1856 – 1924 · architecture, terra cotta and iron ornament
Louis Sullivan
Vertical pier grids sheathed in self-coloured material erupting into cast-iron and terra cotta vegetal ornament at crown and base.
The record
Louis Henri Sullivan, born in Boston on 3 September 1856, joined Dankmar Adler in Chicago in 1879 and with him perfected the steel-framed skyscraper — Wainwright, Guaranty, Schlesinger & Mayer — expressing the tall office block in vertically unified piers.
His essays coined 'form ever follows function', and his office mentored Frank Lloyd Wright, who called him lieber Meister.
After the partnership dissolved in 1895 his practice declined into small banks and stores, their ornament still exuberant; he died in Chicago on 14 April 1924.
Vertical pier grids sheathed in self-coloured material erupting into cast-iron and terra cotta vegetal ornament at crown and base.