LOUIS SULLIVAN & THE WAINWRIGHT BUILDING

LOUIS SULLIVAN & THE WAINWRIGHT BUILDING

Louis Sullivan is considered one of the greatest architects of the 20th century because of his impact on American architecture.  Sullivan, along with other architects from the Chicago School, rewrote the guidelines of metropolitan architecture in the United States. This new architecture suggested the use of existing architectural traditions but promoted them in a vague, pliable, and adaptable way in order to apply them to modern conditions (Colquhoun, 37). Other architects during Sullivan’s time worked to develop this new style but none were as effective as Sullivan.

Sullivan’s goal was to perfect this new style of architecture paying special attention to the shortcomings found in the designs of his peers. In Sullivan’s Wainwright Building, he went against rational thinking by ignoring the spacing of the structural columns. He then reduced this spacing to the width of a single window to emphasize the verticality of the window units; by doing so, the windows read as a vertical unit, rather than a horizontal unit which gave away the information of the floors behind the structure. Furthermore, this design allowed the vertical units to function as traditional columns, window mullions, and exposed structure. 

Spandrel Panel Detail

Sullivan also carried on the previous tradition of ornamentation through his design. The piers, friezes, spandrels, and cornices are all articulately designed using terra cotta, a building material which was growing in popularity at the time. 

Despite the buildings success, there was one thing that caught me as slightly odd. At the time of its design there was a push to give buildings a lighter appearance. “Ever since the mid-eighteenth century, French rationalists such as the Jesuit monk and theoretician Abbe Marc-Antoine Laugier had argued for the reduction of mass in buildings and for the expression of a skeleton structure. Armed with this theory, which they had absorbed from the writings of Viollet-le-Duc, the Chicago architects started from the assumption that window openings should be increased so that they spanned from column to column and provided maximum daylight.” (Colquhoun, 37-38)

The Reliance Building in Chicago (seen at the bottom left), designed by Charles Atwood, did not strive for monumentality, but rather aimed to achieve this perception of lightness. While some may argue that the Wainwright Building achieves this lightness by visually directing its mass vertically, I argue that Sullivan’s use of materials gives the building a massive, monumental appearance. Red brick as well as dark colored terra cotta read as very heavy materials so if the building was intended to achieve this perception, it seems to have failed. 

Despite this potential argument, the Wainwright Building met (or exceeded) any other expectations people of the late 1800’s/early 1900’s might have had for it. Through its new vertical expression and its articulate ornamentation, reminiscent of previous styles, the Wainwright Building has found its place into the architectural history books of the 21st century.