had staged massive urban workers' parades that wound their way through the streets. Lines of 3,000 to 4,000 workers marched to music, carrying and waving flags of socialistic groups. These events reached a climax in response to the Board of Trade Building's dedication on 28 April 1885, three days before the annual workers' May Day parade. On the evening of 28 April, Parsons led a protest march to the Board of Trade to disrupt the inaugural banquet. Singing an anarchistic adaptation of the "Marseillaise," the workers approached what they termed the "Board of Thieves" who had erected a "Temple of Usury." When police lines blocked their approach at every street, the workers marched around the building, then rallied elsewhere, where leaders decried poverty amidst ~eal th .5~

Such demonstrations continued through the spring of 1886, when Parsons led a May Day parade down Michigan Avenue, past the future site of the Auditorium. The year be-

SIRY CHICAGO'S AUDITORIUM BUILDING 137

fore, he and others had led Sunday-afternoon labor meetings

on the lakefront at the foot of Van Buren Street, almost

directly east across Michigan Avenue from where the Audit@

rium was later built. In the spring of 1886 the workers' cause

focused on the eight-hour day, an idea supported by the

American Federation of Labor, which declared that it should

go into effect nationally on 1 May 1886. Strikes and other

demonstrations followed in an effort to force employers to

yield. It was in this context that the labor rally at the Haymar-

ket, an urban square on Chicago's near West Side, took place

on the evening of Tuesday, 4 May 1886. As leaders addressed a

crowd, police arrived and ordered the group to disperse. A few

moments later, someone (never identSed) hurled a bomb of

dynamite toward the police. After the explosion and ensuing

gunfire, seven officers and at least four civilians were fatally

wounded, with scores more seriously injured.j4

The shock of the violence at Haymarket devastated civic

morale throughout Chicago, whose labor movement retreated

in the face of a wave of reactionary rhetoric and legal action.

Part of what made the anarchist movement so threatening to

propertied Chicagoans was its foreign element. For example,

the city's oldest extant socialist newspaper was the German-

language Chicagoer Arbeiter-m'tung launched in 1876 and ed-

ited by two leading anarchists, August Spies and Michael

Schwab, who were tried for the Haymarket bombing. As many

of Chicago's workers were of German origin, their native

language was often used in the radical speeches and banners

prominent at anarchist gatherings.3"hus Haymarket repre-

sented an urban society divided not only along class lines but

also between foreign and native-born. Newspapers other than

those with socialist leanings, and most clergy, condemned the

violence. More broadly they decried the depth of social divi-

sion within the city. The Reverend David Swing, whose liberal

ministry Peck supported, earlier saw the need for a symbolic

counterweight to structures like the Board of Trade Building,

noting, "There is perhaps only one city in the world having a

population of half a million along whose streets no traveller or

citizen can find a single structure built by local benevolence.

Chicago has the honor of being that city."5G

THEORIGINS OF THE AUDITORIUMAND PLANNING Less than four weeks after Haymarket, Peck outlined his vision

of a permanent Auditorium Building at the Commercial Club's

first meeting after the tragedy, which addressed the topic "The

Late Civil Disorder: Its Causes and Lessons."j7 As a leading

organization of businessmen, the Commercial Club had been

founded in the fall of 1877, shortly after the railroad strikes of

that summer." Peck detailed his proposal for the program,

siting, and financing of a new civic structure, "a large public

auditorium where conventions of all kinds, political and other-

wise, mass-meetings, reunions of army organizations, and, of

course, great musical occasions in the nature of festivals,

operatic and otherwise, as well as other large gatherings, could

be held."59 No such facility then existed in the city, and public

funds would not be available. There was sufficient local private

capital to pay for construction, but to cover operating costs,

the building had to have "sufficient area to produce adequate

rentals out of improvements attached to and surrounding the

audi tor i~m."~~The Auditorium Theater would be encased by

a hotel, rentable shops, and offices.

Peck offered his vision not only within the context of

Chicago's response to Haymarket but also as part of an onge

ing effort to improve the city's cultural life. In the spring of

1880 the Commercial Club had devoted a meeting to "the

fostering of art, literature and science" in Chicago. Another

session was devoted to "the cultivation of art, literature, sci-

ence, and comprehensive charities, and the establishment of

art museums, public libraries, industrial schools and free

hospitals" attendant to the commercial prosperity in great

cities.61In the early 1880s one of the club members, Nathaniel

K. Fairbank, the primary supporter of the construction of the

Central Music Hall in 1879, had initiated the idea of an opera

house and public hall. Adler, who had designed the Central

Music Hall as his first independent theater building, worked

with Sullivan on studies for Fairbank's opera-house project. As

Sullivan later recalled, it did not progress to effective fund-

raising because of its perceived elitist appeal.G2 In proposing

the Auditorium to the Commercial Club within weeks of

Haymarket, Peck was offering aversion of his friend Fairbank's

earlier idea, but broadening its civic purposes in response to

the sense of urgency brought on by the recent violence. The

political situation in the city lent support to Peck's aim of

recasting the opera house, a type of building long associated

with urban elites, into a novel kind of structure aimed at the

cultural inclusion of workers.

By May 1886 one of Peck's allies had acquired an option on

a set of contiguous properties that would become the core of

the Auditorium Building's site at the northwest corner of

Michigan Avenue and Congress Street, then the southern

limit of Chicago's commercially developed center. In Peck's

view, this was "the only place available" for an auditorium

"which will fulfill all the requirements," meaning sufficient

area for revenue-producing appendages and a central location

providing access by streetcar from all parts of the To have sufficient funds for land rental and building construction, Peck

organized the Chicago Grand Auditorium Association in July

1886to provide a corporate framework for the issuing of stock in

the enterprise. He led the effort by pledging $100,000, with

$30,000 more from the Peck family. The next largest stock-

holder wa5 Marshall Field ($30,000). Adler and Sullivan, who

had been making studies for a permanent auditorium since

1882, also purchased shares in the amount of $25,000.64

138 JSAH / 57:2,JUNE 1998

By January 1887, when construction began, the Audito-

rium Association had increased its capital stock to $1.5 million. Peck sought to broaden the base of stockholders to include all

classes.65 Citizens subscribed to the project without "any finan- cial inducement being held Peck wrote that the aim was "the benefit and elevation of the public, and to add to the

glory of our city-the public spirit and liberality of citizens

being necessary here to produce what governments build and

support in other countries." His purpose was "not to create a

commercial rnte~pise."~~ For Peck, the paradigm of a state effort

was the Paris Opera, which he disliked. He did not refer to

Parisian municipal theaters built, like the Auditorium, for

popular audiences and encased by rented shops and apart-

ments.@ Instead, he compared the Auditorium to European

state opera houses. Even if the Auditorium were to be privately

and locally funded, Peck believed that itwould attain the status

of a national monument like major European opera houses.69

Unlike the Metropolitan's stockholders, purchasers of shares

in the Auditorium did not acquire a box because, as Peck

originally envisioned the theater, it would contain no boxes.

The Met's boxholders were the guarantors against the annual losses of the theater, which was never expected to be profit-

able. In the Auditorium, sizable hotel and office revenues were

to be the theater's guarantors against loss. Peck elected not to

follow the Met's operating plan for both financial and ideologi-

cal reasons. In its first season of 1883-1884, the Met's boxhold-

ers had agreed to guaranty the theater's manager against a

possible loss of $60,000. After the season of sixty-one perform-

ances, the Met amassed a loss of at least $250,000, due in part

to initial high costs of scenery and costumes. Also, seats other

FIGURE 10: Auditorium, interior looking north-

west from stage, showing rising floor of parquet

with vomitorio-like tunnels from west foyer, north

boxes, main balcony, lower and upper galleries.

Albert Fleury's mural of autumn on north wall is

faintly visible in bright daylight from shlight over

main balcony behind ceiling arches. Photograph

by J. W. Taylor

than boxes were priced too high to fill the house. As Adler

recalled, the Auditorium, with its larger theater and encasing

spaces, was to be "self-sustaining, and not like the Metropoli-

tan Opera House, a perpetual financial burden to its owners."70

Peck had also consistently opposed boxes as a symbol of those differences in social class that had been so sharply drawn

in Chicago, which the Auditorium was intended to lessen. Its

lack of boxes "was [Peck's] idea, for he has no belief in

privileged classes, and regards the Metropolitan Opera House

of New York, where the whole structure is sacrificed to the

boxes, with infinite scorn and patriotic dislike. This was a

repetition of effete European ideas, and if there was one thing

he impressed upon the architects, it was that he wanted the

Auditorium to represent the present and the future and not the corrupted past."71 Although Peck initially preferred no

boxes, their conventional place in Chicago theaters presum-

ably led to the inclusion of forty boxes in the Auditorium

Theater as finally built. However, these were set to the sides of

the theater in two tiers above the parquet, and even the most

frontal boxes were set well back from the proscenium. The boxes were also open to one another, unlike the Met's, which

were separated by partitions. The Auditorium's lower boxes

formed an arcade, while upper boxes had only posts between

them (Figure lo)? In all, the Auditorium's boxes, which

individual Chicagoans bid to possess for a season, accommo-

dated about 200 people, or less than five percent of the

theater's total seating.73 As Sullivan said: "We are democratic in

America and the masses demand the best seats. The boxes, you

see, are on the sides and do not furnish the best possible view.

In the imperial theaters the boxes are closed and take up all

SIRY CHICAGO'S AUDITORIUM BUILDING 139

THE AI:I)ITORIUhI, CIIICACO-PIAN OF FIRST STORY.

FIGURE I I: Auditorium, main entry-level plan. From Engineering Magazine 7 (August 1894)

the best part of the house. Those occupying boxes in America desire to be seen, probably, more than they desire to see."74

Sullivan's position corresponded closely to that of Adler, whose views appeared in an essay on the theater probably written shortly before his death in 1900. Adler argued for a progressive view of architecture, meaning that older building types like theaters should adapt to modern social changes by avoiding nonfunctional historical conventions. He wrote that in 1800 just one kind of theater had been "common to the civilized world. The typical characteristics of its auditorium were: level or nearly level pit; high surrounding walls masked by many balconies and galleries; a ceiling raised high above these high walls by the interposition of an entablature or cove, or of both; within the ceiling a dome rising high enough to allow the main central chandelier to be hung above the line of vision of the greater part of the audience; and a proscenium fashioned and decorated according to the rules convention- ally accepted for the proportions of a doorway in a palace of the period of the Renaissance. Almost the entire nineteenth century has lapsed, and theater design is still dominated by reverence for this historically transmitted type."75 Adler advu cated "non-historical theater design," for "neither historical nor conventionally aesthetic considerations justify the use of forms and types which do not adapt to practical req~irernents."~~

In Chicago's Auditorium, Adler sought to provide views and acoustics of similar quality for all patrons in a room whose 4,237 seats would make it among the world's largest spaces of

this type. Such a capacity, with a large number of inexpensive seats, was meant to ensure financial viability and democratic access. The theater was a rectangle, measuring 118 feetwide by

178 feet deep from the stage's front to the foyer's rear. The site permitted a main entrance only on the south side (Figure 11). The Auditorium's different concept of audience shaped its interior appearance. The Metropolitan's interior read from the stage as an encompassing wall of box tiers. The Auditori- um's multiple aisles and tunnel-like passageways leading into them from the rear foyers recalled vomitoricca term Adler used-like vaulted entrances to Roman amphitheaters (Figure 10) .77 In theater planning, he advocated a maximum number of narrow aisles (rather than fewer wide aisles) for facilitating egress in case of fire. A maximum number of aisles also resulted in a larger number of aisle seats, which were the most desirable. On the main floor and balcony, no seat was more than seven seats away from an aisle.78

Horizontally, the Auditorium's deep rectangular plan en- abled inclusion of a large number of seats in two sections of seating on the main floor: the parquet near the stage and the parquet circle farther back from the stage. The seating in both directions was set in "generous sweeping curves."79 Adler did not specify these curvatures, but Figure 12 shows that they are segments of circles. He did not center seating rows at the stage's front, and as a result, the rows did not reflect sound back to its source on the stage front, thus avoiding echoes there.80 In the theater, the central point of the circle from

140 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

I ' t I F . A I ' 1 ) I T O R I ~ M CHICA(;O--I'L.\Y OF SECOSI) STORY.

FIGURE 12: Auditorium, second-story plan showing (a) central point of circle defining curvature of seating rows in lower parquet, (b) central point of circle defining curvature of

seating rows in upper parquet, and (c) seating rows at sides of upper parquet with rows of convex cu~ature toward stage. From Engineering Magazine 7 (August 1894); graphic

additions by author

which the arcs of the parquet rows are swung is at the stage's rear center (Figure 12, a), while the central point of the circle

from which the arcs of the parquet circle rows are swung is

behind the first parquet row (Figure 12, b). At the parquet

circle's frontal sides, the curvature of the seating rows reverses,

becoming convex rather than concave relative to the stage to

ensure optimal views of the stage from these lateral seats

(Figure 12, c). As Adler wrote, the main balcony (Figure 13)

was elliptical in plan. Rows have a broad, shallow curve yielding

superb views of the stage from the 1,429 seats on this high level.

Vertically, as Charles Gregersen showed, Adler adapted the

ideas of John Scott Russell in order to calculate the steep rise

in seating rows of the main floor (17 feet from front to rear).

Adler had first used this method in the Central Music Hall of

1879, which was the auditorium where Ferdinand Peck regu-

larly worshiped as a supporter of the hall's main tenant, the Reverend David Swing's Central C h ~ r c h . ~ ~ Ascending rows

enabled observers to see and hear above the heads of others

directly in front, as shown in the section (Figure 14).82 The

resulting banked tiers of seating rise impressively from the stage up through the main floor, continuing into the balcony

and galleries, the topmost of which has an extreme slope of

forty-one degrees. From the uppermost row of this topmost

gallery, one clearly hears an unamplified singing voice from FIGURE 13: Auditorium, main balcony plan showing elliptical curvature of seating

the stage. As Adler said, "[TI he acoustic properties of the rows. From Diagram of the Seats and Boxes of the Auditorium Theatre, Chicago (after

house are such as to permit the easy and distinct transmission 19 10)

SIRY CHICAGO'S AUDITORIUM BUILDING 141

FIGURE 14: Auditorium, longiiudinal section looking south, showing (a) hinged ceiling panels for closing off lower and upper galleries, and (b) trusses spanning Auditorium's width

above stepped ceiling. Historic American Buildings Sutvey, 11-1 007, Drawing No. 40; graphic additions by author

of articulated sound to its remotest parts."83 Tickets for this uppermost gallery were initially priced at one dollar, the same as the least expensive tickets for the Chicago Grand Opera Festival, whose theater was also to enable acoustical access for the least wealthy.84

The Auditorium's design contains a number of features that indicate Adler's interest in ancient Roman and Greek theaters as functionally viable models for modern theaters. In referring to the Auditorium's tunnel-like passageways as vomi- toria, Adler implicitly recalled the prototype of the Roman Colosseum, the only ancient theater to which he referred in his writi11gs.8~ Known for its efficiency of circulation, the Colosseum was also elliptical in shape. Adler and Sullivan's use of the ellipse in designing the balcony floor and ceiling arches of the Auditorium recalled a preference for this form for theaters by European architectural writers since the late eigh- teenth century. For example, Gottfried Semper, whose studies of theater design with Richard Wagner provided one basis for the latter's Festspielhaus at Bayreuth, had also believed in the advantage of the ellipse for the projection of s0und.8~

Adler's essays on theater design echoed ideas propounded by the Roman architect Vitruvius. His analysis of the acousti-

cally optimal design of theaters remained a standard reference before the matter received sustained scientific inquiry begin- ning in the late eighteenth century. s' Vitruvius endorsed the idea of raising tiers of seating to optimize acoustics. To avoid the problem of spectators blocking sound from those behind them, he advised that "it should be so contrived that a line drawn from the lowest to the highest seat will touch the top edges and angles of all the seats. Thus the voice will meet with no obstructi~n."~~ Citing Vitruvius's writings on acoustics in his discussions of the topic, Adler described it as a phenom- enon of concentric waves of sound that emanate from a source, just as the Roman architect had described the transmis- sion of sound in ancient theaters, where seating rows were set in concentric rings around a stage. Like Vitruvius, Adler maintained that sound waves travel outward from a source until they are obstructed by an object. To enable sound to flow unobstructed, "ancient architects, following in the footsteps of nature, perfected the ascending rows of seats in theatres from their investigations of the ascending voice," endeavoring "to make every voice uttered on the stage come with greater clearness and sweetness to the ears of the audience."sg Thus, in adapting Scott Russell's isacoustic curve, Adler reworked a

142 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

1 . ---- I --. ,g--- k

\Irs,l~.rn \al?nt?tios ,+I tI!o (ircnk Form - 1'I.tta ~ " $ 1 S*rlinn.

FIGURE 15: Plan of an ancient Greektheater, from James Stuart and Nicholas Revett,

7heAntiquities ofAthens (London, 1762- 1830), and modem adaptation ofthe Greek

form, with longitudinal section at right, from John A. Fox, "American Dramatic

Theatres. Ill," Amencon Architea ond Building News 6 (2 August 1 879): 36

principle of design that he knew from Vitruvius's description

of Classical theaters.

Adler's contemporary, architect John A. Fox of Boston,

had articulated the rationale for modern American adapta-

tion of ancient Classical theater design. In a lecture of 1879 Fox noted that the term "theatre" was derived from the Greek

word signlfylng "to see." He cited James Fergusson, then perhaps the most widely read English architectural historian,

who wrote that the Greeks "hit on the very best form in plan

for the transmission of the greatest quantity of sound, with the

greatest clearness, to the greatest possible number."g0 Fox

proposed a modern adaptation of a Greek theater plan (Fig-

ure 15) that anticipates Adler's Auditorium plan. In a modern

theater, the need to see into the stage's depth to a distance

beyond the proscenium called for abandoning the extreme

side seats in a Greek semicircular plan. The result was "the

fan-shape; or more accurately, a portion of the sector of a

circle, the centre for the radius of which shall be behind the

proscenium, instead of in front of it as in the Greek form." Just

as Adler did, Fox argued for multiplying the points of egress to

subdivide the audience for rapid exit in case of fire. During

performances, the Greek idea of rising tiers of seats gave the

opportunity "for every one in the hall to see almost everybody

else. . . . There is no more valuable adjunct to noble architec-

ture than this sea of interested and sympathetic faces, supple-

mented by the bloom of color in varied co~turnes."~~ This

social effect anticipated descriptions of the Auditorium's open-

ing, when the full house became a metaphor for civic uniV2

Such an American adaptation of Greek theaters both re-

sembles and differs in key ways from the adaptation of the

ancient model at Bayreuth's Festspielhaus, which was an exten-

sion of Semper's ideas. Both buildings abandoned the primacy

of the loges or tiers of boxes in favor of seating that was more

equal, democratic, and unified. The dramatic upward rise of

the seating at Bayreuth was also modeled on Scott Russell's idea of ensuring acoustical and visual access to the stage?3 But,

unlike Adler's theaters, Bayreuth's Festspielhaus had no main

public foyer and no aisles running to the stage between seating

groups, leaving an unbroken curvature of seating as a more

direct evocation of an ancient Greek theater. Also, vertically,

the Festspielhaus gallery was relatively small, whereas in Adler and Sullivan's Auditorium Theater the main balcony and two

galleries above accounted for well over half the seating.

Bayreuth's Festspielhaus featured a triple proscenium, pro- viding multiple rectangular frames for the stage?4 The Chi-

cago Auditorium's arched proscenium expanded out into a

multi-arched ceiling that had no precedent in European or

American opera houses. The Met's acoustical difficulties were

caused by its high proscenium and ceiling needed to accomme date tiered boxes. Adler believed that a proscenium higher

than necessary for sight lines hampered an auditorium's acous-

tics since the amount of unwanted reverberation is directly

proportional to a room's volume. He lowered the proscenium

to reduce the room's volume, thus conserving sound p r e

duced on stage and directing it outward to the audience,

analogous to retaining density of sound projected through a

trumpet or a speaking tube. This principle implied fan-shaped

seating on raised levels, "but the effort to conserve the sound

waves influences to a still greater extent the vertical dimen-

sions of the auditorium. The proscenium must be low, not a

foot higher than is necessary to permit full view of any possible

grouping at the back of the stage from the last and highest seat

in the house."95

Adler complemented the low proscenium with "a gradual

increase in height of ceiling from the proscenium outward."

He modulated the rising ceiling planes "into a profile which

deflects the sound waves downward toward the rear of the

lower portion of the house."96 The Auditorium's ceiling was

SIRE CHICAGO'S AUDITORIUM BUILDING 143

FIGURE 16: Auditorium, interior showing elliptical ceiling arches, main organ screen to left of stage (with portraits of Wagner and Haydn in arch spandrels), and iron-and-plaster

reducing curtain framing stage. Photograph by j. W . Taylor

thus designed as four elliptically arched segments with a common center. These repeat the proscenium arch at progres sively larger scales overhead (Figure 16). The four arches contain the sound emanating from the stage and reflect it back down into the theater quickly enough to prevent a discernible echo of direct sound from the stage?7

To further control the size of the opening around the stage, the Auditorium had an iron reducing curtain, covered with ornamental plaster, which could be raised or lowered. This reducing curtain framed the central heavy silk curtain. When lowered, the reducing curtain framed an opening 47 feet wide and 35 feet high for opera, drama, lectures, and concerts with no chorus (Figures 16, 17). Alternatively, to accommodate large choral performances, the reducing curtain was raised and the stage's entire width of 75 feet was made spatially continuous with the rest of the auditorium. Adler wrote: "The success of the room is greatest when used as a hall for mass

concerts. The chorus seems thus to blend with the audience, and the house is so open that one can see at a glance almost the entire audience and the whole chorus."98 This effect was

apparent on the Auditorium's opening night, when the reduc- ing curtain was raised to bring the whole stage into view from the house, including a chorus in banked seating on the stage (Figure 18).

Combined lectures and choral performances were a part of Peck's social vision of the Auditorium. He proposed a series of Sunday-night lectures by eminent orators of the English- speaking world. These were "not to be the star performances of mere oratory, but real speeches upon important questions of the day-philanthropic, economic, educational, artistic, social."gg The lectures were to be accompanied by great choral performances of 500 voices drawn from the Chicago public, with choral responses from the audience filling the house. Wealthy guarantors such as Peck would underwrite the cost of

144 JSAH / 57:2,JUNE 1998

FIGURE 17: Auditorium, stage set for scene from Lohengrin, showing panoramic sky in

background, stage framed by reducing curtain, and Charles Hollowa~s mural along

proscenium arch

i.,: . 2 .

, , : I ' .

. . ._ . . .. . .

FIGURE 18: Auditorium, opening night, 9 December 1889, showing reducing curtain

raised and seating added to stage flanking chorus. From Frank Leslie's lllustroted

Newspaper, New York (2 1 December 1889).

such events to ensure that seats could be sold at nominal prices

to intelligent workers "upon whom the existing inequalities of

social conditions weigh most heavily." Men would be "brought

into a higher range of ideas and more stimulating and self-

rewarding thought than that possible for them to pick up in

assembly-rooms or in the little reading their daily fatigue

permits them."100 In 1889-1890 the Auditorium's Recital Hall housed meetings of workers and capitalists aimed at resolving

differences.lo1

SULLIVAN'S DESIGN FOR THE AUDITORIUM'S INTERIOR As Peck and Adler saw the Auditorium Theater's planning to

be different from European state opera houses, so Sullivan

viewed its interior as departing from such precedents. As one

observer wrote, "Compared with the greatest European audi-

toriums [Chicago's] will fall below many of them in costly

ornamental display, but will excel any edifice in the world used

for like purpose in seating capacity and utility."lo2 Sullivan's

design was keyed to the theater's electric lighting. The Met still

had gaslights, whereas by 1889 almost all of Chicago's theaters

were lit electrically. The Auditorium Building had the world's

largest lighting plant, with 3,500 incandescent bulbs running

along the ceiling arches and lines of bulbs along the fronts of

the balcony and galleries. The lighting scheme eliminated the

conventional chandelier in the center of a domed ceiling. The

Met's boxholders had asked that the gaslights remain raised

during shows so that patrons in boxes would be visible, whereas

the Auditorium's arcs of electric lights enveloped the audience

as a whole. In this period before urban power systems, only the

most uptodate commercial buildings had electricity, generated

from their own power plants. Electric lighting was then a privi-

lege associated with high capital, still rare in individual homes.

The Auditorium brought this new utility to a mass audience.lo3

As Sullivan had done in his earlier remodeling of McVick-

er's Theater in 1885, in the Auditorium Theater he created a

scheme of color and ornament that was meant to complement

the novel electric lighting. Under the flicker and glare of

gaslights, the Met's original interior had been yellow-white

with gold relief.lo4 The Auditorium's softer, more even electric

light came from clear-glass, carbon-filament bulbs each radiat-

ing 25 watts. When dimmed to pinpoints of light, these re-

sembled jewels. This new way of lighting would enable "the

fullest appreciation of the most delicate tints and the most subtile [ ~ ] gradation^."'^^ The bulbs formed a part of the

decoration, their light springing from surrounding ornament.

As in McVicker's, Sullivan selected a dominant color of old

ivory for the Auditorium. Subtly graded tones of this one color

were applied in oil to unify the interior. No surface was

red-the conventional color for theaters-so that the Audito-

rium looked "sumptuous and chaste," its color conveying the

ideal of a temple for high culture.lo6

Over the ivory-toned surfaces were areas of pure 23carat

gold leaf, which Peckvalued for its permanence. Flat stenciled

ornament of gold leaf (not extant) ran along the ceiling arch

soffits. Along the vertical faces of these ceiling arches, Sullivan

also designed scores of foliate motifs in cast plaster relief as

settings for the projecting bulbs. As Adler wrote, "The use of

richly-modulated plastic surface ornament is an important aid

to successful color decoration. It gives a rare interest to even

the simplest scheme of color distribution by the introduction

of modulations of light and shade, by the constant variation of

perspective effects, and by the brilliancy of the protuberant

points and edges as they catch and reflect the light."lo7

Although richly inventive in its motifs, the ornamental

interior of Chicago's Auditorium was simple and reserved in

contrast with European houses, the archetype of which, from

Chicago's viewpoint, was Charles Garnier's Paris Op6ra. As one French visitor to the city wrote, Chicagoans considered

SIlW CHICAGO'S AUDITORIUM BUILDING 145

the Auditorium Building to be their rival to Paris's Opera, ... YLI Ill.- r- - even though on the Auditorium's exterior "the decorative element, painting, and sculpture, so abundant, too abundant even in our [Opira], is here totally lacking."108 Peck con- trasted the Auditorium with European opera houses, most of which had "grand approaches and splendid vestibules, embel- lished with costly frescoes and statuary which governments have paid for."lo9 He reminded his stockholders that the Paris Opira cost more than twice the amount for the Auditorium and took thirteen years to build, yet it contained a hall whose capacity was only half that of the Auditorium Theater.

The Auditorium Theater eschewed the elaborate Classical and political iconography of the Paris OpCra as a key monu- ment of the French Second Empire. Rather, Sullivan, with Peck's approval, created a distinct symbolic program for the room that was to embody Sullivan's ideal of architecture as nature. This program appears in Sullivan's many ornamental motifs. One of these was the plasterwork relief framing the light bulbs on the ceiling arches. One observer likened these to sunflowers, sign9ng the theater's locale as a prairie m e tropolis.l1° On the main balcony, Sullivan also repeated inter- pretations of the milkweed pod, a plant native to the Chicago region, thereby creating a botanically specific reference to place rather than a variation on a historical style of orna- ment."' As one contemporary wrote, "It is indubitable that there is within these walls an architecture and a decorative art that are truly American, and that owe nothing to any other country or any other time.""*

Allusions to nature recur throughout the Auditorium The ater. As initially completed, the room had stained glass sky- lights over the balcony for daytime illumination, unlike the Metropolitan, and its main European models. One observer wrote that the light along the arches was "so even, so white and free from shadows, that it resembles a mild sunlight."l15 Evocation of nature became more literal in Sullivan's scheme of ornament for the reducing curtain. These reliefs appear to have been inspired by representations of nature found in operatic stage sets of the period, as shown in a scene from Wagner's Lohengrin on the Auditorium's stage (Figure 1'7).ll4 In this view, dating from 1890, the canopy of trees forms a naturalistic arched frame that reiterates the proscenium's elliptical arch above. At the rear is a distant expanse of landscape receding in perspective toward a painted backdrop showing horizon and sky. The foliage on stage continues the foliate plaster ornament in the reducing curtain framing the stage, linking representation of nature in operatic scenery to the theater's permanent architecture.l15

This theme continues in the mural paintings that frame the Auditorium's interior, all of whose imagery was modeled from life by the artists. Having selected the themes for these murals to create a unified program, Sullivan wrote that they expressed

FIGURE 19: Charles Holloway, drawing of mural over proscenium, Auditorium, 1 889.

From Chicago Daily Inter Ocean (I I December 1 889)

growth and decadence as the two great rhythms of nature.l16 Above the proscenium arch is a continuous processional mu- ral of life-size figures on a gold background (Figure 19). They are not muses, symbolic of the inspiration for creating musical art, to be found over the prosceniums of the Met and other opera houses. Rather, they are groups of monks, young women, and others who express "the manifold influence of music on the human mind-the dance, the serenade, the dirge.""'

For Sullivan, these effects took their inspiration from the deeper rhythms of life and death that are cyclical in nature. This theme appeared in his prose poem "Inspiration," which he first read to the Western Association of Architects in Chi- cago in November 1886, just before Adler and Sullivan were confirmed as the Auditorium's architects.l18 The idea is repre sented by the winged figure before a bright fire, at the mural's south end (to the right as one faces the stage). This image, typlfylng youth and inspiration, signified the dawn of life or springtime, like an allegro tempo in music. The winged figure at the north end (at left), representing twilight and memory, reaches down to a low fire flickering to its end, like autumn, analogous to an adagio effect.llg

At the proscenium mural's central crown are three figures representing the past (south) and future (north). The central figure is not an ancient deity like the Apollo who presided over the Met's proscenium but rather a personification of the present, enthroned below a phrase based on Sullivan's poem "Inspiration": "The utterance of lie is a song, the symphony of nature." As he declared in the poem, Sullivan's ideal for the present was a spontaneous and vital art coming fresh from nature rather than from inherited styles. In this spirit, all forty-five figures were painted by a young American artist, Charles Holloway (1859-1941), "who made the sketches from living models posing for each separate figure" so that "every- thing is true to nat~re."l*~As one observer wrote, "Thousands of the spectators who enter the Auditorium will look admir-

146 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

ingly on that work of art, but few will stop to reason out the subject treated there."121

The two murals toward the rear sides of the house contin- ued the theme used over the proscenium. They were painted by the French-trained artist Albert Fleury (1848-1924). Origi- nally educated as an architect, Fleury entered the ~ c o l e des Beaux-Arts after the FrancePrussian War to study painting. His time there overlapped with that of Sullivan, and also of George L. Healy and Louis J. Millet, under whose guidance Fleury worked at the Auditorium. Fleury had come to the United States in 1888 to assist his former teacher, mile Renouf, in making a large commissioned painting of the Brooklyn Bridge. At this time, both Renouf and Fleury re- ceived offers to assist in the Chicago Auditorium's decoration, and Fleury accepted. Like Holloway's mural, Fleury's were subject to the approval of the Chicago Auditorium Associa- tion's Executive Committee, headed by Peck.122 As an archi- tect, Fleury not only specialized in murals but also enhanced the relation of such paintings to built interiors. His side murals for the Auditorium are large in scale and have the perspectival depth of landscape, giving the illusion of extending the inte- rior space of the adjacent balconies. They recall the illusionis- tic natural expanse created by scenic backdrops for opera on the frontal stage. Fleury's images of nature were originally illuminated by natural daylight from the artglass skylights over the balcony. As in the proscenium's mural, the south mural depicts spring (Figure 20), while the north shows an autumnal scene (Figure 21). From his youth, Fleury "was always a lover and a close student of nature, and besides he always followed the practice of painting his figures in the open air."lZ3 He sketched the north mural's scene "from a Wisconsin dell," like the wooded Wisconsin landscapes where Peck spent much time. The south mural depicts "a scene near Highland Park," a suburb on Chicago's North Shore, further emphasizing the Auditorium's regional character.124

Each side mural shows a single creative figure or poet who is communing with the season as a source of inspiration. As Sullivan wrote, " [B]y their symbolism do these mural poems suggest the compensating phases of nature and of human life in all their varied manifestations. Naturally are suggested the light and the grave in music, the joyous and the tragic in drama."125 Through these murals and their inscriptions, Sulli- van linked his personal belief in nature's emotive effects on the artist with the Auditorium as a theater wherein musical drama moved audiences. In "Inspiration," Sullivan referred repeatedly to the sun's daily course across the sky and its repetition through the seasons as a measure of nature's cycli- cal rhythm of growth and decay. In his travels by railroad around the United States, he recalled having "visualized [the country's] main rhythms as south to north, and north to ~outh."~~"eury's murals suggested such a meaning for the

I FIGURE 20 Albert Fleury, south mural (Spnng Song), Aud~tonurn, 1889

,.: ,

FIGURE 21 : Fleuty, north mural (Autumn Reverie), Auditorium. 1889. From Garqm-

ski, Auditorium

arches spanning the Auditorium's ceiling between south (spring) and north (autumn), as if these elliptical forms represented the solar cycle of seasons and years in expanded repetition. Thus out of the ceiling's arched functional form as a solution to optimal acoustics for a mass audience, Sullivan developed a program of ornament and images that gave the ceiling a cosmic symbolism different from the conven- tional shallow dome at the Metropolitan or many European theaters.

THE AUDITORIUM BUILDING'S EXTERIOR Adler and Sullivan developed the exterior from their earliest- known design of September 1886 to after their working draw- ings of April 1887.12' From their first studies, they treated the building as a major civic monument in keeping with Peck's

SIRY CHICAGO'S AUDITORIUM BUILDING 147

FIGURE 22: H. H. Richardson, Marshall Field and

Co. Wholesale Store, Chicago, 1885- 1887, show-

ing ratio of frontal width t o height of 2.5: 1 ; graphic

additions by author

* v . - 'kL It..... 4. 0 . . ; ;, ;~; i *C

X - g. ;, :I ?;I ?L 1 -- . 1 --&

aims. If the Auditorium Theater's interior space conveyed its social ideals, then the exterior communicated symbolic inten- tions through its architectural style. Adler and Sullivan's con- temporaries still thought in terms of a building's style and historical associations as principal carriers of meaning. The Auditorium's exterior style evolved in the course of its design

and construction partly in response to social conditions and to Peck's aims.

Viewed from a distance, with its cubic mass and tower (Figure I), the Auditorium announced Chicago to travelers

from the eastern United States coming to the city along the railroad lines running north into town at the lakefront.lZ8 Early designs had featured walls of pressed brick and ornate

terra-cotta above a granite base. In May 1887, in the course of a bricklayers' strike, the Auditorium's directors resolved that the upper walls above the three-story granite base be clad in an Indiana limestone.12g As the architect of four buildings under construction and of nine more for which plans were ready, Adler had much at stake in this strike. At that time, and in later

essays, he described his professional role as the representative of his clients, the building owners. Like Peck, Adler politically was not a socialist, though he did sympathize with the plight of workingmen, writing that "there is much that is great and noble even in the trades unionism of our day."130 But, during

the protracted strike of 1887, Adler saw the bricklayers' actions as causing workers to lose income. He noted that his clients waiting to build were "all agreed not to have a stroke of work done until this strike is ended by the giving in of the workmen.

The [bricklayers'] union is what stands in the way of the erection of these buildings."131 Because of its size, the Audit*

rium offered steady work for many over a long period, and progress on its construction continued, partly with workers who had left their union to return to work, and who were sometimes subjected to intimidation. Adler stated that some

had returned to work because they had "become so destitute during the strike that they have sold their tools, and we have had to supply them."132

The strike of 1887 brought the issues of Haymarket into the building trades and into the history of the Auditorium, a

structure that was intended to alleviate social tensions. Adler later did not recall that the change in the Auditorium's design from brick to stone had been the result of the strike. Rather, he attributed the decision to "the deep impression made by Richardson's 'Marshall Field Building' upon the Directory of

the Auditorium Association," combined with a "reaction from a course of indulgence in the creation of highly decorative effects on the part of its archite~ts."'~~ Why did Peck and his colleagues look to Henry Hobson Richardson's monument as a model?

One answer is that it was then one of only two recently built

local structures covering a comparable halt-block site. Field's store (Figure 22) and the Auditorium block showed the same ratio of frontal width to height of about 2.5 to In symbolic terms, Sullivan and others saw Richardson's building as largely

a monument to its patron, Marshall Field. His conservative views were well known, and the completion of his building was

FIGURE 23: Aqua Claudia, near Rome (A.D. 38-52)

delayed by labor agitation until June 1887. Field had insisted

that Richardson change his initial design for the upper walls from brick to a red sandstone, which was quanied near Field's birthplace. After Peck, Marshall Field was the Auditorium's largest stockholder. Although he declined to serve as a direc- tor, his brother and partner, Henry Field, also a major stock- holder, took his place on the board, and the latter's response to Richardson's building was thus predictable.ls5

Adler admired this structure, noting, "How American is Richardson's reproduction of the sombreness and dignity of the Palazzo Strozzi in the Marshall Field Building."136 Scholars

of Richardson's work have also pointed out that his building for Field recalled the monumental form of ancient Roman

aqueducts that Richardson had seen on his trip to Europe in

1882, photographs of which he acquired.ls7 One contemp* rary wrote: "It may be truthfully said in general of the styles used in Chicago . . . that the principal complex features came from the roman^."'^^ For Edward Garczynski, author of the

commemorative book on the Auditorium of 1890, its exterior recalled the forms of Roman construction. The tall arched bays compare to those of the Aqua Claudia (A.D. 38-52) near Rome (Figure 23). Such a style contrasted with the ornate Second Empire hotels of post-fire Chicago. As Garczynski wrote, between such structures and the Auditorium, "the

progress has been a mighty leap forward . . . making this build- ing the commencement of a new era. Here all is simplicity, stateliness, strength. There is in its granite pile a quality that strongly reminds the traveled spectator of those grand engineer- ing constructions which the Romans raised in every part of their vast empire." Peck presumably saw such monuments during his travels to Europe. Their influence on the Audito-

rium "was an inspiration" from Peck, to whom "it is most probable we must look for its Roman

The exterior style's association with antiquity paralleled Adler's interest in ancient theaters as one source for the

Auditorium Theater's interior spatial form. Garczynski's per- ception of the building's allusions to Rome aligned with Peck's choice of the name "Auditorium" rather than the term "Grand Opera House." In its ancient Latin usage, auditorium (as distinct from a ruler's private palace, or palatiurn) referred to

the space of the audience in a theater as a public hall for cultural and political gatherings, just as Chicago's Auditorium

would hold both opera and conventions.140 Within its walls, music and drama would be interpreted "not, as in the capitals of modern empires, to a favored few, but, as in the ancient republics, to the people of the city and Nation."141 The Auditorium's exterior form thus conjoined Roman monumen- tality with modern democratic ideology. So did the buildings of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, for which Peck

chaired the local finance committee, and whose classical archi-

tecture he subsequently praised.142 As an architectural response to Chicago's urban class strife

in the era of Haymarket, the Auditorium's exterior may be compared to other buildings that represented different institu- tional responses to labor unrest. One of the most prominent of these was a new armory for the First Regiment of the Illinois National Guard, a project first proposed in 1885. Organized in 1874, the First Regiment came to enroll about 600 local men who represented Chicago's middle and upper classes. Among

its members was one of Adler and Sullivan's draftsmen. Having twice dispersed crowds without firing during the railroad strikes of 1877, the unit also confronted labor protests at

several points around the city in November 1886. To radical leaders of Chicago's workers, the First Regiment epitomized armed force in the service of ~apita1.l~~ When the First Regi-

ment sought to build anew, Marshall Field offered to lease it a site he owned on the northwest corner of Michigan Avenue and Sixteenth Street, not far from his own home. Field, who

was closely identified with this regiment, agreed to lease the site to the unit for $4,000 per year (then only half its value) with no annual rent increase. Daniel Burnham and John Wellborn Root designed the First Regiment Annory in March

1889, and it opened in September 1891 (Figure 24) Burnham and Root's First Regiment Armory was described

as "perhaps the most massive structure in Chicago," with its heavy stonework rising unbroken to a height of 35 feet on all four sides.145 The front had a wide sally port for troops marching abreast. Above the rusticated granite base were brick walls with arched openings and round corner bartizans. Atop all four walls ran a projecting machicolated cornice

crowned with gun slits. The exterior left no doubt as to its purpose in the charged atmosphere of the time. Within there was a large drill hall that Adler and Sullivan redesigned in 1893 as a temporary theater known as the Trocadero Music Hall, named after the Parisian theater designed by Gabriel Davioud in 1876. Adler and Sullivan's client was Dr. Florence Ziegfeld,

SIHY: CHICAGO'S AUDITORIUM BUILDING 149

FIGURE 24: Bumham and Root, First Regiment Armory, northwest comer, South

Michigan Avenue and Sixteenth Street, Chicago, 1889- 189 1 (largely rebuilt after fire,

1 894; demolished 1929). From Gilbert and Btyson, Chicago and Its Moken

FIGURE 25: William Le Baron Jenney and William A. Otis. Ferdinand Peck House,

1826 South Michigan Avenue, Chicago, 1887. From Gilbert and Btyson, Chicago and

Its Moken

founding president of the Chicago Musical College, which had

its quarters in Adler's Central Music Hall. The armory the-

ater's performances were to raise funds for the regiment,

which received little state aid. In April 1893 fire destroyed this

last theater designed by Adler and Sullivan five days before it

was to open.14'j

Peck was not a benefactor of this regiment. Its treasurer was

Charles Hutchinson, who was also treasurer of the Chicago

Auditorium Association. In 1885 the committee in charge of

the regiment's new armory had proposed to Peck that the

armory and the Auditorium project be combined in the same

structure.14' Auditorium directors were leaders of Chicago's

Citizens' Assocation, founded in 1874 to fight corruption in

municipal government, yet which supported the militia against

labor agitation in 1877 and 1885. They also led the Chicago

Citizens' Law and Order League founded in 1877just after the

city's railroad strikes in order to prevent the sale of alcohol to

minors, as it was believed the strikers included a large number

of halfdrunken boys. In this context, both the First Regiment

Armory and the Auditorium were facets of a broad range of

elite responses to threats of social unrest.148

The Auditorium was neither an armory nor a fortress, but it

did have as its social aim the pacification of urban workers, not

by means of armed control but rather by cultural suasion. As a

capitalist monument, the Auditorium did present an image of

indestructibility, as exemplified by its granite base near the

citizen's eye. Moreover, the tower, in addition to the slotlike windows within its stylized machicolated cornice, had windows

within its arches below that Garczynski described as "square

and deeply recessed, like embrasures in a fortification."149 In

its style, the Auditorium provided a model for Ferdinand

Peck's own house, which he commissioned William Le Baron

Jenney and William A. Otis to design in 1887 (Figure 25).

Educated at the ~ c o l e des Beaux-Arts, Otis translated chapters

from Edouard Corroyer's L'Architecture Romane (Romanesque

Architecture) immediately after its publication in 1888. This

book traced the continuous development of medieval Ro-

manesque from ancient Roman architecture, a link consistent with contemporaneous perception of the Audit~rium.'~~ Lo-

cated at 1826 South Michigan Avenue, within three blocks of

the First Regiment Armory, the Peck house exhibited a rough-

hewn stonework similar to that forming the Auditorium's

base. Its tower above a heavy lintel spanning the porch in-

cluded a shadowed loggia below a foursquare crown, so that

the house read in part as a miniature version of the Audito-

rium. When President Benjamin Harrison was entertained by

Peck at this residence on the day of the Auditorium Theater's

opening, he remarked that the house was "the Auditorium,

Jr." Peck responded that "the same spirit prevailed in both

buildings."151 The house reminded all that the Auditorium

was Peck's project. Two buildings, by different architects,

imaged one patron. Interpretation of the Auditorium as a heavy lithic mass

contrasts with its place in the conventional historiography of

the Chicago School of architecture, which stressed local efforts

to lighten or open up walls of the city's commercial buildings

from about 1880 to 1900. From this viewpoint, the Auditori-

um's exterior was valued not for its solid piers of walling but

rather its arched voids of windows. In this light, the Audito-

rium compares not with Burnham and Root's Armory but with

the building closest to Peck's own attitude toward urban

workers: the new quarters for Chicago's Athenaeum (Figure

26), opened in May 1891. It stood on the same block as the

150 JSAH / 572, JUNE 1998

FIGURE 26,Thomas W~ng , Ch~cago Athenaeum, south s~de ofVan Buren Street west

o f M~chlgan Avenue, as expanded and remodeled into a seven-story building,

1 8 9 0 189 I , demolished. From Chicago Tnbune ( I 0 May 8 9 I): I

Auditorium on the south side ofVan Buren Street, adjacent to

the original Art Institute of Chicago, built on the southwest

corner of Van Buren and Michigan Avenue in 1887.Peck and

other Auditorium patrons had also been founding supporters

of the Art 1ns t i t~ t e . l~~

Styling itself as "The People's College," the Athenaeum

was open to men and women regardless of "nationality or

religious belief."153 Its instructional program was partly in-

tended to provide skills that would qualify students for employ-

ment with local businessmen whose philanthropy supported the college by heavily subsidizing costs of instruction. Thus both the Athenaeum and the Auditorium were cultural re-

sources that provided workers with capitalist-structured alterna- tives to leftist political culture. It was to be a unifying, upbuild-

ing urban institution, including the Reverend David Swing on

its faculty. In December 1889 the Athenaeum's head, the

Reverend Edward I. Galvin, a Unitarian minister, congratu-

lated Peck on creating in the new Auditorium "such a building

for the public good in culture and wholesome recreation [as]

must find universal endorsement." He wrote: "[Tlhe next

crowning glory of your life will be the completion and opening

of the Athenaeum B~i ld ing ." '~~

As the Athenaeum's president during the same years he was

directing the Auditorium project's realization, Peck had bought

the Van Buren Street site for the Athenaeum and had overseen

the expansion of its building from four to seven stories. As

designed by Thomas Wing, the new structure had classrooms,

a large lecture hall, recreational rooms, a library, and a gymna-

sium, all accessible to members for a nominal annual fee.

Facing north, the Athenaeum's street front had an abundance

of windows with minimal piers and columns between, creating

the image of a typical Chicago loft building of the period. The

Athenaeum's appearance was determined almost wholly not

by stylistic considerations but by utilitarian needs to light

interior spaces and limit costs of construction. The Roman

associations of the nearby Auditorium's exterior were lacking

in this building also meant for the cultural uplift of workers,

but one that did not have the Auditorium's monumental scale,

lakefront site, and representational purpose.

CONCLUSION

The Chicago Auditorium, whose design Adler and others

ascribed to the wishes of its patrons, conveyed many messages

simultaneously. On one level, it was a civic and cultural monu-

ment; on another, it projected the city's power and enterprise;

on yet a third, it stood for an elite's will to direct Chicago's

social, economic, and political future. The outer architecture

figuratively stood against socialism and anarchism, while the

theater inside offered alternatives to politicized and nonpoliti-

cized workers' amusements. As Adler concluded more than

two years after the building had opened, without doubt "Chi-

cago has an Auditorium far better as an opera house or a

concert hall or a ballroom than either the Metropolitan Opera

House or the Music Hall [the Academy of Music] in New york,"l~5 Adler, like Peck and Sullivan, knew these theaters

from eastern trips. Adler's claim rested on his building's

innovative plan for audiences in terms of circulation, seating,

sight lines, and lighting, as well as acoustics. Sullivan's ornamen-

tal and symbolic program for the theater's interior was compa- rably original, meant to contrast with the Met and European

state opera houses, which he, Adler, and Peck had studied. They all rejected the predominance of boxes in these theaters. From

the Auditorium's stage, "the performers can neither sing to the boxes nor play to them, but must address themselves to the

public" as "an immense mass of spectators without a break."156

SIRY: CHICAGO'S AUDITORIUM BUILDING 151

~ ~

- -

Study of the Auditorium's origins, planning, interiors, and - "A

exterior suggests how to continue to move beyond earlier

modernist views of the Chicago School of architecture. The

influential historians Sigfried Giedion and Carl Condit used

the term to refer to the city's of the

1880s and 1890s. They Valued these structures for their techni-

cal innovations and their external expression of new metal-

frame construction. The Auditorium's story underscores the

value of a historiographic approach that considers the ideol-

of patrons in the of chicagots dynamic and

of the Such an of the Auditorium's development also shows that patrons were aware

of competing in E~~~~~ and in ~ ~ city, adapting ~ y

some like the Festspielhaus~and rejecting

others, like the Paris Opira and the Metropolitan. As did architects elsewhere through the nineteenth century, ~ d

and thought in terms of wesand their

possible variations, in addition to pursuing a general ideal of appropriately functional modern form. This latter side of their

thinking had attracted Giedion and Condit. Yet, as we have

seen, Adler and Sullivan were not fullv removed from histon-

cism and the symbolic associations of older styles, for the

Auditorium was not only part of the continuing development

of an American Romanesaue swle but also a monument that A ,

conveyed allusions to ancient Rome.

Giedion and Condit were correct, however, in stressing the

regionally distinct identity of Chicago's architecture in the

1880s, as Sullivan's interior for the theater showed. For Peck,

however, this regional identity had not so much a stylistic

impetus as an ideological origin, rooted in his and others'

concepts of Critics Schu~lerof New York and Paul Bourget of Paris both explored this ideal as peculiarly characteristic of chicago architecture, which B ~

get describedas "a new kind of an art of made by the crowd and for the crowd."15s At the Auditorium, Peck

developed this ideal in terms of working people's access to

events limited to those with higher incomes.

Adler and Sullivan's technical and ornamental inventiveness,

both in interior space and exterior form, served to embody

Peck's aims. Together patron and architects forged a link between ideology and style arising from conditions of the

Auditorium's historical moment, which their building, in turn,

did much to define.

Notes I am most grateful for advice and assistance from Charles Laurier, Roosevelt

University Library; Robert Bruegmann, University of Illinois at Chicago; and Miles Berger, Chicago.

'Adler's published writings related to the Auditorium include "The Para- mount Requirements of a Large Opera House," InlandArchitect and News Record 10 (October 1887): 45-46, also published as "Theatres," Amn'can Architect and Buildingh'ews22 (29 October 1887): 206-208; "Foundations ofthe Auditorium

152 JSAH / 57:2,JUNE 1998

Building, Chicago," InlandArchitect andNewsRecord 11 (March 1888): 31-32 and plates; "Stage Mechanisms," ibid. 13 (March 1889): 42-43, also published in BuildingBudgd 15 (February 1889): 21-22; "The Auditorium Tower," American ~ ~ h i w t 1891): 15-16; ''The chicago ~ ~ d iand Buiuing)Jms 32 (4 ~ ~ r i l rium," Architectural Record 1 (April-June 1892): 415-434; "Theater-Building for American Cities; First Paper," Engineering Magaziw 7 (August 1894): 717-730; '#Second paper," ibid (September 1894): 815-829; "Convention Halls," Inland Architert and News Record 26 (September 1895): 13-14; ibid. (October 1895): 22-23; and "The Theater (c. 1900) ," ed. Rachel Baron, Prairip SchoolReview 2 (Second Quarter 1965) : 21-27.

Sulli\an2s writintrs related to the Auditorium include: "Plastic and Color -Decoration of the Auditorium," originally published as "Harmony in Decora- tion," Chirago Tribune (16 November 1889): 12, reprinted in Industrial Chicago (Chicago, 1891), 2: The Building Interests, 490-491; in Sherman Paul, Louis Sullivan:AnAnhitectinAmefican Thought (Enelewood Cliffs. N.1.. 1962). 143-146,

" , " d . ,,

and in Robert Twombly, ed., Louis Sullivan: The Public Papers (Chicago, 1988), 74-76; "Development of Construction, I," Economist 55 (24 June 1916): 1252, ~ ~ k reprinted in Twombly, ed., Sullivan: Public Papers, 214-222; and The Autobiogra- bhl; of an Idea (1924; New York. 1971). 292-294. 303. 309. See also Sullivan's A , "

remarks quoted in "Church Spires Must Go," Chzcago Tnbune (30 November 1890): 36, partly reprinted in Twombly, ed., SuUivan:Public~apers,72-73.l ~ ~

Other accounts of the original building include Edward R. Garczynski, The Audithum (Chicago, 1890); Industrial Chicago, 1: The BuildingInterests, 194-196; Montgomery Schuyler, "Glimpses of Western Architecture: Chicago," Harper's Magazine 83 (August 1891): 395-406, and A Critique of the Wmks ofAd2pr and Sullivan, D. H. Burnham L+ Co., Ha? Iues Cobb, Great American Architects Series, no. 2: Architecture in Chicago (New York, 1896), 2-27; Paul F. P. Mueller, Testimony, in Chicago Auditorium Association vs. Mark Skinner Willing and the Northern Trust Co. as Trustees, etc., et al., in the United States Circuit Court ofAppeals for the Seventh Circuit, October Term, A.D. 1925, no. 3733, 440-470, reprinted in Edgar J. Kaufmann, jr., "Frank Lloyd M1right's 'Lieber Meister,' " in Niw Commatarips on Frank Lloyd Wright (New York and Cambridge, Mass., 1989): 42-62; Paul Sabine, "The Acoustics of the Chicago Civic Opera House," ArchitecturalForum 52 (April 1930): 599-604; Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography (New York, 1932), 105-106; Hugh Morrison, Louis Sullivan: Prophet of M o h Architecture (New York, 1935), 80-110; Wright, quoted in "Chicago's Auditorium Is Fifty Yean Old," Architectural F m m 73 (September 1940): 11 -12; Frank A. Randall, H i s t q oftheDeve@mmt ofBuilding ConstructioninChicago(Urbana,I11.,1949), 117;~r igh t , Genituandthe~obocracy (New York, 19491, 42-53; Carl W. Condit, "Sullivan's Skyscrapers as the Expression of Nineteenth Century Technology," Technoha and Culture 1 (win- ter 1959): 78-93; Historic American Buildings Survev. IL-1007: Auditorium

"

Building (1960; Addendum, 1980); Albert Bush-Brown, LOUU Sullivan (New York, 19601, 15-16; Willard Connely, Louis Sullivan As He Lived (New York, ~ ~ -1960), 101-122; Condit, The Chzcago Srhool ofArchitecture: A H i s t q of Commercial andPublic Buildinain the Chicapo Arm 1875-1925 (Chicago. 1964). 69-79: Paul - "

E. Sprague, "The Architectural Ornament of Louis Sullivan and His Chief Draftsmen," Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1968,396-398; William H. Jordy, Ammican Buildings and Their Arrhitects, uol. 4: Progressive and Academic Ideals at the Turn ofthe Twatirth Centup (1972; reDr., NewYork. 1986). 101-104.118-119. 161-162; Wilbur T. Denson, "A History of the Chicago Auditorium," p h . ~ . diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1974; Daniel H. Perlman, The Audit* rium Building: Its H i s t q and Architectural Sign$canre (Chicago, 1976); George C. Izenour, ThPnterDesign (NewYork, 1977), 82-86; Sprague, Thehwings of Louis Henv Sullivan (Princeton, 1979), 6-7, 334-337; Charles E. Gregersen, "The Chicago Auditorium: A History and Description," Addendum, HABS Survey, IL-1007 (1980); Narciso Menocal, ArchitectureasNature: The Transcenden- talist Idea of Louis SuUivan (Madison, UTis., 1981), 18, 45-46; John A. Burns, "Structure and Mechanics as Sculpture," AIA Toulna172 (April 1983): 44-49; Charles E. Grimsley, "A Study of the Contributions of Dankmar Adler to the Theatre Building Practice of the Late Nineteenth Century," Ph.D. diss., Northwestern University, 1984, 215-304; David S. Andrew, Louis Sullivan and the Polrmics of Modern Architecture (Urbana, Ill., 1985), 82-92; Michael Forsyth, Buildings for Music: The Arhitect, the Musician, and the Listmtrfrom the Smateath Catury to the Present (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 236-243; Lauren S. Weingar- -den, "The Colors of Nature: Louis Sulli\an's Architectural Polychromy and Nineteenth Century Color Theory," Winterthur Portfolio 20 (1985): 250-252; David Van Zanten, "Sullivan to 1890," in Wim de Wit, ed., Louis Sullivan: The

Function of Ornament (Kew York, 1986), 36-51; Jordy, "The Tall Buildings," ibid., 65-71; Twombly, Louis Sullivan: His L@ and Wolk (New York, 1986), 161-195; Joseph Rykwert, "Louis Sullivan and the Gospel of Height," Art in Ama'm 75 (November 1987): 162-165; David G. Lowe, "Monument of an Age," American Crnft 48 (June/July 1988): 40-47, 104; Weingarden, "Natural- ized Nationalism: A Ruskinian Discourse on the Search for an American Style of Architecture," Wintprthur Portfolio 24 (spring 1989): 63-67; Gregenen, Dankmr Adh: His Theatm and Audztonums (Athens, Ohio, 1990), 4-6,9-23, 65-70; Ross Miller, American Apocalypse: Chicago and the Myth o f the Great Fire (Chicago 1990), 11 1-121; Roula M. Geraniotis, "German Design Influences in the Auditorium Theater," in John S. Garner, ed., The Midwest in American Archittrture (Urbana, Ill., 1991), 42-75; Miles L. Berger, T@ Built Chirago: En t r@-mn Who Shaped a Great City's Architecture (Chicago, 1992), 93-103; Hans Frei, Louis Hmry SuUivan (Zurich, 1992), 68-75; Donald L. Miller, Ciy of the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making ofAmerica (New York, 1996), 354-366; and Mario Manieri Elia, Louis Henry Sullivan (New York, 1996), 38-59.

2 Influential characterizations of the Chicago School include Sigfned Giedion, Space, Time and ArchitPcture, 5th ed., revised and enlarged (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), 368-393; Condit, "The Chicago School and the Modern Movement in Architecture," Art in America 36 (January 1948): 19-36; TheRise of the Skyscraper (Chicago, 1952); and ThP Chicago Srhool ofArrhitecture. See H . Allen Brook, "The Chicago School: Metamorphosis of a Term," JSAH 25 (May 1966): 115-118, and Robert Bruegmann, "The Marquette Building and the Myth of the Chicago School," Threshold (fall 1991): 6-23. Important revisions of Giedion's and Condit's ideas appear in The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago and New Ymk: ArchitPctural Interactions (Chicago, 1984); John Zukowsky, ed., Chirago Architecture, 1872-1922: Birth ofa Metropolis (Munich, 1987); Daniel M. Bluestone, Constructing Chicago (New Haven, 1991); Berger, They Built Chirago; and Robert Bruegmann, The Architerts and the City: Holabird and Roche of Chicago, 1880-1918 (Chicago, 1997).

"osiah Cleaveland Cady, "The Essential Features of a Large Opera House," Inland Architect and News Record 5 (October 1887): 46-47, reprinted in A m c a n Architect and Building News 22 (29 October 1887): 208. Before 1883, the prime venue for opera in Manhattan had been the New York Academy of Music (1853-1854) on the northeast corner of Fourteenth Street and Irving Place. Although it seated over 3,000, the Academy had only eighteen proscenium boxes owned by the city's oldest wealthy families. It was New York's recently monied elite, led by the Vanderbilts, who financed the Metropolitan with its many boxes. See "The Metropolitan Opera House," TheNation 37 (25 October 1883): 348-349; [Montgomery Schuyler], "The Metropolitan Opera-House," Harper's New Month4 ~Mngazine 67 (November 1883): 877-889; Marianna G. \'an Rensselaer, "The Metropolitan Opera-House, New York," American Archi- k t and BuildingArews 15 (16 and 23 January 1884): 76-77, 86-89; Henry E. Krehbiel, Chaptm ofOpera (NewYork, 1911), 86-88; Frank Merkling et al., The Golden Hors~shoe: The Lij? and Times o f the Metropolitan Opera H m e (New York, 1965), 13-21; Quaintance Eaton, The Miracle of theMet: An Informal H i s t q ofthe Metropolitan Opera 1883-1967 (New York, 1968), 43-53; Irving Kolodin, The Metropolitan Opera 1883-1 966 (New York, 1968), 3-6; John Briggs, Requipm fm a Yellow Brick Brewery (Boston, 1969), 6-17 Martin Mayer, The Met: Une Hundred Years o f Grand Opea (New York, 1983), 15-23; Paul E. Eisler, The Metropolitan Opera: The k t TwmQ-Five Years, 1883-1908 (New York, 1984), 9-19; John Dizikes, Opera in America: A Cultural Hirtory (New Haven, 1993), 214-221; and Kathleen A. Curran, A Forgottm Architect ofthe Gilded Age: Josiah Cleaveland Cad? 's h g a q (Hartford, 1993), 16-20.

Cady, "Essential Features of a Large Opera House," 47. Edith Warton, The Age of Innocmce (1920), in R. W.B. Lewis, ed., Edjth

Wharton: Armiels (New York, 1985), 1017. Egisto P. Fabbri, Chairman, Committee on Building, Metropolitan Opera

House Company quoted in Mayer, Met, 15. Mayer, Met, 19, noted Cady's tour of Europe following the Metropolitan

Board's decision to build on 4 March 1881. Schuyler, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 884, noted that boxes in the lower

two full tiers were sold to stockholders, while the manager rented those in the half tier below and the topmost full tier above. Briggs, Yellow Brick Brewq, 22-23, recalled newspaper diagrams of the Metropolitan's boxes. On the shape of Cady's plan, see van Rensselaer, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 86-87. On its name, see Maver, Met, 16. On La Scala, see Simon Tidworth, Thentres; An

Anhitectural and Cultural History (New York, 1973), 43-44; and Nikolaus Pevs ner, A History of Building 7j;r,~s (Princeton, 1976), 74. On Barry's Covent Garden, see Richard Leacroft, The Development of the English P h j h o w (New York, 1973), 221-230.

One description of Cady's building concluded: "In the arrangement of the stairways and passages, the Metropolitan Opera-house bears considerable resemblance to Covent Garden" ("In the New Opera-House," New Yolk Times [22 July 18831: 9) . Briggs, Yellow Brick Brewery, 9, noted that Covent Garden's impresario, Ernest Gye, hoping to be named the Met's manager, made plans of Covent Garden available to Cady. Cady also relied on a German-trained associate, Louis de Coppet Bergh (1856-1913), whose sister had studied music in Italy and provided pictures and details of European opera houses such as La Scala. See Milton Stansbury "Romance in the Opera House," Opera News5 (10 March 1941): 4-9.

Schuyler, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 883. On the form of the Metropoli- tan's proscenium, see also \an Rensselaer, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 76, who noted that the Met was "a building in which each and every stockholder should have an equal chance of seeing-and being seen. No variations of plan were to be allowed the architect in favor of architectural effect which would be at the expense of this perfect equality. All the boxes were to be of the same character and the same size, and, in so far as it was possible to human skill, all were to be equally advantageous as regards seeing the stage, and being seen by the rest of the audience."

l o Schuyler, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 883. ' I At the Metropolitan's opening, "much disappointmentwas caused by the

comparative failure of the acoustic properties of the auditorium.. . . In the upper rows of the boxes and in the balcony only the high voices were distinctly heard. Nor were the facilities for seeing much better in some portions of the auditorium than the facilities for hearing" ("The New Opera House," New Yolk Times [23 October 18831: 1). See also "Metropolitan Opera-House," ThPRTntion 37 (25 October 1883): 848-849. After a first season, it was noted: "The Metropolitan Opera-house season has been financially a disastrous failure." Only consistently solduut performances would have enabled a profit, but "the house is never full, and never can be, because there is such a large part of it in which no one can see or hear" ("Patti M7ill Go To London," New Ymk Times [16 February 18841: 5). Later praise for the Met's acoustics was noted in Briggs, YuIlow Brick Breuier?, 15, and Eisler, Metropolitan Opera, x.

l 2 Editorial, "Mr. Abbey's Retirement," New Ymk Times (14 February 1884): 4. Cady's care for sight lines was noted in "A Grand Temple of Music," ,Veu Ymk Times (14 October 1883): 5. Briggs, Yellow Brick Brewq, 15-16, and Mayer, Met, 40-41, reported unresolved difficulties with sight lines up to the time of the old Metropolitan's demolition in 1966.

l 3 Letter, "Its Boast and Its Snare," New Ymk Times (4 May 1884): 4. l4 Cady, "Essential Features of a Large Opera House," 47. l 5 Ibid. I6James Roosevelt, first president of the Metropolitan Opera House Com-

pany, acknowledged: "We never expected that it would pay. None of us went into it with the idea that we would ever get our money back, but simply for the enjoyment to be derived from having a first-class opera-house. No opera-house in the world has ever paid as an investment, and none will ever pay" ("The Opera House Scheme," Neui Ymk Times [14 March 18821: 1). Van Rensselaer, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 76, noted that the corner masses on Broadway, being built in January 1884 after the theater opened in October 1883, were "to contain shops below, above large ball-rooms and restaurants, and above these again bachelors' apartments." A special committee of the Metropolitan's Board of Directors reported that "the advantage in finishing would be that the plans of the corners included the building of reception and supper rooms, which would enable the Directors to rent the house for balls" ("The Opera's New Home," Nmu York Times [24 May 18831: 1).

"Van Rensselaer, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 76. la On operatic culture in New York City before the Met's construction, see

Richard Grant U'hite, "Opera in New York," C e n t u ~Magazine 23 (March 1882): 686-703; (April 1882): 865-882; 24 (May 1882): 31-43; (June 1882): 193-210; George C. D. Odell, Ann& of the hkw Yolk Stag? 1815-1925, 15 vols. (New York, 1927-1949); and Lawrence W.Levine, Highbrm/Lowbrm: The Emerpzce ofCultura1 Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 85-104.

'"n moral concerns in New York City about operas of Verdi and Offen- bach in the 1850s and 18605, see Dizikes, Opera in Americn, 171-173, 193-194.

SIRY: CHICAGO'S AUDITORIUM BUILDING 153

Schuyler, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 880, wrote that earlier local buildings made for opera, such as the New York Academy of Music (1852-1854), designed by Alexander Saeltzer on the northeast corner of Fourteenth Street and Irving Place, one block east of Union Square, and the Brooklyn Academy of Music's first building of 1859-1861, designed by Leopold Eidlin, on Mon- tague Street, were similarly conservative in style: "It is quite certain that when these edifices were built, it would have been as difficult to obtain the money for an undissembled opera-house as twenty-five years later it has proved easy to obtain ten times as much." On New York's Academy of Music, see James V. Kavenaugh, "Three American Opera Houses: The Boston Theatre, The New York Academy of Music, The Philadelphiahmerican Academy of Music," Ph.D. diss., University of Delawxre, 1967, 28-51, and Dizikes, Opea in America, 166-167. "On the Casino Theater, see American Architect and Building Nms 18 (27

August 1885): 102; James Taylor, "The History of Terra Cotta in New York City," ArchitecturalRecord2 (October-December 1892): 136-148; Montgomery Schuyler, "The Works of Francis H. Kimball and Kimball and Thompson," Architertural Record 7 (April-June 1898): 494, 496, 497; Lloyd Morris, Incredible ,\ku Ymk: High Lzfv and Low Lifv ofthe Last Hundred Bars (New York, 1951), 189, 267; Young, Famow American PInyhowes, 223-225; Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory Gilmartin, and John M. Massengale, h k u Ymk 1900: metropolitan Architecture and Lrrbanism 1890-1915 (New York, 1983), 206-207, 220-221. On the Casino's roof garden, see Robert H. Montgomery, "The Roof Gardens of New York," Indoon and Out2 (August 1906): 214-219.

2 i Adler, "Chicago Auditorium," 415. 22 "The Men of Millions," Chicago Tribune (6 April 1890): 25. Chicago's

larger private fortunes were there listed as Marshall Field ($25 million), Philip D. hrmour ($25 million), and George M. Pullman ($15 million). Potter Palmer and Mrs. Cyrus McCormick were also then reported to have fortunes of $10 million. Many Chicago properties of the Peck estate and their assessed values were listed in the Illinois Bureau ofLabor Statwtics, hrinth Biprcnial R~port; Subject: Franchises and Taxation 1896 (Springfield, 1897). Biographical sources on Peck include C. Dean, The IYurld's Fair City and HerEnterpzsing Sons (Chicago, 1892), 36-74; The Biographical Dictionary and Portrait G a l w of Rppresentatzve Men of Chicago. . . (Chicago and NewYork, 1892), 106-109; John J. Flinn, Hand-book of Chicago Bzography (Chicago, 1893), 283-284; hrba N. Waterman, Historical Rmww of Chicago and Cook County and Selected Biography, 3 vols. (Chicago, 1908), 3,926-930; "Ferdinand Peck, Widely Known Chicagoan, Dies," Chicago Tribune (5 November 1924): 19; Paul T. Gilbert and Charles L. Bryson, Chzcago and Its M a k m (Chicago, 1929), 625; and Berger, T b q Built Chzcago, 93-104. In 1857 Philip Peck moved with his family to a new home at Michigan Terrace, the most elite rowhouse block in the city. It stood on Michigan Avenue's west side, from Van Buren to Congress Streets, where the Auditorium and its neighboring structures to the north rose in the 1880s. On Michigan Terrace, see Bluestone, Constructing Chicago, 75-78.

23 On Chicago's Athenaeum, see Alfred T. Andreas, Hwtory ofChicago, 3 vols. (Chicago, 1884-1886), 3, 416-417; and Kathleen D. McCarthy, Koblesse Oblige: Charity and CulturalPhilanthr@ in Chzcago, 1849-1929 (Chicago, 1982), 82-84. Peck supported the Athenaeum from its origins after 1871 and served as its president for four years (1887-1891). He also secured the Athenaeum's building at 56 East Van Buren Street in 1890, on the Auditorium's block. See Kineteenth Annual Rtport ofthe Chicago Athenaeum 1889-'90 (Chicago Historical Society), and Rand, McNally & Co., Bird's-Eye Vipius and Cuzde to Chzcago (Chicago, 1898), 31, in Randall, Building Construction in Chicago, 160. Peck served for five years (1886-1890) on Chicago's Board of Education and as its \ice president. See Proceedings of the Board of Educatzon of the City of Chicago, 1886-1890. He was also a trustee of the old and the new University of Chicago. In 1870 he had helped to found the Illinois Humane Societ): and in 1880 he was a founder of Chicago's Union League Club, which sought reform of city government. He also supported thehrt Institute of Chicago and the Reverend David Swing's Central Church of Chicago, which was the main tenant of Dankrnar Adler's Centtal Music Hall (1879). See Bluestone, Constructing Chi- cago, 99-101.

24 Waterman, Chicago and Cook County, 3,930. 23 Gilbert and Bryson, Chicago and Its Makm, 625. See Dean, World's Fair City,

71; and Sullivan, Autobiography ofan Idea, 292,293. 2"'The Great Auditorium," Chicago Tribune (18 June 1888): 7. 2' Bruce Grant, Fight fora City: The Story ofthe Lrnion League Club ofchicago and

Its T i m 1880-1955 (Chicago, 19553, 119, and Berger, T h q Built Chicago, 94. The operas for the Auditorium Theater's first season in 1888-1889 were predominantly in the Italian tradition. See "The Auditorium and the Italian Opera Revival," Chicago Tribune (17 November 1889): 5, and "The Dedication of the Auditorium," ibid. (8 December 1889): 12. In the Auditorium Theater's later years, Peck "attended every opening night. He loved Faust, [Ill Trovatore and Bohemian Girl" ("Ferdinand Peck, Widely Known Chicagoan, Dies," 19).

Philo T. Otis, Impressions of Europe 1873-1874: Mwic, Art and H i s t q (Boston, 1922). See also Otis, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra: Its Organization, Growth and Druelopmt 1891-1924 (1924; reprint, New York, 1972). On Patti, see H. Sutherland Edwards, The Pnma Donna: Her H i s t q and Surroundzngsfrom the Seventeenth to the Ninetenth C e n t u ~ , 2 ~01s. (London, 1888), 2, 64-124; Herman Klein, The Reign ofPatti (London, 1920); and Dizikes, Opera in Amm'ca, 223-230. Bluestone, Constructing Chicago, 22, noted traveled Chicagoans' aware- ness of cultural amenities in European cities as inspiration for Chicago's improvement.

2g On the development of commercial theaters in Paris after the revolution of 1789, see G. Radicchio and M. Sajous D'Oris, IYS thiitres d~ Park pmdunt In fiolution (Ban, 1990), and Anthony Sutcliffe, Park: An Architectural History (New Haven, 1993), 67-68. On the Opera National, see Jane Fulcher, The ,\'ation 's Image: French C k n d Opoa asPolitics and Politicized Art (Princeton, 1987), 113-121, 171. On Garnier's design for the arrival and circulation of different classes of operagoers, see most recently Christopher C. Mead, Charles Gamier's Park Opera: Architectural Empathy and the Kenawsance of French Clnssicism (New York and Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 113-127.

30 Ctsar Daly and Gabriel Da~loud, Les TGitres de In Place du ChBtelet (Paris, 1874), and Mead, Gamier's Park Opera, 128-129. See also T. J. Walsh, Second Empire Opera: The TGitre Lyrique, Park 1851-1870 (London, 1981). On these theaters, the TrocadCro, and Davioud's unbuilt project for a new Orphton Municipal (1864-1867), see also Daniel Rabreau et al., Gnbriel Davioud: Archi- tecte, 1824-1881 (Paris, 1981), 54-75, 76-83, 89-102. On Davioud's and Bourdais's related project of 1875 for a "People's Opera House" in Paris, see Izenour, TheaterDesign,93.

31 Michael Musgrave, The Mwical Li/e of the Cqstal PaInce (Cambridge, 1995). On the Royal Albert Hall, see Hitchcock, Archztecture h'zneteenth and Twentzvth Centuries, 4th ed. (NewYork, 1977), 236; and Izenour, TheaterDeszgn,168-169, 252-254.

92 Geraniotis, "German Design Influence in the Auditorium Theater," 47-54. Descriptions of Bayreuth's Festspielhaus include Edwin 0.Sachs and Ernest A. Woodrow, Modern Opera Howes and Theatres, 3 vols. (London, 1897-1898), 1,19-31; Albert La~ignac, The ~MwicDrnmas ofRichard W a p a n d His Festi7ial Theatres in Bayreuth, trans. Esther Singleton (New York, 1904), 54-67; Pevsner, H i s t q ofBuzlding 7jpes, 86-87; Izenour, TheaterDesign,75-82; Forsyth, Buildings for music, 179-182; Heinrich Habel, Festspiulhaw und Wahn- fiwd GPpInnte und aw~yfiihrte Bautplt Richard UTagners (Munich, 1985); and Frederic Spotts, Bayreuth: A History of the Wagner Festzval (New Haven, 1994), 38-54. Peck included the Bayreuth Festspielhaus among those theaters that Adler was to examine during his trip of 1888 (see n. 36 below). Adler presumably knew of the building earlier. In his paper "Stage Mechanisms," 42, he referred to Carl Brandt's work as a theattical engineer in connection with stage equipment for the Opera House in Frankfurt-am-Main, built 1873-1880.

33 On Semper's first Hoftheater at Dresden, see Mallgrave, Gotthd Semper, 117-129. On the seating arrangement in Schinkel's Schauspielhaus at Berlin, see Barry Bergdoll, Karl Friedrich Schznkel: An Architecture for Prwsia (New York, 1994), 60. On these buildings, and on Aupst Sturmhoefel's unbuilt project of 1888 for a Volkstheater,or People's Theater, see Geraniotis, "German Design Influence on the Auditorium Theater," 54-55,58-62.

On Semper's unbuilt designs for Munich's Festspielhaus and their relation to Wagner's dramatic theory, see Harry F. Mallgrave, Gottfiwd Semper: Architect of the Kinetemth Century (New Haven, 1996), 251-267. On Wagner's interest in ancient Greek drama as a model for his art, see Brian Magee, Aspects oflVagnrr (New York, 1988), 5-9, and Dieter Borchmeyer, Richard Wagner: T h e q and Theatre, trans. Stuart Spencer (1982; Oxford, 1991), esp. 59-86.

3%n American reports of Bayreuth's opening, see Dizikes, @era in Ampn'ca, 238-239. Among these reports were those by Leopold Damrosch, the Metropoli- tan Opera's future conductor of German opera, who wrote: "To Day's Musical Wonder," ,Vnu Ymk Sun (13 Aupst 1876): 2, and "The Twilight of the Gods," ibid. (23 August 1876:2). See also the editorial "Wagner, the Art Revolutionist,"

154 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

ibid. (19 August 1876): 2. Architects Potter and Robertson's nonwinning design for the Metropolitan Opera House included a lowered orchestra pit, adapted from the one at Bayreuth ("Competitive Designs Prepared for the Metropolitan Opera House, Kew York, N.Y. Messrs. Potter and Robertson, Architects, New York, N.Y.," American Archztpct and Buzldinghkus 8 [I3 Novem- ber 18801: 234-235). In 1890 McKim, Mead and White's theater at NewYork's Madison Square Garden was "to be built upon the plan of that at B a ~ e u t h which Wagner caused to be built according to the most approved plans" ("New York's .Auditorium," Chicago Tribun~ [25 January 18891: 2). On the Metropoli- tan's C ~ r m a n seasons, see Krehbiel, Chaptm of Opera, 109-138, 155-212; Kolodin, Mvtropolitan Opera, 87-105; Eaton, Miracle of the ~Clet, 66-74; Briggs, YellowBrick Brauery, 30-38; Mayer, Mvt, 48-64; Eisler, Metropolitan Opera, 55-171; and Dizikes, Opera zn Ammica, 239-246.

35 On Sullivan's window shopping in the vicinity of the Paris Opera, see Autobiography of an Idea, 227. On the facade's unveiling and the theater's inauguration, see Mead, GurniPr'sPam Opera, 184-185,193-195. On Sulliban's trip back to the United States, see Twombly, Louis SuUivan, 73. By 1909 Sullivan did own Charles Garnier, Le.Vou7wl Opha de Pam, 2 vols. (Paris, 1880); Richard Lucae et al., Dm @ernhaus zu Frankfurt am Main (Berlin, 1883); and Hans Auer, Das K. K. HofOpernhaus in W k i von van dn- Xu11 und von Siccardsburg (Vienna, 1885). See Andrew, Louw Sulli7ian, Appendix 2: Inventory of Sullivan's Library, from Williams, Barker & Severn Co., Auction Catalogue no. 5533, "Household Effects, Library, Oriental Rugs, Paintings, Etc., of Mr. Louis Sulliban," Chicago, 29 November 1909 (Burnham Library, k t Instimte of Chicago). On Sulliban and Wagner, see Sullivan, Autobiogmphy of an Idea, 208-209; Wright, Grr~zus and the ~Moborrq, 49, 54-56; and Jordy, Amen'can Buildings and Their Archztects, 4, 161, 165. On Americans at Bayreuth, see Prvsto Music Tzmes 6 (31 August 1889): 6.

"Peck, quoted in "One of Our Wonders," Chicago Hernld (16 September 1888): 17. He stated: "We intend to have the most complete stage in the world, uith the best appliances. During my recent visit to Europe, I examined a number of stages with this end in view, and Mr. Adler, one of our architects, is there now . . . for the purposes of examining and getting detailed plans of the finest stages in Europe, especially those of Buda-pesth, Frankfurt, Vienna, Dresden, Baireuth [sic],and La Scala, at Milan." Adler's account of his trip appeared in his talk "Stage Mechanisms," in Inland Architect and .Vms &cord 13 (March 1889): 42-43. See also Joan W. Saltzstein, "The A ~ ~ t o b i o p p h y and Letters of Dankmar Adler," Inland Archztvct 27 (September/October 1983): 20-24, and Geraniotis, "German Design Influence on the Auditorium The- ater," 44-47. " Peck, Annual Report of the President to the Stockholders of the Chicago

Auditorium Association, 7 December 1889 (Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt University Archives).

38 Henry Ericsson, Six$ Yean a Buildrr (1942; repr., NewYork, 1972), 68. On the strike, see Joseph Siry, "Adler and Sullivan's Guaranty Building in Buffalo," JSAH 55 (March 1996): 21, 34 (nn. 48, 49). On the Board of Trade Building, see "The Board of Trade," Chicago Ti ihne (28 April 1885): 9; ibid. (29 April 1885): 3; Thomas Tallmadge, Architecture in Old Chicago (Chicago, 1941), 165; and Randall, Building Construction in Chzcago, 108. " Paul A\irich, The Haymadwt Tragdy (Princeton, 1983), 136-140. One

major study is Kenneth L. Kann, "Working Class Culture and the Labor Movement in NineteenthCentury Chicago," Ph.D. diss., University of Califor- nia at Berkeley, 1977. Others include Hartmut Keil and John B. Jentz, eds., German Workms in Industrial Chicago, 1850-1910: A Comparative Perspecti7w (De Kalb, Ill., 1983). These studies refer to Michael J. Schaack, Anarchy and Anarchists (Chicago, 1889), who described baried workers' meeting halls around the city. The North Side's Turner Hall was at Clark Street and Chicago Avenue, while Vorwarts Turner Hall was on U'est Twelfth Street.

"George Wharton James, Chicago's Dark Plnces (Chicago. 1891). See also William Stead, If Christ Came to Chzcago: A Plea for the Union of All Who Lovv in the Service o/All Who Suffrr (London, 1894). On the ciy's range of amusements, see Harold R. Vynne, Chicago b~Day and?right: T/EPlvasure Seekeri Guide to thtParis of Amnica (Chicago, 1892). On entertainments of nonrddical trade unions, see, for example, "Among the Turners," Chicago Herald (2 May 1886): 16; and "Theatrical Folks' Hop" and "The Stone-Cutters' Ball," Chicago Tribune (8 December 1887): 2.

4i Editorial, Indicator 4 (9 February 1884): 96. See also "The Abbey Opera Company," Indicator 4 (19 January 1884): 62. On the Metropolitan Opera

Company's Chicago tour of 1884, see Quainmnce Eaton, Opera Caravan: Adurnlures of the ,bfetropolitan on Tour (New York, 1957), 8-13, and Ronald L. Davis, Opera in Chicago (NewYork, 1966), 35-36.

12 Editorial, Indicator4 (9 February 1884): 96. " Silas G. Pratt, ed., First Chzcago Grand Opera Festzual (Chicago, 1885).

Ibid. 45 On the Exposition Building, see Industrial Chicago, 1: The Buildinglntrrests,

157-158; .4ndreas, H i s t q o/Chicago, 2,655-657; "The Interstate Exposition at Chicago," Inland Architect and hkus Record 16 (September 1890): 22; Bessie L. Pierce, H i s t q of Chzcago, 3 vols. (Chicago, 1957), 3, 18-19, 475; Helen L. Horowitz, Culture and the City: Cultural Philanthr* in Chicagofi-om t h 1880s to 1917 (1976; Chicago, 1989), 36-39; and Ross Miller, AmPn'can Apocalyppsu, 23, 91-92.

46 On the 1884 May Music Festival, see Andreas, Hwtory of Chicago, 3, 650-651; "The May Music Festival," Chicago Tribuw (31 May 1884): 3, and "Limusements," ibid. (1 June 1884): 6. " "The OperaFestival," Chzcago Tebune (1 March 1885): 7.

"The Opera Festival," Chicago Tnbune (30 March 1885): 9. 4g Pratt, ed., First Chicago Grand Opma Festival. Adler and Sullivan's remodel-

ing of the Exposition Building's north end for the Opera Festival was discussed in "A Mammoth Opera House," Inland Architvct and Ahus Record 5 (March 1885): 25; "The Operatic Festival,'' ibid. (29 March 1885): 12; "The Grand Opera Festibal," Real Estate and BuildingJournal27 (4 April 1885): 160-161; Editorial, "The Opera Festivd," Chicago Tribunv (5 April 1885): 4; ibid. (12 April 1885): 27; Sullivan, Autobiogmphy of an Idea, 292-293; Morrison, Louis Sullivan, 67-71; Denson, "Chicago Auditorium," 30-34; Yvonne Shafer, "The First Chicago Grand Opera Festival: Adler and Sullivan Before the Audito- rium," Theatrr Design and techno lo^ 13 (March 1977): 9-13, 38; Grimsley, "Dankrnar Mler," 184-189; Twombly, Louis Sulli7ian, 147-149; Gregersen, DankmarAdlur, 115-16,55,60-61; and Frei, Louis Sullivan, 64-65.

io "The Grand Opera Festival," Real Estate and Buildzng Journal 27 (4 April 1885): 161.

" On the festival's financial and cultural results, see "Music for the People," Chicap Inter Ocvan (3 May 1885): 6. See also Andreas, H i s t q of Chicago, 3, 652-653.

52Peck, quoted in "The Opera Is Over," Chicago Tribune (19 April 1885): 12.

"Our Vampires," The Alarm (2 May 1885): 1, and "They Want Blood," Chzcago Tnbuw (29 Apnl 1885) 2 See also Schaack, Anarchj and Anarchwts. 80-8 1, and A\nch, Ha)market Tragedj, 146- 149

54 Recent accounts of the riot and its aftermath include Awich, Haymarket Tragedy,181-239, and Carl Smith, Cdan Disorder-and theShapr ofBelirf (Chicago, 1996), 101-176. Accounts from the period include "A Hellish Dead," Chicago Tribun~(5 May 1886): 1-2. On workers' lakefront meetings held from May to November 1885, see Av~ich, Haymarket Tragedy, 109-110. " Schaack, Anarchy and Anarchwts, 44-73, and Av~ich, Haymarket Tragedy,

84-85, 218-219. See also Carol Poore, "German-American Socialist Culture," Cultural Cirrrespon&ce (Spring 1978): 13-20, and Eric L. Hirsch, Lrdan h o l t : Ethnzc Politics in the AVineteenth-CPntury Chzcago Labor ~ L f o v m t (Berkeley, 1990), esp. 144-170.

jbThe Reverend David Swing, quoted in Ericsson, Six9 Ears a Buzldvr, 235. For Swing's and other clerical first reactions to Haymarket, see "Denounced from Pulpit," Chicago Tribunt (10 May 1886): 1-2. See also Lewis F. U'heelock, "Urban Protestant Reactions to the Chicago Haymarket Affair 1886-1893," Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1956.

j7Peck, address to Chicago Commercial Club, 29 May 1886, published in "New Grand Opera-House," Chicago Tnbune (12 June 1886): 9.

58 See John J. Glessner, The C o m m i a l Club of Chicago (Chicago, 1910), and Andreas, History ojchicago, 3,404-405. On Chicago's first major railroad strike, see Robert V. Bruce, 1877: The EarofT.'zolence (New York, 1959), 233-253, and Philip Foner, The Great Labor Lpisingof1877 (NewYork, 1977), 138-156. " Peck, in "New Grand Opera House," Chicago Tribunv (12 June 1886): 9.

" b i d , A9 successfuil local examples of this building type, Peck cited Adler's Central Music Hall (1879), and the Chicago Opera House (1885), on the southwest corner of Clark and Washington Streets, designed by Cobb and Frost. Adler and Sullivan remodeled its theater in 1886. On this building, see Andreas, H i s t q of Chicago, 3, 668-669, and Rand, McNally & Co., Bird's-Eje V ~ I I Sand Guide to Chicago, 141, repr. in Randall, Building Construction in Chzcago,

SIRY: CHICAGO'S AUDITORIUM BUILDING 155

206. Peck's family owned the building's site. See "A Question of Dollars," Chicago Tribune (20 June 1889): 10. On the Cenual Music Hall, see n. 81 below. "Glessner, Commercial Club, 20. b2 Garczynski,Audithum, 20, recalled how, prior to the Peck proposal, "one

of Chicago's most noble and most honored citizens, who, realizing this uant of the city, had from 1882 to 1885, with the prompting and assistance ofTheodore Thomas, made many brave but ineffectual efforts to convince a number of her wealthy citizens and her supposed leaders in culture and refinement to join him in giving Chicago a great Public Hall and Opera House." He added: "The comprehensive studies of [Adler and Sullivan] made from 1882 to 1885 in connection with certain efforts in a similar direction under the auspices of Mr. Fairbank and Mr. [Theodore] Thomas, had enabled them to show that adaptation to a multiplicity of uses could be attained in the construction and equipment of an Auditorium without imperiling its utility or its beauty." Theodore Thomas was the nationally known orchestra leader who played at Chicago's May Music Festi~als of 1882 and 1884.

Sullivan, "Development of Construction," repr. in Twombly, ed., Sullivan: Publzc Papers, 215, recalled that in about 1885, "there was a movement started by N. K. Fairbank for the building of a great opera house in this city, and we [Adler and Sullivan] made some sketches, but somehow the thing did not pull through. It lagged along. No one took a special interest in it, that is, interest enough to put up the money." In Autobiography ofan Idea (p. 292), Sullivan later wrote that prior to 1885: "For several years there had been talk to the effect that Chicago needed a grand opera house; but the several schemes advanced were too aristocratic and exclusive to meet with general approval." Variations on Sullivan's account appear in local reports of the early 1880s, such as "Wanted-An Opera House," Chicago Tribune (21 January 1883): 4.

b3 Peck, in "New Grand Opera House," Chicago Tribune (12 June 1886): 9. 64 Original stockholders and their amounts were listed in Recur& of the

Chicago Auditorium Association, originally Chicago Grand Auditmiurn Association, December 11, 1886 to November 7, 1906, 2 (Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt University Archives). This w a limited liability corporation created for p u b licly beneficial purposes under the laws of the State of Illinois. While not legally a nonprofit corporation, the Auditorium Association paid its stockholders a dividend only once, in 1893, the year of the Columbian Exposition, as noted in Recur&, 228. "Waterman, Chicago and Cook County, 3, 924. As the Auditorium neared

completion, Peck wrote to its stockholders that "it is desired and expected that other citizens not now identified with the project will unite kith us, thus continuing the policy originally adopted of distributing the ownership widely among our people" (Peck, Annual Report of the President to the stockholders of the Chicago Auditorium Association, 1 December 1888. Auditorium Collec- tion, Roosevelt University Archives).

""The Grand Auditorium," Chicago Tribune (10 December 1886): 1. On Peck's fundraising, see "Subscribers to the Grand Opera Hall," ibid. (26 September 1886): 7; "The 'Grand Auditorium,' " ibid. (28 November 1886): 7; and "A Magnificent Enterprise," ibid. (5 December 1886): 15. See also Morrison, Louis Sullivan, 86, and Twombly, Louis Sullivan, 164-165."Peck, Annual Report of the President to the Stockholders of the Chicago

Auditorium Association, 12 December 1891. Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt University Archives.

On these buildings, see n. 30. "Peck stated that "it is the wish of the projectors that the Auditorium shall

eventually come to be the great art center of America" ("The Pride of Chicago," Chicago Daily lYms [Morning Edition, 9 December 18891). Similar themes recurred in speeches at the theater's opening. See "Dedicated to Music and the People," Chicago Tribune (10 December 1889): 1-2. The Auditorium's national significance stemmed partly from its intended use for national politi- cal conventions, which began with the Republican Convention there in June 1888. Later President Benjamin Harrison and \'ice President Levi P. Morton, nominated at that convention, joined several state governors and Canadian officials at the theater's dedication. Peck wrote that the "Auditorium will be in a sense nationalized by the presence of distinguished men of the country" (Peck, Annual Report of the President to the Stockholders of the Chicago Auditorium Association, 7 December 1889. Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt University Archives).

'O Adler, "Chicago Auditorium," 415. Krehbiel, Chaptpn ofOpma, 91, cited a claim by John B. Schoeffel, a partner of Henry Abbey, the impresario who

managed the Metropolitan in its first season (1883-1884), that Abbey had lost $600,000. See Briggs, Yellow Brick Brmery, 22, 28-29; Mayer, :!let, 43-47; and Eisler, Metropolitan Oppm, 50-53. Garczynski, Auditm'um, 20, noted that, in contrast to Cincinnati, whose capacious Music Hall had succeeded from its opening in 1878, "New York, kith a far greater population, and with infinitely superior wealth, had built the Academy of Music, and still more recently the Metropolitan Opera House, with no better financial result than the obligation of the owners of these temples of the Muses to pay annual assessments for the maintenance of these structures."

7' Garczynski,Auditorium, 122. 72 Adler, "Chicago Auditorium," 423, wrote: "The boxes, forty in number,

are arranged in two tiers upon each side of the parquette. The lower tier forms an arcade of semi-circular arches kith rather light treatment and but little effect of inclosure, while the upper boxes are entirely open. In fact, there is nothing at all of the boxlike and stuffy effect produced by the conventional treatment of the open box." The lower boxes' arches framed their occupants on view, yet interfered with views outward.

73 The Auditorium's boxes were sold for a season. See "An Opera Box for $2,100," Chicago Tribune (23 November 1889): 1. The Met's first patrons paid $17,000 to own a box permanently.

74 Sulli~an,quoted in "The Pride of Chicago," Chicago Daib h'ms (Morning Edition, 9 December 1889).

75 Adler, "The Theater," 22-23. 7Vbid., 23. 77 Adler, "Chicago Auditorium," 423, wrote: "This unusually great rise of

the main floor has also made practicable the arrangement of six entrances, similar to the 'vomitoria' of the Roman amphitheatre, by which the lower half of the parquette seats are reached without rendering it necessary to climb to the upper level of the main floor." Schuyler, "Glimpses of Western Architec- ture: Chicago (1891)," in American Architecture and Oth~r Writings, ed. William Jordy and Ralph Coe, 2 ~01s. (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 1, 260, saw the Auditorium's entrances as vomitoria. He wrote (p. 258): "A place of popular entertainment, constructed upon a scale and with a massiveness to which we can scarcely find a parallel since Roman days, would present one of the worthiest and most interesting problems a modern architect could have if he were left to solve it unhampered."

7%dler advocated a larger number of narrower aisles in "Paramount Requirements for a Large Opera House," 46, and "Theater Building for American Cities; Second Paper," 815.

'9 Adler, "Chicago Auditorium," 421. "Gregersen, Dankmnr Adlm, 10, notes that the idea of seating rows not

haling curvatures centered on the source of sound followed from the theaters of Adler's early employer, the architect Ozia S. Kinney, who died in 1869.

Adler worked on the plans of the Central Music Hall for perhaps three years, adapting suggestions of its patron, theatrical manager Ceorge B. Carpen- ter (1835-1881), who had visited theaters throughout the United States for ideas on the design ("Real Estate," Chicago Tribune [2 March 18791: 6). See also "The New Central Music Hall," American Architect and Building Naus 6 (8 November 1879): 8, and "The Music Hall," ibid. (5 December 1879): 6. Views and seating plans appeared in a pamphlet, Central Music Hall (Chicago Histori- cal Society). Later accounts are in Joseph Fort Newton, David Swing: Popt Prencher (Chicago, 1909), 34-35; Morrison, Louis Sullivan, 66,286-289; Condit, Chicago School, 31-32; Twombly, Louis Sullivan, 9899, 139-141; Grimsley, "Dankrnar Adler," 80-130; Gregersen, Dankmar Adlm, 47-49; Bluestone, Con-structing Chicago, 101; and Frei, Louis Sullivan, 50, 63.

Dean, World's Fair City, 71, wrote of Peck: "Although holding no decided views regarding religious belief, he may be seen with his family at Central Music Hall nearly every Sunday, listening to the logical and symmetrical discourses of Prof. David Swing." Among the many publications of this minister's words, a comprehensive collection from the period of the Auditorium is David Swing, Sermons (Chicago, 1884).

82 Gregersen, DankmarAdlm, 11-19. On John Scott Russell's methods for the banking of auditorium seating, see Izenour, TheatPrDesign, 71, and Appendix 3 (597-599), which is a republication of Scott Russell, "Elementary Consider- ations of some Principles in the Construction of Buildings Designed to Accom- modate Spectators and Auditors," from Edinburgh ,lieu Philosophical Journal 27 (1838). See also Forsyth, Buildings furMusic, 235-243. "Adler, "Paramount Requirements of a Large Opera House," 46.

156 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

' I 2 Garczynski, Auditmium, 114. In a later interview, Sullivan said of Mler's and his design for the synagogue for Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv, Chicago . .

(1889-1890): "It is the nineteenth century school. . . . That is all I can say for it. It has no historical style. It is the present. U'e have got to get away from schools in architecture. .is long as we adhere to schools of anything there is no progress; nothing gained, no advancement. Look at the Auditorium. What school does that represent? None" ("Church Spires Must Go," Chicngo Tribune

[30 November 18901: 36). l L 3Garczynski,Auditmium, 128. ""Sullivan, Autobiography of an Idea, 208-209, recalled that Lohenp'n had an

impact on his appreciation of Wagner, whose portrait, along with Haydn's, appears in gold relief in the arch spandrels of the organ screen to the stage's left. See "Auditorium Supplement," Chzcago In& Ocean (11 December 1889). Johannes Gelert (1852-1923) sculpted these reliefs and those of Shakespeare and Demosthenes to the stage's right.

""he illusionistic backdrop for the Auditorium's stage consisted of a continuous canvas roll on which were painted panoramas of the sky in different seasons and weathers. The backdrop, 300 feet long and 75 feet high, was painted by the Kautsky Brothers of Vienna, whose system of hydraulic lifts was adapted for the Auditorium's stage. See Adler, "Chicago .L\uditorium," 428-429, and Garczynski, Auditorium, 133-135. Sullivan's designs of foliate ornament to frame naturalistic stage imagery recurred in his studies for the proscenium and curtain of the Pueblo Opera House (1888-1890). See Lloyd C. Engelbrecht, "Adler & Sullivan's Pueblo Opera House: City Status for a New Town in the Rockies," Art Bulletin 67 (June 1985): 287,290.

lI"Suivan, "Plastic and Color Decoration of the Auditorium," in Twombly, ed., Sullivan: Public Papm, 75.

11' Ibid., 76. The title that Sullivan originally selected for the poem "Inspiration" was

"Growth and Decadence." See Twombly, Louis Sulliuan, 224-225. On Sullivan's presentation of "Inspiration," see "M'estern Association of .kchitects," Chicago Tribune (18 November 1886): 6, and American Architect and B~ i ld ing~ leus 20 (27 November 1886): 254. Analyses of the poem include Paul, Louis SuUiuan, 36-40, and M'eingarden, "Louis H. Sulli~an: Investigation of a Second French Connection," JSAH39 (December 1980): 297-303.

'l"ullivan, "Plastic and Color Decoration of the Auditorium," in Twombly, ed., Sulliuan: Public Papm, 75.

Iz0 "Pride of Chicago," Chicago Daib L"ldws (Morning Edition, 9 December 1889).

121 Ibid. ]"At their meeting of 28 August 1889, Peck and his colleagues resolved

"that the architects and the decorative contractor [Healy and Millet] proceed with landscape paintings for the side arches in the Auditorium-the cost thereof not to exceed two thousand dollars ($2,000). It being fully understood that if not satisfactory they are to be taken down at the expense of Healy and Millet. . . the landscapes to be subject to modification in the original designs and subject to the approval of the Executive Committee" (Minutes of Execu- tive Committee of Chicago Auditorium Association, 141. Auditorium Collec- tion, Roosevelt University Archives). On 5 June, the Executive Committee had "voted to authorize Architect Sullivan to have figures placed over the prosce- nium arch of the Auditorium, the cost thereof not to exceed $2,000, and the design subject to the approval of this committee" (Ibid., 111). On Fleury, see Francis E. Towme, "Albert Fleury, Painter," Brush and Pencil 12 (April-Septem- ber 1903): 201-208. On Healy and Millet, see David Hanks, "Louis J. Millet and the Art Institute of Chicago," Bulktin of the ArtInstitute of Chicago 67 (1973): 13-19. On Sullivan's friendship 191th Millet and Fleury in Chicago, see Connely, Louis Sullivan, 206. On Fleury's murals, see Garczynski, Auditm'um, 130-132. Fleury also painted the twelve murals in oil, each showing a different American regional scene, in the Auditorium Hotel's Banqueting Room. He soon became an instructor in mural painting at the Art Institute and completed a number of later such commissions. Fleury wrote of his approach to painting open-air scenes in "Picturesque Chicago," B7ush a?zdPmcil6 (September 1900):273-281.

Iz' Torme, "Albert Fleury," 204. "Pride of Chicago," Chicago Daih Akus (Morning Edition, 9 December

1889). On Peck's affinity for spending time in Wisconsin's woodlands, see Dean, Wmld's Fair CiQ, 69-70.

12' Sullivan, "Plastic and Color Decoration of the Auditorium," in Twombly, ed., Sullivan: Public Paprrs. 75-76.

Sullilan, Autobiography ofan Idea, 300. 12' On the chronology of the Auditorium's exterior design, see Gregersen,

"Chicago A~iditorium: A History," 18-24. See also Morrison, Louis Sullivan,

86-89, and Twombly, Louis Sullivan, 164-170. On the Auditorium's siting and urban visibility, see Garczynski, Audit@

rium, 41-49. l2YAt their meeting of 7 May 1887, the Auditorium's directors, headed by

Peck, voted to change the upper walls to limestone (Records,71. Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt University Archives). Paul Mueller, "Testimony," in Kauf- mann, ed., "M'right's 'Lieber Meister,' " .Vine CommtaGs , 49, and Wright, Genius and the Moborra~y, 48, both recalled that Sullivan's initial designs for the upper walls were in brick and an ornate terra-cotta, cladding structural iron columns.

l m Adler, "Architects and Trade Unions," Inland Architect and IVRUS Record27 (May 1886): 32. Adler's ideas on labor and politics also appeared in "Delibera- tions of the Architects," Economist6 (21 November 1891): 857-858; "Municipal Building Laws," Inland Architect and NRUS Record25 (May 1895): 36-37; "Open Letter to Chicago Mason Builders," ibid. 29 (February 1897): 2-3; "The General Contractor from the Standpoint of the Architect," ibid. 33 (June 1899): 38-39. On the building trades strike of 1887, see Industrial Chicago, 1: The Buzldinglntrrrsts, 556-581.

13' .\dler, quoted in "U'hy the Strike Must Fail," Chicago Tribune (17 June 1887): 1.

'32 Ibid. I3Qdler, "Chicago Auditorium," 417. 134Field's Wholesale Store was 325 feet long east-west on Adarns Street and

its seven stories stood 130 feet high. The Auditorium's front on Congress Street is 362 feet long east-west, while its ten-story block is about 144 feet high. Both thus had a ratio of frontal width to height of 2.5:l. John Van Osdel's Farwell Wholesale Block (1886), on the west side of South Market Street from Monroe to .\dams, was the other recent building of comparable size in central Chicago. See Rand, McNally & Co., Bird's-Eye Views and Guide to Chicago, 105-106, and Randall, Building Construction in Chicago, 112, 123.

I" "Death of Henry Field," Chicago Tribune (23 December 1890): 1; and Robert W. Thyman, H i s t q ofManhall Field & Co., 1852-1906 (Philadelphia, 1954), 62. Henry Field was a director of the Auditorium from December 1886 to his death (Records, 8, 175. Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt Vniversity Archives). Field's M'holesale Store's sandstone w a s quarried near Springfield, Massachusetts, less than thirty miles from Marshall Field's birthplace near Conway. On the building, see James F. O'Gorman, "The Marshall Field Wholesale Store: Materials Toward a Monograph," JYXH 37 (October 1978): 175-194. Sullivan, Kindergarten Chat \'I:"An Oasis," Kindergartm Chats and Othtr Writings, ed. Isabella Athey (New York, 1947), 30, described the Field Store as a monument to Field, "to the strength and resource of individuality and force of character." Field's associate, Harry G. Selfridge, noted that the firm's architecture "met the moral requirements of Mr. Field himself' as "a lasting monument to his character" (Harold I. Cleveland, "Fifty-Five Years in Business: The Life of Marshall Field-Chapter XI," System 11 [May 19071: 459).

'" Adler, paraphrased in "The Western Association of .kchitects," Ammican

Architect and BuildingLVms 20 (27 November 1886): 253. 13' O'Gorman, "Marshall Field U'holesale Store," 190. See also Jordy, Ameri-

can Buildings and TheirArchitects, 4,34-37. 13' Industrial Chicago, 1: The Buildinglntmests, 25. 13%arczynski, Auditmium, 54. la On the ancient Latin usages of the word "auditorium," see Birgitta

Tamm, Auditorium and Palatium: A Study on AssemblyR0om.s in Roman P a h s during the 1st C e n t u ~ B.C. and the 1st C e n t u ~ A.D., Stockholm Studies in Classical Archaeology 2 (Stockholm, 1963), 7-24.

14' Editorial, "The Auditorium Opening," Chicago I n k - Ocean (9 December 1889): 4.

'42 On Peck's involvement with the World's Columbian Exposition, see Flinn, Hand-book ofChicago Bzography, 283, and Gilbert and Bryson, C/~icago and Its Makers, 625. Peck's enthusiasm for its architecture appeared in his Report of the Commissioner-Gwral for the United States to the International UnivrrsalExposition, Pani, 1900,6 vols. (UBshington, D.C., 1901), 1,60.

14' On the unit's local history and reputation, see Souvenir A h m and Sketchbook of Chirago'sFirst Rrgimmt (Chicago, 1890); Andreas, H i s t q of Chzcago, 3, 586-587; and John J. Flinn, Chzcago: The ~Mnrvelous CiQ of the West, 2nd ed.

158 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

(Chicago, 18921, 387-389. MTorkers earlier referred to this regiment's men as "Manhall Field's boys" ("Our\'ampires." The Alarm [2 May 18851: 1).M'right, Autobiography (1932), 96, identified Adler and Sullivan's draftsman, MTilliam (Billy) Gaylord, as "a candidate for pugilistic honors in the First Regiment at 'the Armory,' " presumably meaning the regiment's earlier armory building at 24 Jackson Street, opened in 1878. On this struchlre, see Industrial Chicago, 1: The Building Interests, 185.

"4 On the First Regiment's Armory, see Inland Architect and hrms Record 13 Uune 1889): 90; "MTas Laid with Pomp," Chzcago Tribune (13 July 1890): 1-2;

Julian Ralph, "The First Regiment Armory in Chicago," Harperk Weekly (3 December 1892): 1163; Donald Hoffmann, The Architecture ofjohn Wellbm Root (New York, 1973), 139-144; and Robert Fogelson, Amm'ca's Armmies (Cam-bridge, Mass., 1989), 81,146-147,151,158-159,160-162.

145 Flinn, Chicago: Maruelous CiQ, 389. 14b On Adler and Sullivan's "Trocadero Theater" inside the Fint Regiment's

Armory, see Gregersen, Dnnkmr Adlm, 86-87. On Ziegfeld, the father of the famous twentieth-century showman, see Flinn, Hand-book of Chicago Biography, 395. On the Parisian Trocadkro Palace and Theater, see Rabreau et al., Gnbriel Dauioud, 89-102.

14' "Music for the People," Chicago Inter Ocean (3 May 1885): 6. 14* On the Chicago Citizens' Association, see Frederic C. Jaher, The Udan

Establishment:Up* Strnta in Boston, hrmYolk, Charlestm, Chicago, and 1.0s Angeles (Urbana, 1982), 505. On the Chicago Citizens' Law and Order League, see hdreas , Histmy ofChicago, 3, 288-290.

14y Garczynski,Auditorium, 11 1. 'jOSee Corroyer, "Romanesque Architecture," Inland Architect and "&us

&cord 13 (March 1889): 39-40; (April 1889): 51-53; (May 1889): 65-68; (June 1889): 83-86; (July 1889): 95-96; 14 (August 1889): 3-6; (September 1889): 18-19; (November 1889): 48-50; (December 1889): 73-76; Uanuary 1890): 90-92; 15 (February 1890): 3-5; (March 1890): 31; (April 1890): 43-45; (May 1890): 55-57. Another contemporary view of the relation of Roman to Rc- manesque appeared in Montgomery Schuyler, "The Romanesque Revival in New York (1891)," in Ama'can Architecture, 1, 191-195. On Romanesque in Chicago's architecture, see Industrial Chicago, 1: The Builrlzng Interests, 67-68, and Henry Van Brunt, "John Wellborn Root," Inhnd Architect and ,%us Recmd 16 (January 1891): 85-88. On Otis, see Henry F. and Elsie R. MTithey, Bzographi-cal Dictionary of Amencan Architects (1956; Los hge les , 1970), 450, and Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Architects Design (New York, 1982), 44.

13' "The President's Party," ChicagoEumingJournal(9December 1889): 2. A rendering of Peck's house *as published in Inland Architect and ,Vms &cord 10 (October 1887). Peck and Jenney were both members of the Union League Club, whose building of 1886Jenney designed. See Charles B. Jenkins, "M7.L. B. Jenney and Mr.B. Mundie," Architectural R p V i m 1 (February 1897): 2-9, and Grant, Fight fora CiQ, 81-95.

I52 On the Athenaeum's headquarters from 1890, see Industrial Chicago, 1: The Building Intvrests, 275; Flinn, Chicago: MaruelmLF CiQ of the West, 265; Rand, McNally & Co., Bird's-Eye Views and Guide to Chicago, 31-32, repr. in Randall, Daielopwwnt ofBuilding Construction in Chicago, 253. See also ~Villeteenth Annual Report of t h Chzcago Athenaeum 1889-'90 (Chicago Historical Society). The Athenaeum's earlier building stood on the west side of Dearborn Street, just north of Adler and Sullivan's Borden Block on the northwest corner of Randolph. On the Art Institute's original patronage from its organization in 1879, see Andreas, H i s t q of Chicago, 3, 421, and Helen L. Horowitz, "The Art Institute of Chicago: The First Forty Years," Chicago Histmy 8 (Spring 1979): 2-19.

I j 3 "Warming Its New Home," Chicago Tnbune (10 May 1891): 1. 134 The Reverend Edward I. Gal~ln to Ferdinand W Peck, 13 December

1889, in Auditorium, Dedication Volume (Newberry Library). On Galvin and the Chicago Athenaeum, see Andreas, Histmy ofChzcago, 3,417.

I 5 j Adler, "Chicago Auditorium," 433. Ij'jGarczynski,Audztunum 132. 15' Studies that revise views of the Chicago School by examining its architec-

tural patronage include Bluestone, Constructing Chfcago, and Berger, T h q Built Chzcago.

15R Paul Bourget, Outre Mm (Paris, 1895), 1, 161-162, trans. in Schuyler, Cntiqwofthe I.Vorks ofAdlm %Sulliuan, in American Architecture, 2,380. Bourget in this context was discussing the exteriors of Chicago's tall commercial buildings. SeeJordy,Amen'mn Buildings and ThPirArchitects, 4,5243. Schuyler wrote: "The type of an opera-house, which the [Chicago] auditorium essentially is, is so well settled and so universally accepted that the variations ordinarily attempted upon it, even by architects of original force, are comparatively slight. M'hile the component parts of the accepted type are retained in this interior, they are transmuted into an entirely new result." The theater, in "extending and proclaiming a hospitality as nearly as may be equal and undistinguishing, illustrates, as plainly as the exterior of manystoried buildings, and in contrast with the 'royal' and 'imperial' opera houses, M. Bourget's conception of 'a new kind of art, an art of democracy' " (Schuyler, Critique of the T.TJorksof Adlm & Sullivan, in American Architecture, 2, 384-385).

I11ustmtion Credits Figures 1,10, 13, 16, 17,20. Courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago Figures 5, 14. Library of Congress Figure 6. Museum of the City of NewYork Figure 7. Deutsches Theatermuseum, Munich Figures 8,9, 18,22. Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society Figure 23. Courtesy of hlinariScala/Art Resources International, New York City

SIRY: CHICAGO'S AUDITORIUM BUILDING 159