Poet of the Tall Building
He gave the new skyscraper a clear vertical order, then covered its threshold with ornament alive with growth.
Architect & Writer
Sullivan’s famous claim that form follows function is often reduced to a command for bare walls. His own buildings argue otherwise. The structure of a tall office block becomes legible from the street, while ironwork and terracotta pulse with leaves, seeds and spirals.
Born in Boston, Sullivan studied briefly at MIT and worked in Philadelphia before traveling to Paris. He settled in a Chicago remaking itself after the 1871 fire, where new steel and elevator technology made height a practical commercial question. His Beaux-Arts exposure gave him a vocabulary to resist as much as to use.
He joined Dankmar Adler’s office and became his partner in 1883. Adler brought engineering, acoustics and business skill; Sullivan led much of the expressive design. Their partnership, and the draftspeople around them, is the proper unit for understanding the early buildings.
The Auditorium Building joined a theater, hotel and offices under one roof. Adler’s acoustic expertise gave the performance space its reach; Sullivan worked through the massing and ornament of a vast, mixed-use project. Its exterior is weighty, while the auditorium’s interior organizes sight, sound and movement for a public audience.
At the Wainwright Building in St. Louis, the partners faced the new office tower. Sullivan gave the repeated office floors strong vertical piers between a distinct base and cap. The result does more than announce height: it lets a passerby see how a commercial building is occupied, floor after floor.
Wainwright BuildingRead the base, repeated office floors and crowning cornice as a way to give a tall commercial building a coherent face.Explore the buildingThe economic crash of 1893 reduced commissions and Adler and Sullivan separated in 1895. Sullivan continued to design, often without the large civic projects that had sustained the partnership. The Schlesinger & Mayer department store, later Carson Pirie Scott, is a concentrated answer to the commercial street.
Broad lower windows displayed goods and admitted light. At the corner entrance, dense cast-iron vines turn the pedestrian’s pause into an event; the upper floors repeat a disciplined grid. George Grant Elmslie, a gifted draftsman in Sullivan’s office, contributed to the ornamental work. “Form follows function,” in this building, includes attracting shoppers and giving the corner civic presence.
Schlesinger & Mayer / Carson Pirie Scott storeBroad display windows meet dense cast-iron ornament at the street: Sullivan designed for the act of shopping.Explore the buildingLarge Chicago commissions became scarce. Sullivan designed a series of small Midwestern banks, each fitted to its town and site rather than stamped from a universal plan. Their brick masses and striking entrances hold the same conviction that ordinary civic and commercial life deserves careful design.
His 1896 essay on the tall office building remains a useful companion to the work, but the phrase drawn from it can mislead. Sullivan did not discard ornament; he sought forms and patterns that grew from a building’s purpose and structure. Looking at a bank doorway or the Carson store tests the slogan against what he actually built.
The Tall Office Building Artistically ConsideredRead Sullivan’s own account of base, repeated office floors and attic before returning to the Wainwright Building.Read the essaySullivan’s last years included financial difficulty and a narrowing practice. His Autobiography of an Idea, published in 1924, cast his career as an intellectual struggle; it is valuable as a self-portrait but should be read beside the record of Adler’s partnership and office labor.
A System of Architectural Ornament, also published in 1924, shows him building vegetal forms from geometric schemes across successive plates. The work is a direct rebuttal to the later caricature of Sullivan as an enemy of decoration. His pupil Frank Lloyd Wright carried some lessons forward, though Wright’s later fame also obscured the distinctive terms of Sullivan’s own achievement.
A System of Architectural OrnamentTrace how a geometric scaffold grows into vegetal ornament rather than reading “form follows function” as a ban on decoration.Study the platesChicago · 1886–89 · Chicago Architecture Center
Adler and Sullivan fitted a theater, hotel and offices into one urban block; the acoustics were as deliberate as the exterior.Explore the buildingSt. Louis · 1890–91 · City of St. Louis
Read the base, repeated office floors and crowning cornice as a way to give a tall commercial building a coherent face.Explore the buildingChicago · 1899–1904 · Chicago Architecture Center
Broad display windows meet dense cast-iron ornament at the street: Sullivan designed for the act of shopping.Explore the building1896 · original essay · MIT OpenCourseWare
Read Sullivan’s own account of base, repeated office floors and attic before returning to the Wainwright Building.Read the essay1924 · Sullivan’s late plates · Art Institute of Chicago
Trace how a geometric scaffold grows into vegetal ornament rather than reading “form follows function” as a ban on decoration.Study the plates
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