Adler and Sullivan: The Coalescence of Structure and Ornament

Following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, a massive reconstruction effort led to an explosive

growth in the city’s built environment; more than 100,000 structures stood within the city limits by the

1880s. The ability of Chicago to rapidly regrow was primarily due to innovations in the mass production

of building materials and the use of the materials themselves, namely iron and steel. Furthermore,

these new structural elements promised resistance to fire along with the potential to establish a new

architectural identity in a city whose slate had been wiped clean. Chicago became the laboratory for

testing these materials in terms of both structural and architectural performance as there was a

transition away from traditional load bearing masonry toward steel frame construction. Out of the

range of projects that emerged from this transitional period, Adler and Sullivan’s work experimented

with the confluence of rational steel structures and ornamentation as a method for producing a new,

distinct American architecture. The first of their projects that explored these new modes of

ornamentation and construction was the Chicago Auditorium Building.

Prior to the commissioning of the Auditorium Building in 1885, the theater as a type had been

established as a means for displaying a city’s prominence to its own citizens as well as the country at

large. Outside of Chicago, major cities such as Boston, Philadelphia and New York had constructed

significant opera houses as civic works through private financing. The New York Academy of Music,

completed in 1854, was constructed by Manhattan capitalists who arranged for stock in the project to

be sold in the form of public subscriptions. A significant demand for Italian opera at affordable prices

was the motivating factor in the financing of this project. The theater seated 5,500 customers in order

to maximize profit and exposure. Beyond the revenue that was generated through ticket sales, the New

York Academy, along with its counterparts in other cities, provided a larger, long-term economic

function; it created a space for the city’s financial elite to gather and promote deals with traveling

businessmen, encouraging further economic investment in the city.1 The theatrical space and its

ornament was a city’s economic prosperity made manifest. Architectural daring signified increased

economic investment in a city’s cultural identity, motivating wealthy travelers to return to their city and

finance similar ventures with the hope of outdoing the attempts of other cities. In the case of the New

York Academy, the German-trained Alexander Sältzer was selected as the architect. Sältzer created a

horseshoe-shaped plan, modeling the interior after the Berlin Opera House. By architecturally

mimicking a German opera house, the New York Academy and its investors were imbued with European

elite culture. The Academy’s ties to historic European cultural centers became desirable for other cities

to emulate as they tried to promote their own cultural significance and economy in turn.2

In 1865, Chicago completed its own opera house in the same vein as the New York Academy of

Music. The project was financed by Uranus C. Crosby, a wealthy Chicagoan who made his fortune from

the distilling and selling of alcohol. Crosby’s Opera House became the flagship Chicago music center,

providing two venues for entertainment – the primary theater for opera and a music hall where smaller

concerts were held separately. Just as the New York Academy had attempted to recreate the Berlin

Opera House, Crosby had the interior of his opera house lavishly designed in a similar fashion to

1 Joseph M. Siry, The Chicago Auditorium Building, (Chicago, 2002), 21-24.

2 Ibid., 23-25

European models to concretize a historic culture in his own project. The ceiling featured a central dome,

ringed with portraits of famous composers and lit by hundreds of concealed gas lamps. Above the

proscenium was a replica of the baroque artist Guido Reni’s fresco Aurora. There was a major emphasis

on promoting an elite and wealthy identity rooted in history. However this significant Chicago structure

would last only six years as it was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.3

In the years after 1871, Chicago underwent a major transformation as a significant portion of

the city was to be replaced. With so much of the city’s architectural identity lost, Chicago was willing to

consider new construction techniques and their resultant effects on built forms. According to Louis

Sullivan, “the year 1880 may be set as the zero hour of an amazing expansion, for by that time the city

had recovered from the shock and panic of 1873.” He claimed that “in Chicago, the progress of the

building art from 1880 onward was phenomenal.”4 Sullivan was speaking primarily to the business

district, in which structures were implementing the newest techniques for construction, ornamentation,

and interior equipment. In 1885, following a series of temporary opera festivals that culminated with

the Grand Opera Festival of 1885, Chicago’s Democratic mayor proposed that a permanent opera hall be

constructed on the lakefront as a civic project easily accessible to all people. A group of investors led

primarily by Ferdinand Peck, the head of the Chicago Grand Opera Festival Association, set out to

develop the theater with the goal of making it a significant civic project that would provide affordable

artistic education and entertainment to a wider range of socioeconomic classes. In March of 1886, a

grouping of plots on Congress Street between Wabash and Michigan Avenue were acquired as the site

for the Auditorium Building. Contrary to previous theater projects, initial purchase of stock paid only for

the building’s construction. In order to properly maintain the operation, the theater was planned to be

augmented with a hotel and rentable commercial spaces, creating a multi-use complex different from

other significant opera houses of its time.5

In 1886, Adler and Sullivan were selected as the Auditorium Building’s architects. The pair had

established themselves in the realm of theater design by working on a string of theaters in Chicago prior

to the commissioning of the Auditorium Building: the Grand Opera House (1880), Hooley’s Theater

(1882), Haverly’s Theater (1884), and McVicker’s Theater (1885).6 Due to its significant commercial

program, the design for the Auditorium Building became representative of the logistical concerns for the

money-making functions of the hotel and commercial spaces. The theater was positioned in the center

of the building, surrounded by the commercial operations which required an ordered repetition of

fenestration to increase street exposure.7 The elevation presented a tripartite elevation with an

increase in scale of the fenestration in the middle band, responding to the presence of the theater space

it contained. While the façade represented a regularity within the building, the range of programs and

their spatial differences required a number of structural solutions.

3 Ibid., 25-28

4 Ibid., 63

5 Ibid., 123-129

6 Ibid., 63

7 Ibid., 144

Façade of the Auditorium Building from Congress Street, showing the regulated commercial exterior, 1986. Gary Sigman Photography.

Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt University Archives

The first matter of structural concern for the Auditorium Building was its foundation. At

110,000 tons, the building was immensely heavy for the ground area it occupied. Furthermore, Chicago

lacked the easily reachable bedrock that existed in Manhattan where pile foundations could function

properly. The clay soils that the Auditorium Building rested on led to the development of a local

technique for shallow pier foundations that would resist settlement. In order to ensure equal

settlement, each section of the building would have to spread its certain load across an area of concrete

foundation that would equal the load-to-area ratio of the rest of the sections. Due to the varying

programs and spatial arrangements within the building, certain areas required larger or smaller concrete

footings to allow the building to practically float on the soil.8

8 Ibid., 151-152

Isometric Drawing of the Auditorium Building’s basement structure, showing varying sizes of isolate pier foundations, 1980. Drawing by Laura

Hochuli. Library of Congress

Above ground, the regularity of the office and hotel spaces permitted the use of traditional

masonry techniques combined with iron column-and-beam construction, however the adventurous

section and scale of the theater required a more innovative strategy.9 Adler and Sullivan approached the

theater as a space that would possess a regionally distinctive character with democratic ideals. In an

attempt to distance the theater from the elite European culture that previous theaters had referenced,

the architects rethought nineteenth-century conventions of opera house design. While ornamentation

played a role in the rethinking of the traditional European models, new structural opportunities, and in

turn the spatial organization of the theater, would establish a distinct approach to the theater as a civic

and democratic project.10

Adler created a strategy for an arched proscenium which progressed into a series of expanding

arches as the theater moved back from the stage, allowing for a more equal viewing experience for all

attendees -- a technique that had no precedent in Europe or America.11 In order to achieve this feat, six

transverse trapezoidal trusses were spaced at varying heights between the proscenium and the highest

balcony seating. Hung from the bottom of these structural members were arched trusses that held the

vaulted ceiling.12 While cast iron could function accordingly for the structure’s columns, the spans

9 Carl W. Condit, American Building Art: The 19

th Century, (New York, 1960), 56.

10 Joseph M. Siry, The Chicago Auditorium Building,(Chicago, 2002), 197.

11 Ibid., 212

12 Carl W. Condit, American Building Art: The 19

th Century, (New York, 1960), 57.

required for the four-thousand-seat theater were too great for the structural capacity of cast iron. In

1885, before construction began on the Auditorium Building, the Carnegie structural-shape rolling mill,

which supplied structural members to the project, switched production from wrought iron to Bessemer

steel. This availability of steel allowed for all beams, girders, and trusses to be made of the stronger

material.13

Sectional Perspective through Auditorium Building, showing trusses spanning the width of the theater, 1998. George C. Izenour

Archive, Department of Special Collections, the Pennsylvania State University Library.

Auditorium Theater, showing the multi-arched space created by the steel trusses, 1967. Photograph, Cervin Robinson.

13

Thomas J. Misa, A Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America 1865-1925, (Baltimore, 1995), 48-49.

While Sullivan’s design for the Auditorium Building’s exterior was directly influenced by the

work of H.H. Richardson in the form of massive stone walls given Romanesque characteristic through

the proportions and repetition of their openings, the hidden interior space of the theater provided

Sullivan with a testing ground for new styles of ornamentation that would relate to the unprecedented

architectural form produced by Adler’s innovative structure. Sullivan’s ornamentation for the

Auditorium Building’s theater diverted from the three-dimensional, thicker ornamentation of

Richardson, instead creating a thin applique to run across the surfaces of the outward expanding arches

of structure.14 The ornamentation was applied to the structure as plaster casts, forming a grid that

alternated between plant reliefs and organic geometric patterns that could seemingly continue on ad

infinitum, not dissimilar from the sequential expanding arches that organized the space and structure.

As a thin cladding, the ornamentation no longer functioned to produce a depth and mass to the

structure, but instead coexisted with the steel trusses to highlight the rational volumes they produced.

With the various systems of construction simultaneously present, the Auditorium Building

became a display for the possibilities of steel with respect to other structural materials. No longer was

the theater praised for its authentic replication of classic European ornament. Reinvention of typical

spatial layouts through the implementation of steel structures that were highlighted by clad

ornamentation provided a new modern American identity. The Auditorium Building functioned as a

transitional building on the path to true steel-framed architecture which took off in the 1890s.15

As the rail markets slowed down and cities were rapidly growing in the late 1880s, the mass

production of steel in the United States shifted to accommodate the need for steel in urban

construction. Between the years of 1886 and 1899, the production of steel structural shapes increased

from fifty-six thousand gross tons per year to eight hundred thirty thousand gross tons per year, while

structural iron fell from one hundred seventy-eight thousand gross tons per year to twenty-seven

thousand gross tons per year.16 This sharp increase in the popularity of steel was primarily due to the

significant economic advantages that steel-frame buildings offered. Firstly, steel structures required

relatively little time to go up. An old building could be torn down, replaced with a steel-frame building

and filled with new tenants in less than twelve months. Additionally, steel allowed for increased

building heights in conjunction with the proliferation of the elevator in the United States, producing

more rentable space from a single plot of land. The tall office building quickly became the definitive

architecture of the major urban centers of America.17

Despite having earned a reputation primarily as theater designers in the 1880s, Adler and

Sullivan’s work shifted to the tall office building as the building type took off in the 1890s. The first of

their most significant office buildings was the Wainwright Building in St Louis, completed between the

years of 1890 and 1891. Just as they had split from more traditional models of European theater spaces

in their Auditorium Building, so too did they reinvent the typical expectations for large-scale urban block

projects. Similar projects of the time, such as H. H. Richardson’s Marshall Field Wholesale Store, were

often of the Romanesque style, emulating the palazzo typology in which three distinct layers (base,

middle, top) were made clear through the articulation of horizontal registers. In Richardson’s design,

14

David Van Zanten, “Sullivan to 1890,” Louis Sullivan: The Function of Ornament, (New York, 1986), 37-51 15

Ibid., 50 16

Thomas J. Misa, A Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America 1865-1925, (Baltimore, 1995), 83-84. 17

Ibid., 84-87

the verticality of the double-height windows is sunken into the building, while the horizontal bands

protrude to establish a sense of mass that resonates with the thickened stone façade. Adler and Sullivan

inverted this relationship in the Wainwright Building, setting the horizontal spandrels back as the

vertical members came to the fore, clearly expressing the vertical as the direction in which American

cities were heading.18 Furthermore, their design for the façade became a representation of the

structural and spatial logic of the building. Whereas the expression of structure was relatively limited to

the internal theater space of the Auditorium Building, the Wainwright Building’s exterior provided clear

insight into the structural nature of the building. The intersection of horizontal spandrels and the

vertical piers created a gridded regularity in the fenestration in the same vein as the volumetric grid

produced by the skeletal steel frame. However the true materiality of the steel structure was not as

clearly expressed as it was in the Auditorium Building’s theater, where ornamentation was applied as

thin, clad surface at key moments to highlight the steel trusses. Instead, Sullivan had the external

vertical members overlaid with brick to create a sense of load-bearing masonry piers, in effect falsifying

the true construction of the building. Ornamentation in the form of terracotta panels were instead

applied to the spandrels, cornice, and capitals of the piers, creating a stark contrast between objects

that had no true structural purpose and those that held the building up.19

Wainwright Building, showing the details of the office walls. Photograph, Cervin Robinson.

18

William H. Jordy, “The Tall Buildings,” Louis Sullivan: The Function of Ornament, (New York, 1986), 73-76 19

Ibid., 76

Guaranty Building, showing the details of the office walls. Photograph, Cervin Robinson.

A few years after the completion of the Wainwright Building, Adler and Sullivan finished another

tall office building, the Guaranty Building, in Buffalo. In many ways, the Guaranty Building is a revision

of the Wainwright Building. Both projects have a similar base with seven bays of large openings, each

one topped with smaller clerestory openings. Transitioning to the next level, an intermediate vertical

member is placed in the middle of each bay, and again the horizontal spandrels are recessed to further

accentuate the verticality expressed through the external columns/piers which terminate at the cornice.

The significant difference between the two projects is found in the treatment of each building’s

ornamentation. While Sullivan rendered the expressed vertical structure as devoid of ornamentation in

the Wainwright Building, reserving it for non-structural moments, he designed the Guaranty Building to

be completely ensconced in ornamentation. Despite not drawing specific attention to key structural

elements, the terracotta ornamentation functioned as a continuous thin surface that could be read as a

light application to the steel structure beneath it, creating a more honest representation of the steel

structure on the façade than had been done on the Wainwright Building where the columns were

covered in brick to appear as masonry piers. The steel structure had freed up the façade, allowing for

the organic, geometric lattice of terracotta cladding to flow and change with each segment of the

building, from the entrance to the cornice, while still seeming continuous.

Guaranty Building, showing the detail of the cornice. Photograph, Cervin Robinson.

Guaranty Building, showing the detail of the base. Photograph, Cervin Robinson

No sooner had the Guaranty Building epitomized the endless possibilities of clad ornamentation

than it had marked the eventual demise of ornamentation in the tall office building. The oversaturation

of terracotta ornamentation and the ability to infinitely reproduce it caused it to lose significance.

Joanna Merwood discusses this phenomenon through the lens of the engineer George M. R. Twose. As

Merwood states, “Twose was one of the first to realize that this material represented the

‘mechanization’ of cladding, since new colors, shapes, and patterns could be created and almost

infinitely reproduced, and the material could be quickly and cheaply manufactured and erected.”20

Twose believed that terracotta ornamentation was beginning to suffer from the perfection it acquired

through the mechanized production of it, and he considered this effect to be visible to the naked eye.21

Meanwhile, as ornamentation was losing its significance due to this artificial perfection and

reproducibility, capitalist motives started to drive the façade design of buildings. The light levels and the

environmental quality of interior spaces of tall office buildings could greatly affect the cost of rent that

tenants would be willing to pay. This meant that maximum fenestration would yield the maximum price

for rent. Just as steel-frame structures proliferated due to primarily economic reasons, so too did the

dematerialized curtain wall become popular, replacing solid, ornamental cladding.

If any one building marked the shift from the ornament-clad steel structure to the curtain wall

tall office building, it was the Reliance Building in Chicago, completed in 1895 by D. H. Burnham and Co.

While Adler and Sullivan’s design for the Guaranty Building’s façade implied an ornamental surface that

functioned separately from structure, the Reliance Building’s curtain wall of glass and off-white

terracotta provided a truly clear separation of surface from structure, forming a continuous veil that

would permit maximum daylight as opposed to a solid mass.22 The architectural historian Carl Condit

considered the Reliance Building to be the prototype for future modernist buildings, stating “If any work

of structural art in the nineteenth century anticipated the future, it is this one. . . . Atwood succeeded in

developing almost to its ultimate refinement the modern dematerialized curtain wall, and this made the

building a direct forerunner of the work of Le Corbusier and Mies in the twenties.”23

Reliance Building, showing the curtain wall detail. Photograph, Archimago (blog)

20

Joanna Merwood, “The Mechanization of Cladding: The Reliance Building and Narratives of Modern Architecture,” Grey Room 4 (2001): 59. 21

Ibid., 59. 22

Ibid., 53-54. 23 Carl Condit, The Chicago School of Architecture: A History of Commercial and Public Buildings in the Chicago

Area, (Chicago, 1964), 110–111.

Structural steel initially provided a means for the construction of innovative, rational spaces to

promote a new American identity for civic architecture, as in Adler and Sullivan’s Auditorium Building.

However, due to capitalist and economic influences, steel structures were quickly regularized into

skeletal grids for the proliferation of the tall office building, which became the quintessential American

building type from the 1890s onward. Across the range of projects they completed, Adler and Sullivan

incorporated ornamentation as a surface application for highlighting the structural rationality that these

new buildings possessed, from the trussed arches of the Auditorium Building’s theater space to the

continuous field of ornamentation across the gridded exterior of the Guaranty Building. However, as

this system of clad ornamentation became overly abundant and reproducible, it began to lose its

significance, being replaced by the more banal curtain wall that was promoted in a similar capitalist

fashion to structural steel. The work of Adler and Sullivan in the late 1880s and 1890s marked a unique,

albeit brief, period in which ornamentation and structure coexisted to promote a new American

rationale to the making of architectural space.

Bibliography

Condit, Carl W. American Building Art: The 19th Century. New York: Oxford University Press, 1960.

Condit, Carl W. The Chicago School of Architecture: A History of Commercial and Public Buildings in the

Chicago Area. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.

Jordy, William H. “The Tall Buildings,” Louis Sullivan: The Function of Ornament. New York: W. W.

Norton & Company, 1986.

Merwood, Joanna. “The Mechanization of Cladding: The Reliance Building and Narratives of Modern

Architecture.” Grey Room 4 (2001).

Misa, Thomas J. A Nation of Steel: The Making of Modern America 1865-1925. Baltimore: The Johns

Hopkins University Press, 1995.

Siry, Joseph M. The Chicago Auditorium Building: Adler and Sullivan’s Architecture and the City.

Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002.

Van Zanten, David. “Sullivan to 1890,” Louis Sullivan: The Function of Ornament. New York: W. W.

Norton & Company, 1986.