it must be tall every inch of it tall the force and power of altitude must be in it the glory and pride of exaltation must be in it it must be every inch a proud and soaring thing it was 1895 when the architect louis sullivan wrote these words to capture the essence of a new phenomenon taking shape in chicago that would come to define the american city in the coming 20th century the skyscraper in these fantastic new structures louis sullivan recognized a distinctly american invention that required its own unique expression he saw the skyscraper along with the greek temple the gothic cathedral and the medieval fortress as an emblematic type of building made necessary by progress and because of this necessity its design should reflect its particular purpose he then linked that assertion to the laws of nature and composed perhaps the most famous phrase ever to come out of his profession [Music] whether it be the sweeping eagle in his flight or the open apple blossom the toiling workhorse the branching oak the drifting clouds over all the coursing sun form ever follows function and this is the law it is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic of all things physical and metaphysical [Music] of the heart of the soul from the 1880s to the 1920s louis sullivan devoted himself to the idea that the united states should have architecture as unique and daring as the nation itself even as he welcomed the new america emerging from the industrial revolution he insisted that his nation's true strength could be found only in the enabling beauty of its landscape his uncompromising belief in the essential connection between architecture and freedom set him on a one-man crusade and for a brief moment in his thirties it seemed as if he might succeed [Music] but his voice was drowned out in the mad rush of the gilded age to emulate everything european and he was barely able to make a living for the rest of his life yet he died leaving the united states some of the most beautiful and original buildings ever created and his genius inspired another rebel who became the most famous architect the world has ever known frank lloyd wright [Applause] [Music] so [Music] [Music] it was the hurricane katrina of its day over three nights a raging fire had almost destroyed the most important city in the western united states tens of thousands of people were homeless there was catastrophic property loss but after the initial trauma passed it became clear that the city was not going to disappear measured against the scale of destruction there had been relatively few deaths the rail lines that made chicago the vital interchange of american commerce were intact the lumber lumberyards that made housing possible throughout the treeless prairies of the west were spared as were the union stockyards that sent dressed pork and beef all over the country into europe it seemed all it would take to make a comeback would be the audacity that created chicago in the first place american nationalism or patriotism is really just a grander form of what goes on in chicago which is you know the greatest city in the world the best the biggest the best in less than 40 years what had started out in the 1830s as a rough frontier boom town had surpassed many older larger and richer cities as the wildly beating heart of the american economy chicago had this attitude about itself i think which was that it was the primary dynamic american city new york was tired and old chicago was young and vigorous some other place might have been devastated by the fire but chicago seemed to say okay all right this happened now watch as a new yorker you know it kind of envy that so if anything it seems to me the fire which was so destructive encouraged chicago to show the world that it could be the phoenix rising from the ashes you know and rebuild itself to be even greater than it had been prior to the fire now in the process of doing that the fire created huge opportunities for architects if ever there was a place and a person made for each other it was this proud city bursting with energy and louis sullivan when he arrived in 1873 he was a 17 year old college dropout thoroughly convinced that he was destined for great things for his entire young life sullivan had done everything he could to shake off victorian values like modesty restraint and obedience and his brash artistic talent would soon find fertile ground in a rowdy surging city rebuilding itself after shrugging off catastrophe [Music] he had spent most of his childhood on his grandparents farm north of boston where he would skip school as often as possible in order to roam the countryside alone developing a deep spiritual bond with nature that would form the foundation of his work and philosophy as an adult but during his trips to boston he also became fascinated by the city's enormous stone buildings the new engineering marvels made possible by steel and the men who built them at 16 he was admitted to one of the first classes of architectural students at the massachusetts institute of technology the architecture program is just getting started it was modeled after the ecole de bozar in paris principally because the founders of the mit school had studied there and that meant that basically you studied the classical orders you learned every single name of every single little piece of whatever in a classical building didn't have much opportunity to do any designing in your first year so sullivan found it rather inadequate boring tall and all the rest quit i imagine that he had an innate sense of extraordinary ability and that is hard to fathom for most people like many young men of his generation sullivan realized that the real action was out west and so he went to join his parents and brother in chicago in his autobiography he recalled the excitement of his arrival in a city remaking itself the train neared the city it broke into the city it plowed its way through miles of shanties disheartening and dirty gray it reached its terminal at an open shed louis tramped the platform stopped looked toward the city ruins around him looked up at the sky and as one alone stamped his foot raised his hand and cried in full voice this is the place for me he came at a propitious time in some ways but a difficult time in other ways because that was the beginning of the great depression of the 1870s there was a bank panic more or less a four year depression this economic slump meant that even a city like chicago couldn't move fast enough to satisfy sullivan's ambitious adolescent agenda he decided that until better times returned he had nothing to lose by giving education another try not in chicago or boston but in the heart of european culture paris [Music] without knowing for sure what awaited him sullivan sailed for europe and competed for admission in the ecole de bozar where his former teachers at mit had studied in six weeks he turned his casual knowledge of french into fluency and passed the entrance examinations to become the only american out of 30 students admitted that year [Music] while the ecole would give him a valuable credential and teach him how to develop ideas sullivan found the curriculum as boring and restrictive as mit once again he was being drilled in the classical forms of ancient greece rome and the renaissance he was already aware that he had a different vision for architecture just as he had always had a different vision for his own life set apart from those around him who followed tradition it was during an excursion to rome that he found the education he was looking for in the sistine chapel he first beheld the work of michelangelo and was stunned here he communed in silence with a superman here he felt and saw a great free spirit [Music] here he came face to face with his first great adventurer the first mighty man of courage the first man with a great voice for no hand unaided could do this no intellect unaided could do this imagination alone could do this after just a year in europe sullivan left the ecole de bozar and returned to chicago he worked as a freelance draftsman anxiously searching for just the right firm where he could prove himself as a great architect dangmar adler was understood by everybody in the profession to be one of the leading structural engineers and also maybe the best acoustical engineer in the united states adler had made a reputation for music spaces concert halls other kinds of buildings as well but adler knew that he was not a great designer in terms of the aesthetics of buildings along come sullivan match made in heaven sullivan was a great facade designer and ornamentalist so the team really clicked when sullivan joined adler's firm in 1880 architects and their clients were as concerned with the building's ornamentation as they were with its engineering they wanted to decorate the box and they used the ornament as a way to make you know more interesting silhouettes and a picture more of a picturesque kind of romantic view of what a building could be like i think it also helped to create scale and to make it less scary to pedestrians i mean i think there's been a lot written about the rube that came in from the rural areas and they arrived in the city to see these massive buildings that were very overwhelming and i think having the ornament on them made it much more approachable [Music] in the gilded age ornamentation was everywhere buildings were draped in graceful intricate forms of carved or sculpted stone patterned brick fired clay and pressed metal individuals building houses or a speculator building an office building for rental purposes wanted their building to have a certain appeal so that that building would attract customers or in the case of private houses show the the taste the connoisseurship of those who owned the buildings so the ornament functions as a or kind of signboard almost an advertisement for the artistic sensibility of those who own the building and as a certain market value this this building is more attractive than the one next door therefore you should have your office here [Music] there is no building too modest to proclaim its value through ornamentation even from the cheapest run-of-the-mill structures it peered out in hints of gentility ornamentation was where louis sullivan quickly distinguished himself from his fellow architects by joining adler's established practice as chief designer he was immediately able to put his mark on a variety of houses and commercial buildings here sullivan's childhood bond with nature burst forth in vigorous bold ornamentation they made it clear there was something very different about dank mar adler's new young designer most important it was completely original most other architects at this time depended on pattern books to guide their decorative work not sullivan ever the individual his ornament was all sketched by his own hand this remarkably unique and prolific talent prompted dankmar adler to make sullivan his partner in 1883 just two years after louis had joined the firm clients chose them because they knew what they were going to get not something that's run of the mill cookie cutter ornament but ornament with a flourish and an integrity and a vitality that would make their buildings unique louis sullivan saw ornamentation as not mere decoration but as a way to confer character for justice's country declared that nothing should stand in the way of human potential so too there was no detail in a sullivan building too mundane to become something extraordinary in his mind anything an elevator screen [Music] a chimney cap a radiator grill or a bank teller's window should be an original work of art adler's theaters which had always been known for their perfect acoustics now had the added benefit of sullivan's incredible skill as a designer this caught the attention of one of chicago's wealthiest and well-connected men who was hatching an ambitious plan to turn the city into something more than just a rough boom town and heal social tensions that were beginning to tear the city apart beneath the sears tower one of the world's most iconic skyscrapers stands another tower that in its day was part of the most ambitious and celebrated building projects in the united states known simply as the auditorium a first look makes it hard to imagine it as having any special purpose beyond simply being big but in 1886 chicago's richest and most powerful businessmen were investing huge amounts of money and hope that a grand opera house would help ease two of the city's most pressing problems the first was simply a question of image even though chicago's industrial might was creating the modern consumer economy and making the city incredibly rich one thing its civic leaders couldn't buy was respectability they began to be concerned that it wasn't being thought of for having any culture that it was a city of stockyards and smokestacks the second problem was more serious and more threatening to these men's position an increasingly radicalized working class who had been left out of the scramble for riches it's really right on the heels of the civil war that industrialization occurs in the united states and that changes everything i mean gone is the jeffersonian ideal of the small farmer the small businessman who is self-reliant in comes hordes of people exploited in factories and basically have no say politically economically have very little control over their own lives it is a situation which seems to destroy the american dream for a lot of people throughout the 1870s workers demands for better pay and working conditions plus the unheard of eight-hour day had been ignored strikes that shut down plants and rail yards had been met with contempt and violence from industrialists who controlled city government and the press tensions overflowed in may 1886 when a bomb exploded in the middle of a violent confrontation between protesters and police in chicago's haymarket square seven police officers died scores of civilians were injured and the rally organizers were hanged for complicity and murder to the rest of the country the city appeared to be a place where order had broken down completely this had never happened in chicago before i mean there had been violent clashes but nothing this potentially the workers didn't know what their future was going to be and capitalists like peck didn't know quite the future of their situations ferdinand peck was heir to a real estate fortune who like many 19th century romantics believed that art could bring people together in his deeply divided city after the haymarket affair he convinced a group of the city's richest men to form the auditorium association which would finance the building of an opera house where everyone regardless of class could enjoy the uplifting effects of high culture and he knew precisely the architects he wanted to build it he knew that if you wanted to get the best possible theater that the greatest expert on theaters was right there in chicago dank mar adler dank mar adler had the ability to design theaters that were as near to perfect as you could imagine perfect acoustics sight lines exiting stage facilities what were adler and sullivan doing at this time they weren't that well known there could not have been a building project more perfectly in sync with louis sullivan's belief that architecture in its purest form reflected how people thought about themselves and their society the auditorium commission was also a phenomenal opportunity for sullivan to demonstrate his outsized talent ambition and boundless energy but it was an almost overwhelming assignment adler and sullivan would actually be designing three buildings at once at the centerpiece was a 4000 seat theater which in itself would have been a huge commission for the firm but there was also a 400 room hotel and an 11 story office block each presenting its own set of design challenges a few blocks away another building was taking shape that would exert considerable influence on louis sullivan's auditorium design its designer was h.h richardson one of the boston architects whose massive stone buildings had so impressed sullivan as a boy in the marshall field wholesale store richardson had done something radical for his time by stripping away applied decoration almost entirely from a major building he intended the rough stone facade massive and textural as its own ornamentation symbolizing strength permanence and utility [Music] inspired by such a bold break with convention sullivan conceived a design that was both a tribute to richardson and an expression of his own desire to break with tradition it wasn't simply a building it was a civic monument and its simplicity had achieved the auditorium's director's vision of a democratic opera house [Music] there had never been such a large privately funded construction project in the united states even as sullivan was confronted with an unprecedented design program dank mar adler was challenged like never before in creating a foundation that would support such a mammoth structure on chicago's famously spongy lakeside soil just the digging of this foundation was worthy of expensive photographic reproduction for the midwest's leading architectural journal in the summer of 1887. [Music] in that same issue there was a drawing of a house designed by the noted chicago architect joseph silsby it was rendered by one of his stable of draftsman a 19-year-old from wisconsin named frank lloyd wright had gotten around that sullivan was falling behind schedule on the auditorium's massive interior design program which like everything else sullivan did was original from the grandest spaces down to the light fixtures and back stairwells so wright went calling at the offices of adler and sullivan with his own renderings it was a fortuitous meeting the beginning of one of history's great artistic collaborations help was needed in designing the auditorium building and i think probably sullivan almost instinctually knew that this was somebody who understood and sullivan and wright would work into the night getting the drawings done for the auditorium building and sullivan kind of became the mentor to frank lloyd wright sullivan quickly became dependent on wright's ability to carry through design concepts to execution promoting him to chief draftsman over the next two years the auditorium building began to rise over downtown chicago miniaturizing everything around it so it rises up out of the ground with rock face stone and then in the upper part of the building which actually is a facing of stone in front of brick it's using the technology of shapers to make it an absolutely flat but plastic skin on the front of the building it brought in this solid mass of stone which anchored the buildings that were already there on michigan avenue and gave the building a kind of richness as well as a feeling of you know this is a mountain mass right in the middle of an urban development you have this vast building with a tower and the tower isn't trying to be pretty the tower is showing strength and energy the auditorium's solid and simple exterior was merely a mask for what sullivan had planned for its interior an explosion of color and ornamentation never seen before in the united states you walk in and there's just this luminosity and scintillation and surfaces that glow and palpitate in themselves and the richness of marble and onyx all come into play with this almost transient experience of light and color [Music] the theater's entrance was almost hidden behind three heavily rusticated stone arches at the base of the auditorium's great 17-story tower it led to a low-ceilinged lobby made up of a series of identical arches suggesting unlike such spaces in new york or europe there were no grand staircases to serve as parade grounds for the elite [Music] it was more like a basement drawing people to the enclosed staircases where they would begin a journey through plaster ornamentation [Music] mosaic floors gilt balustrades garnet-colored marble all illuminated by the soft glow of newly developed electric light this dimly lit magnificence was simply a prelude to the triumph of the theater itself [Applause] [Music] so you can imagine sitting in the audience at this time and being surrounded by this shimmering light that could also be toned down for the performance and there would also be kind of a golden screen around the percentium stage that would turn even the performance into a kind of spectacle it's almost like a crowning of the performance and yet sitting in the auditorium you feel like you two are crowned beyond its obvious beauty the auditorium's ornamentation also served a functional purpose if you look across the arches of the auditorium theater what you see is this integration of lighting and ventilation and ornament all within the same elliptical lines of the ceiling which was one of the skills that adder and sullivan had they integrated all the mechanical modern functions into the visual ornamental design of the space when the auditorium was finished in 1890 it caused a sensation drawing president benjamin harrison and his vice president to the theater's premier performance they left washington while congress was in session the only time that the president and the vice president of the united states ever left washington at that time to do what to attend the opening of this performance and three weeks later congress votes that chicago should host the colombian exposition so the auditorium building is um it's it marks the moment that sullivan really fit exactly with the zeitgeist it would he would never it would never work quite as well again it is questionable if the auditorium ever achieved ferdinand peck's goal of enriching the lives of industrial wage earners in chicago for whom the mere five cent street car fare to get downtown was a luxury much less a ticket to the opera inevitably it became what all opera houses were at the time a place for people with money to enjoy high culture but it did give all chicagoans a building the likes of which would never be seen anywhere else the auditorium's unprecedented decorative program and the director's willingness to pay for it had allowed sullivan to be as bold and expansive as michelangelo whose work had inspired the young architect 15 years earlier at 33 sullivan could have been forgiven for looking at the completed auditorium building as his own sistine chapel when adler and sullivan moved into new offices on the 16th floor of the auditorium tower they were literally on top of the world but they would not stay there long [Music] adler and sullivan had demonstrated on the grandest scale possible what a distinctly american building could be both in appearance and practice one aspect of the auditorium of particular importance to louis sullivan was showing what was possible when an architect freed himself from established historical styles for even though the united states had been politically independent for more than a century its architecture exposed a persistent and deep dependence on european culture for guidance and validity that sullivan was determined to break the state of american architecture at that time was called reign of terror and i think we've gone through those funny things we had been classical for a while thanks to jefferson and then people gone to europe and they were reading sir walter scott and it became medieval and then it went into people wanted to do moorish architecture and all hell broke loose they were doing second empire because paris was the center of the world at that time it was the period when mark twain said the united states is the only country in the world whose architecture is up to its sense of humor whether it was italianate gothic second empire or queen anne every accepted design seemed to point back to europe professional journals filled their pages with sketches architects made on their continental travels and conducted design contests to see who could best emulate european styles for american living i think it was understood that the united states didn't really have an architecture of its own uh european architecture was tried and true sullivan probably thought that architecture needed to purify itself in the united states in the sense of it needed to keep up and express the kinds of social and economic changes and technological changes and indeed aesthetic changes that were going on in both north america and europe in the late 19th century sullivan wanted to do for american architecture what writers like ralph waldo emerson and walt whitman had done for american literature a generation before throw off the restraints of european tradition and unashamedly express the youthful vigor and inventiveness of their young nation for sullivan this meant stripping away america's fanciful facades and creating buildings with deeper meaning something that revealed the ingenuity and independence of its people in the early 1890s he wrote that america is the only land in the whole earth wherein a dream like this may be realized for here alone tradition is without shackles and the soul of man free to grow to mature to seek its own sullivan really thought that through his architecture he could make a difference in society he could make a difference in the way people felt and the way people related to each other the way people interacted with nature this gets into what he meant by democracy if you were exposed perhaps even just by seeing from the outside this chicago auditorium building or maybe going in and looking at the glorious lobby there you might develop a greater appreciation of what is beautiful in life and perhaps find a way to incorporate something like that into your own life this may have been unrealistic for a working person but nonetheless if anything sullivan was an idealist not a practical man and even to think something like that unrealistic though it may have been strikes me as setting him apart from most other architects during and after the auditorium's construction the firm of adler and sullivan executed a number of other commissions where sullivan increasingly took bolder steps to move beyond european precedent and present an architecture unique to the united states two of them are found in the most unlikely of places a cemetery in a pastoral setting then on the far north side of chicago sullivan fashioned two mausoleums that commune with nature in ways his urban buildings could not here he discarded the fashionably sentimental and religious forms of the victorian funeral tradition and created something entirely new the first was designed for one of the firm's most loyal clients the merchant and developer martin ryerson [Music] its ornate bronze gate is the only decoration on an otherwise unadorned mass of polished granite gently sloping out of the ground yet what appears to be a visually silent surface is doing something else you can literally see the sky in it does that suggest that although something has come to an end something else has not come to an end that life goes on life permeates the other more renowned tomb of eliza getty for many critics and historians this is the case study in sullivan architecture replete with themes found in most of his work after 1890 imposing simple geometry interlaced with intricate ornamentation that as sullivan once said to frank lloyd wright should not simply be on the building but of it the getty tomb is one of the most extraordinary objects in the world life is supposed to go on we hope or maybe we don't but here is if you look at the ornament there it's a honeycomb and the honeycomb is always the image of eternity because out of the bees come the two great things in all the world sweetness and light honey and wax you imagine the mind the brilliance of making a tomb a honeycomb frank lloyd wright always said that the getty tomb was as pure sullivan as you could get if you take a look at the joints of the building and the way it's put together it's big solid pieces of stone gravity and time are its friend so it's true entombment for the long haul something that is in part the permanence of death but in reality it's a celebration of [Music] life [Music] another dramatic break with european influence took shape in chicago's newly fashionable gold coast on the north side of town just steps away from lake michigan in the midst of french renaissance and english gothic mansions adler and sullivan built a modestly sized house that took a totally new if not defiant approach to american domestic architecture the charlie house is recognized as largely the creation of sullivan's then 24 year old chief draftsman frank lloyd wright [Music] but sullivan's influence is unmistakable in the plain almost austere design punctuated by bursts of color and ornamentation [Music] wright he was as he described it astonished by sullivan's graphic skill and skill as and he also was very attracted to sullivan's ideology and they were both committed to an american modern architecture sullivan was so important to write because it made right feel that he could really push the edges of architecture because here was someone else doing i think ryden sullivan had a very special relationship i think it got beyond a professional relationship sullivan never had children and i think he saw right as the son he never had a rights father and mother divorced when he was quite young so sullivan this was a surrogate father as chief draftsman wright had his own office right next door to whom he later called liebermeister the beloved master in 1889 two years after wright joined the firm he married and moved to suburban oak park whether motivated by generosity or control sullivan agreed to hold the mortgage on a lot and house that the young wright designed for his growing family this arrangement which allowed right to build a showcase that caught the attention of other suburbanites would ultimately lead to trouble between the two men but for the next four years wright would stay at adler and sullivan as the firm embarked on a course of commissions which would play a major role in changing the landscape of the american city in 1889 chicago had become so rich and powerful that voters in four surrounding townships voted to be annexed by their giant neighbor the city quadrupled in size becoming the largest metropolitan area in the united states and the nation's second most populated city [Music] this growth made chicago's downtown an even more crowded and intense environment squeezed into an area roughly a hundred blocks bounded on three sides by water into the south by rail yards real estate literally went through the roof for builders seeking to make a profit on expensive land there was nowhere to go but up but in the late 1880s no one was quite sure what these new tall buildings should look like most of them were either a series of one-story buildings stacked on top of one another or immense exaggerations of familiar grand hotels and mansions they were denying that buildings were tall architects were denying that the chief characteristic of the tall office building sullivan said is that it's tall the emphasis on expressing height was the clearest example of sullivan's assertion that form ever follows function he first demonstrated this not in chicago but in saint louis where an upstart speculator named ellis wainwright hired adler and sullivan to build him a 10-story office building here in sullivan's hands the modern skyscraper took form [Music] to meet his own standard of making such a building look tall he began by looking at it the same way the designers have been treating a building form used since antiquity the column consisting of a base a shaft and a capital it would have a beginning a middle and an end [Music] placing the building's windows in uniform rows he then set them back into the structure creating unbroken vertical lines that when multiplied created the same visual effect of a fluted classical column ornament was applied where it wouldn't interfere with the building's upward thrust and once the eyes settled at the top it was treated to a feast of swirling energetic forms celebrating what man had accomplished but even here among the tangle of new technology and the chaos of the street sullivan made sure that people would be reminded of the greater force nature the wainwright building was so well received that adler and sullivan were hired to design a number of tall buildings around the country they showed louis sullivan's grasp of the needs of the modern city but with a firm commitment to displaying the bounty of nature that had made such rapidly expanding urban centers possible adler and sullivan repeated their triumph in st louis with the guaranty building in buffalo new york here sullivan employed the same design principles from the wainwright with an even greater flourish he took a newly developed building material called terracotta affixed directly to the structure's steel frame and turned this functional element into a symphony of ornament terra cotta is the fire proofing that you need to put on the building to protect the steel from a fire and if you don't ornament the terracotta you'll see lots and lots of joints you don't see those joints on the guarantee exterior because you see the ornament every surface of that building speaks to its function but also to the vitality of growth that you find in plant forms so that when you get to the corners at the corner those plant forms encroach upon and overlap and over grow the geometric 90 degree angle that the cornice projects from he was brilliant at what he did if louis sullivan had never designed another building his reputation as the father of the skyscraper and the prophet of modern architecture would have been secured in these two commissions alone for all one has to do is step a few blocks away from each of them and see the profile of countless tall buildings that would begin rising all over the world 60 years later ironically adler and sullivan built just two skyscrapers in chicago the schiller theater and the chicago stock exchange they were masterpieces of sullivan design inside and out neither of them survived the 20th century but before the stock exchange was torn down in 1972 its crown jewel the trading room was disassembled and recreated in the art institute of chicago its beauty was exceeded only by its hidden strength ten stories of offices rested on the steel beams that spanned this lofty room which was itself covered with wall and ceiling stencils some made up of more than 20 brilliant colors [Music] it was as if sullivan had created a garden that floated above the heads of shouting stockbrokers [Music] the building's arched entrance was also saved and stands outside the museum as a monument to a period when beauty extended even to the most cutthroat of professions the schiller theater and the stock exchange were emblematic of what was already being called the chicago school of architecture firms all over the city were observing and learning from each other using steel frame construction to reach ever greater heights while admitting more and more natural light one of these firms was led by two men who were between them as ambitious and creative as louis sullivan daniel burnham and john root theirs had been one of the more established and well-connected firms passed over to build the chicago auditorium so while adler and sullivan were making splashes with their monumental opera house and unique high-rises burnham and root were building their own landmarks in the same neighborhood [Music] in 1892 as the schiller theater neared completion less than a block away burnham and root were overseeing the construction of a building twice as high the masonic temple was a 22-story combination of stores and offices topped by a masonic lodge a year earlier sullivan himself had designed his own speculative office building for a fraternal order called the odd fellows temple to be built in chicago it was a visionary design foreseeing the setbacks employed by skyscrapers in the 1920s and rising to the dizzying height of 36 stories but it was never built the contrast between the realization of burnham root's masonic temple and sullivan's own abandoned design was an indication of things to come for in 1891 burnham and root were selected to lead a project that would make the auditorium pale in comparison and proved to be the deciding influence on american architecture that louis sullivan himself had hoped to exert [Music] chicago always had an image problem chicago was always trying to show the world that it had arrived as a city a city to respect a city of culture a city of achievement and the auditorium was an early manifestation of the people of chicago pulling together to show look we have arrived and the greatest opportunity was to host the world's colombian exposition of 1893 you see it was the great age affairs in the days before internet and television everything else it was a way to go see the new machinery all the cities competed wildly for it and you know chicago the windy city isn't from the wind it's the new york paper said all those windy people from chicago they kept talking and talking and chicago was ready to put money where its mouth was the way people get the olympics today but it wouldn't do to show the world america's progress in the four centuries since columbus's arrival in the crowded filthy and smoke-choked world of the real chicago civic leaders chose daniel burnham and john root to create an alternative universe on the far south side of town where there were no factories packing houses or angry workers just as the planning of this massive project was getting underway john root suddenly died of pneumonia having lost a brilliant creative force in his partner daniel burnham also lost the chief designer of the world's fair but burnham's particular genius was planning and he assembled a team of architects from across the country which included adler and sullivan to pull off another one of chicago's audacious exploits with so many independent talents working on a huge complex of exhibition halls and public spaces a consensus was reached that the fair's buildings would be in a style name for where many of the nation's top architects had studied the bozar the resulting spectacle would become known simply as the white city and its center surrounding a huge reflecting pool was called the court of honor in many cases people some would advocate that for chicago to show itself as a city that could stand up with the great cities and civilizations of the world that having buildings that looked of ancient greece and rome was a way of affirming this and since the buildings were built like giant stage sets it could be molded and shaped into anything you want many people thought this was an appropriate form to give them that is to many people accept louis sullivan he had nothing against the bozar movement except that it was completely wrong for american civilization to him it showed his colleagues inability to express the uniqueness of their society through architecture disturbed by such an extravagant duplication of values he saw as so alien to american democracy he defied the standards of the affairs organizers and designed something completely different for the transportation building a colonnade of arches bursting with color and exuberant ornamentation without a trace of classical design its gilded arched entrance quickly became known around the fair as the golden door for many of the people who came from europe to see the fair it wasn't the buildings that looked to europe and the classicism that actually got the most notice the things that got the most notice was this wonderful shimmering building of color and form and texture that adler and sullivan created for the transportation exhibits however impressed europeans were with sullivan's unique building there was something being expressed in the rest of the white city that struck a deep cord in the millions of americans who came to the fair from all over the country to a nation uncertain about the meaning of freedom and democracy to former slaves indians suspect immigrants and labor activists and with the civil war still very much alive in its memory these fantastic recreations of imperial rome implied stability order and authority and within five years of the fair victory in the spanish-american war brought the united states its first overseas possessions and the status of a world power in such an atmosphere the exuberant delicate and playful spontaneity of sullivan's transportation building may have charmed but it was out of step with the times the court of honor didn't only influence architects but influenced civic leaders speculators building speculators real estate speculators who wanted to bring order and harmony as well as the prestige of an advanced kind of cultural image to their cities or towns near the end of his life louis sullivan looked back on the fair with particular bitterness having seen his hope for a truly american architecture vanish in the public's ecstatic embrace of bozar design these crowds were astonished they went away returning to their homes each one carrying in the soul a shadow of the white cloud each one permeated with the most subtle and slow acting of poisons thus architecture died in the land of the free and the home of the brave in a land declaring its democracy its inventiveness its resourcefulness enterprise and progress thus did the virus of a culture snobbish and alien to the land perform its work of [Music] disintegration within a year of the fair is closing in 1893 most of the temporary buildings that made up the fantasy of the white city had burned to the ground but their brief and explosive appearance had sunk deep into the american consciousness just three years after the auditorium had captivated the public louis sullivan's aesthetic was suddenly out of fashion daniel burnham's triumph would mark the beginning of louis sullivan's professional demise and the world's fair was just the beginning of sullivan's troubles as the fair was winding down a bank panicked through the united states into another depression this one far worse than the one that greeted sullivan when he came to chicago as a teenager commercial construction in chicago fell by half from 1892 to 1893 and adler and sullivan suffered a precipitous drop in their commissions additionally sullivan lost his most valuable employee frank lloyd wright with a growing family to support frank lloyd wright had begun to supplement his income by designing homes in oak park on his own when sullivan found out about these bootlegged houses the story goes that he was furious and fired right on the spot it would be 14 years before wright and sullivan had anything to do with one another again i think the real story about the breakup could be compared to the dynamic of a parent and a child it just got to the point because of wright's own maturing confidence in himself and not being able to take sullivan's orders like the obedient young servant that the two of them just couldn't stand each other anymore two years after wright's departure from the firm sullivan was hit with a far more severe blow the end of adler and sullivan it was dagmar adler that decided to leave architecture and break up the firm adler was married had children and got a great job offer which was working for the crane elevator company at the extraordinary salary with 25 000 a year in 1890 this was in the depth of the depression and i think adler just felt he had to do this for the well-being of his family so ended the firm sullivan was hugely upset by this probably ended their relationship i think except for minor contacts later and was forced to go out on his own having to compete for commissions in a depression without his partner whose contacts in the business community brought in much of the firm's work the deck became increasingly stacked against sullivan unlike daniel burnham who approached architecture from a businessman's perspective louis sullivan's insistence on artistic purity put him at odds with financiers who looked at commercial buildings as primarily ways to make money now it's all right when there's a boom going on people are willing to risk things like the auditorium building but when there's hard times it's um it's another thing entirely if you really look at the story of adler and sullivan they always were somewhat the outsiders and their jobs came from very specific sources the old schiller building later the garrick came because of dank mar adler and theater design chicago stock exchange came because it was the same client from the auditorium building so it was a return customer but they still were somewhat the outsiders they weren't the first choice of the big money lasalle street people who were investing in real estate in a fraction of the time it had taken for sullivan to build his career since 1880 it was quickly falling apart in 1900 he was 44 and abruptly married for the first time a woman half his age margaret hadibaugh this hasty marriage was doomed to end in divorce nine years later the couple never had children and there are no surviving photographs of the two together no letters between them or personal diaries to shed any light on their relationship [Music] despite the collapse of his firm louis sullivan would not compromise his commitment to authentic american architecture as an artist he continued to thrive pouring all his creative energy into the few commissions that remained for him he openly scorned the profession's embrace of the bozar when he spoke to a group of young architects in 1900 we live under a form of government called democracy and we the people of the united states of america constitute the most colossal instance known in history of a people seeking to verify the fundamental truth that self-government is nature's law for man and so comes about the incongruous spectacle of the infant democracy taking its mental nourishment at the withered breast of despotism he wouldn't do something popular to make money he had to do what he had to do that is very rare in architecture [Music] you have a set of beliefs and opinions having to do with your work your own work which you understand to be not just about architecture but about society and you stick to those opinions come hell or high water 99 out of 100 architects would shift into something that they could sell sullivan wouldn't do it maybe common sense would tell you that he should have done it but he didn't and i have to respect him for that what sullivan lacked in paying clients he made up for in professional stature among his colleagues other architects knew what he was trying to do and the compromises they were making to keep their firms in business despite sullivan's attack on their work they did not hesitate to praise him in the professional press in 1901 the architectural record wrote that sullivan was the only american architect who by precept and example stands for originality not eccentricity but invention wedded to reason a profit not without honor save in his own country the little work he did have became even more energetic unrestrained and experimental during what would prove to be the most difficult period in his life in 1904 sullivan completed his last major commission in chicago the schlesinger and mayor department store on one of the finest corner locations of state street sullivan created what many historians and critics recognize as an early predictor of 20th century modernism two blocks north on state street daniel burnham was designing a new store for marshall fields with its neoclassical design it could have passed for an office building bank or government center there was no mistaking sullivan's design for the schlesinger mayor's store as anything but a place celebrating bounty display and consumption [Music] it was meant to be an open invitation to the thousands of people who walked by every day especially to a new type of shopper the unescorted woman with money in her purse sullivan designed a circular entrance opening on to one of the busiest intersections in the city visible and accessible from multiple vantage points the first two floors were one giant display case of plate glass framed by cast iron ornamentation that seemed to be growing out of control like eager vines in a garden they were appealing primarily although not exclusively to women shoppers and therefore there were annual cycles of fashion which corresponded to the seasons and therefore the ornament sullivan style had a strong botanical naturalistic association this theme was repeated throughout the building as it had in all of sullivan's work for 20 years perhaps most middle-class victorian shoppers saw these stunning displays of craftsmanship as merely indicators of luxury but as industry and technology drew more and more people away from the countryside into cities sullivan had made a profound statement this artificial cycle of consumption that retailers used to draw customers back to their stores throughout the year was made possible by the greater untameable force of nature the upper floors clad with pale terracotta had a simple repetitive window pattern that gave the store in places the look of a building 20 years ahead of its time in this building later known as the carson perry scott store sullivan had literally built a bridge between two centuries he had visualized the future of urban design in the 20th century but remained in tune with the romantic sensibilities of city dwellers who had come of age in the 19th but this visionary department store did nothing to revive sullivan's career in chicago its lavish design may have contributed to his client's unsustainable debt and schlesinger and mayor had to sell their interest in the store even before the last bit of ornament went up on state street sullivan's own debts were piling up and he was finding it impossible to get work he lost his beloved seaside retreat in ocean springs mississippi which he had bought just after the completion of the auditorium then already living with his wife in a series of hotels he was forced to sell all his personal possessions in a public auction the auction itself according to sullivan's own words was a slaughter and didn't realize the money that he actually wanted to so he not only lost all the beautiful artworks and the library which he treasured so much but even kind of the financial benefit he had hoped to gain didn't even happen so it must have been just absolutely devastating it's just like things were slipping away from him after the auction his wife margaret divorced him and sullivan became thoroughly isolated struggling to support himself he had to watch while all around him his colleagues fed the public's infatuation with classicism and other historically based design daniel burnham having created landmarks in downtown areas across the country had moved beyond individual buildings to designing entire cities sullivan unable to advance his ideas through building turned to writing more letters and essays in which he attacked his colleagues and their clients with greater vehemence [Music] [Applause] as a people thinks concerning architecture so it thinks concerning everything else this architecture shows oh so plainly the decline of democracy and a rank new growth of feudalism sure sign of a people in peril this architecture has no serenity sure sign of a people out of balance this architecture shows no love of nature you despise nature in it is no joy of living you know not what the fullness of life signifies you are unhappy fevered and perturbed in these buildings the dollars vulgarly exalted and the dollar you place above man and yet it was a group of bankers who gave sullivan a chance to work again in 1906 sullivan received an inquiry from an owner of a small town bank in owatonna minnesota carl bennett was a progressive attracted to sullivan's ideas about architecture and democracy he was also interested in having a competitive edge over other banks in his community sullivan desperate for work and income came down from his tower and took the train to minnesota sullivan was a rather pathetic figure by then he was tamed here was a small town banker really employing a man who wouldn't have looked at them twice before the ordinary way of building a bank at that time was to do it in neo-greek neo-roman form so the citadel not surprisingly what emerged from bennett's commission to sullivan was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before in a bank [Music] very soon bankers in the hinterlands of wisconsin iowa indiana and ohio wanted the same [Music] thing [Music] the average working person was being welcomed in banks which were not intended to overpower you or make you look small or insignificant but rather to suggest to you that this is your bank your neighborhood your town you're welcome here these towns were places that depended on the agricultural community and they wanted to present themselves as part of this popular every man kind of society you know every man is equal democracy and symbolically this was important to give them a place that resembled the everyday environment and glorified it and idealized nature and when these buildings were completed the people of the towns called them the jewel boxes because they really even today stand out among all the other commercial and even civic buildings that surround them if you look at the getty tomb and then just blow it up you have the bags all of the bags those are the faberge eggs of american art when he was working on a second bank he said i'll never do another bank building again i think he said that because he wasn't getting the big commissions anymore and there was a lot of work involved and his fees were small [Music] i think he really got to love doing the banks he probably felt that he could indicate that the pulse of democracy was still alive and well sullivan also took the liberty of attaching his name to his later banks as if he was signing a painting or a piece of sculpture [Music] after more than 20 years of trying to implant a meaningful distinctive american architecture in the industrial city louis sullivan ended up creating its fullest expression in the countryside among people whose lives were tied to nature [Music] between 1906 and 1920 sullivan averaged one building project a year the vast majority of them being these small town banks it was not nearly enough to live on he was reduced to living in a series of cheap hotels and asking friends and old colleagues for money among them his former draftsman frank lloyd wright sullivan's last building commission in 1922 was just a facade for a humble two-story music store residence on chicago's north side despite the tiny scale he created a work of stunning beauty in glazed terracotta [Music] however obscure and undesirable sullivan had become to those awarding commissions his colleagues still admired and respected him even after bearing the brunt of his blistering criticism he had a number of supporters toward the end of his life i think that they probably didn't quite know what to do for him beyond basic charitable help they couldn't easily reintroduce them to clients or to a high volume of professional activity and they probably thought he was a little weird and eccentric because he was but he accomplished something that none of the others had and i think they also respected him for trying throughout his career to create an american style of architecture despite all odds [Music] in 1922 the artist who had proudly sat for handsome portraits throughout his life was now an old man beset with heart and kidney problems knowing this the american institute of architects paid him a small stipend to set down for posterity his philosophy in two published forms a memoir and a visual treatise on ornamentation [Music] at 66 still mentally as vigorous as ever he set about writing his memoirs in the rooms of the cliff dwellers a writers and artists club housed on the top floor of daniel burnham's orchestra hall on michigan avenue typically this autobiography was no conventional life story he wrote about himself in the third person and called it an autobiography of an idea it's not about him as an architect it's about his maturing as a human being self-awareness learning what kind of mind he had [Music] on page after page he went into the greatest detail on how his boyhood bond with nature became the foundation of his artistic life his arrival in chicago his education in paris [Music] and the moment of his ecstatic inspiration in the sistine chapel the book ends in 1893. in it there is no mention of frank lloyd wright or his wife margaret sullivan then finally put out on paper the process by which over 40 years his incomparable ornamentation had been created it was a series of 20 meticulously hand-drawn studies called a system of architectural ornament at the very end i mean he would show up to his office dressed in his suit had people who worked and watched him work on the system of ornament so that he looked just like he did in the painting that was done by werner where he would dress and you'd never see him at the drafting table without his coat and tie [Music] it begins by demonstrating through a series of steps how a square develops into a complex series of interlaced elements that grow out of each other but what may appear to be decorative instruction is in fact something else it wasn't about here is how you do ornament it is this is how you think this is how you create this is an inspiration for you to bring something out of you [Music] it wasn't about architecture anymore but the nature of creativity itself [Music] in a borrowed office sullivan would work for months on a single drawing decades of frustration isolation and hardship had done nothing to diminish his delight in expressing his extraordinary combination of discipline skill and a joyful stream of consciousness almost buried in the tretus is a visual footnote that is the essence of sullivan's philosophy i think what this is about is that just as nature represented by the seed has within itself the possibility to develop infinite numbers of forms so too do human beings create ideas and other things that they didn't know they could do but the potential is there to do it once you kind of unlock that sea germ [Music] [Applause] [Music] the system of architectural ornament is really a metaphor for human possibility that everybody has the potential to be a creative person to be something more than they are we all have that i think sullivan is saying we don't necessarily know it but i'm showing to you that you have it and then the sky's the limit and that to him is what democracy is it may be naive it doesn't take into account economic limitations and other kinds of situations in which people may not be able to get out of but in principle it's a wonderful it's true [Music] these drawings represent the end of an era when beauty was applied to everyday life not simply to please the senses but nourish the soul [Music] in 1924 louis sullivan's body gave in to his numerous ailments and he died at the age of 68. his few friends had barely enough money to cover his funeral expenses he was buried with little ceremony in chicago's graceland cemetery within sight of the majestic tombs he had created as a young man in the architectural record frank lloyd wright eulogized his former employer and among his many praises described louis sullivan as someone who could draw as beautifully as he could think his ornament represented not only nature but music you will see that there is this organic form but it's a form which has no beginning and no end his ornament just seems to twist and swirl and twirl and divide and multiply you never know where it begins you never know where it ends it has that infinite quality and i think it goes back to his feeling that everything begins with a seed the seed begins to grow it matures it flowers it declines it dies and then it furnishes the earth again to begin the cycle all over [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey [Music] [Music] you