Louis Sullivan in St. Louis, Missouri
In St. Louis there is a remarkable collection of artifacts and one major building associated with famed architect Louis Sullivan. The artifacts are held in the St. Louis Museum of Art. The building is the Wainwright, a few blocks from the Gateway Arch.
Louis Sullivan, American, 1856-1924
Winslow Brothers Company Ornamental Iron Works, Chicago, Illinois
Balusters from the Schlesinger and Mayer Building, Chicago, Illinois, 1898-99
The design of each baluster is an elongated grid of rectangles and a central medallion. Above and below the center is an egg shape framed by oval lines and emitting rich scrolls of foliage. These balusters supported the handrail of a staircase in the Schlesinger and Mayer Building, in Chicago, which later became the Carson Pirie Scott department store.
Louis Sullivan, American, 1856-1924
Northwestern Terra Cotta Company, Chicago, Illinois
Ornament from the St. Nicholas Hotel, St. Louis, Missouri, c.1893
The popular designation “snowflake panel” captures the complex structure of this design. An outer circle frames an octagon. The center is filled with linear patterns of arc and trefoil shapes. Outside the circle sinuous tracery fills the remaining space, weaving a structure of web-like vines. Panels such as this were installed in sets of three under the projecting bay windows of the St. Nicholas Hotel, located at Eighth and Locust Streets, St. Louis.
Adler and Sullivan, Chicago, Illinois
Winslow Brothers Company Ornamental Iron Works, Chicago, Illinois
Elevator Grille from the Chicago Stock Exchange Building, Chicago, Illinois, 1893-95
The graphic pattern of small spheres on radiating arms set within circles and ovals on this grille is meant to embody the energy and embryonic life force of seeds. Soaring skyscrapers were compared to growing plants, and their rising heights were facilitated by elevators. This grille element enclosed elevators in the Chicago Stock Exchange, a thirteen-story building designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan.
Louis Sullivan, American, 1856-1924 Northwestern Terra Cotta Company, Chicago, Illinois
Ornament from the Scoville Building, Chicago, Illinois, 1884-85
The unusual forms on this panel suggest the leaves and flowers of a plant. This combination of organic and geometric shapes is characteristic of Louis Sullivan’s early ornament designs of the 1880s. This three-part panel design was installed below windows on the top story of the Scoville Building, a Chicago factory designed by Louis Sullivan and his partner, Dankmar Adler.
Louis Sullivan, American, 1856-1924
Northwestern Terra Cotta Company, Chicago, Illinois
Lunette from the Scoville Building, Chicago, Illinois, 1884-85
The scrolling motifs and sprouting leaves on this lunette suggest natural forms that have been simplified and abstracted. The high relief of these designs is quite different from Louis Sullivan’s later concept of ornament as low-relief motifs that merge and mingle with the surface. This ornament is reminiscent of designs by the English architect Owen Jones and the Philadelphia architect Frank Furness, with whom Sullivan worked briefly in 1873. This arched lunette and the adjacent panel decorated the top story windows of the Scoville Building, a Chicago factory designed by Sullivan and his partner, Dankmar Adler.
Wainwright Building
The Wainwright Building Offered a New Model for Skyscrapers
Standing a few blocks west of the Arch at Seventh and Chestnut, the ten-story Wainwright Building marked a milestone in architecture. Completed in 1891, it featured soaring vertical bands to emphasize its height. Many architectural historians consider it to be the first true “skyscraper.” Famed Chicago architect Louis Sullivan designed the building with a steel frame clad in brick. Unlike earlier tall buildings, the Wainwright’s design made no attempt to use ornamentation to hide the fact that a steel framework supported its mass. The innovative architecture of the Wainwright Building was a step forward in the construction of tall structures. Architect Frank Lloyd Wright, chief draftsman at Sullivan’s firm at the time, called the Wainwright Building “the very first human expression of a tall steel office-building as Architecture.”
This corner view is where the building has its most impressive appearance.
Upper floors and the door surrounds show how the sculpted spandrel panels and door surround stand apart from the otherwise flat surfaces. The subtle play between light and show gives definition to the structure.
The elaborate decoration in terra cotta helped to frame major openings and important surfaces on the building. Geometric and natural motifs gave the signature look of a Louis Sullivan building.
DEtail extended to metalwork on the brass plated door handles. Here the letters W and B are interwoven together into a monograph. The twist to the door handle gives something to grip on to.
We were drawn to the finely chiseled stones that gave texture and shadow imperceptibly to the surface.
The Wainwright Building ever gradually receded into the background as we walked away from it. While the skyscrapers that this prototype spawned, crowded out the surrounding area.