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The Chicago school is famous throughout the

world and one style is referred to as the Chicago School. The style is also known as Commercial style.[1] In the history of architecture, the Chicago School was a school of architects active in Chicago at the turn of the 20th century. They were among the first to promote the new technologies of steel-frame construction in commercial buildings, and developed a spatial aesthetic which co-evolved with, and then came to influence, parallel developments in European Modernism. A "Second Chicago School" later emerged in the 1960s and 1970s which pioneered new structural systems such as the tube-frame structure[.

Chicago. Contemporary publications used the phrase "Commercial Style" to describe the innovative tall buildings of the era rather than proposing any sort of unified "school".

Chicago School window grid Some of the distinguishing features of the Chicago School are the use of steel-frame buildings with masonry cladding (usually terra cotta), allowing large plate-glass window areas and the use of limited amounts of exterior ornament. Sometimes elements of neoclassical architecture are used in Chicago School skyscrapers. Many Chicago School skyscrapers contain the three parts of a classical column. The first floor functions as the base, the middle stories, usually with little ornamental detail, act as the shaft of the column, and the last floor or so represent the capital, with more ornamental detail and capped with a cornice. The "Chicago window" originated in this school. It is a threepart window consisting of a large fixed center panel flanked by two smaller double-hung sash windows. The arrangement of
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First Chicago School

While the term "Chicago School" is widely used to describe buildings in the city during the 1880s and 1890s, this term has been disputed by scholars, in particular in reaction to Carl Condit's 1952 book The Chicago School of Architecture. Historians such as H. Allen Brooks, Winston Weisman and Daniel Bluestone have pointed out that the phrase suggests a unified set of aesthetic or conceptual precepts, when, in fact, Chicago buildings of the era displayed a wide variety of styles and techniques. Other scholars have noted that the phrase implies that Chicago was the only locus of technical or aesthetic innovation in skyscraper design, when in fact developments in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Cincinnati often paralleled or preceded similar work in

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windows on the facade typically creates a grid pattern, with some projecting out from the facade forming bay windows. The Chicago window combined the functions of lightgathering and natural ventilation; a single central pane was usually fixed, while the two surrounding panes were operable. These windows were often deployed in bays, known as oriel windows, that projected out over the street. Architects whose names are associated with the Chicago School include Henry Hobson Richardson, Dankmar Adler, Daniel Burnham, William Holabird, William LeBaron Jenney, Martin Roche, John Root, Solon S. Beman, and Louis Sullivan. Frank Lloyd Wright started in the firm of Adler and Sullivan but created his own Prairie Style of architecture. Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who had run the Bauhaus in Germany before coming to Chicago, is sometimes credited with the rise of a second "Chicago school" between 1939 and 1975.

The building is remarkable for its steel structure, which allowed a dramatic increase in window area, which in turn allowed more daylight into the building interiors, and provided larger displays of merchandise to outside pedestrian traffic. The lavish cast-iron ornamental work above the rounded tower was also meant to be functional. Sullivan designed the corner entry to be seen from both State and Madison, and that the ornamentation, situated above the entrance, would be literally attractive. The building is one of the classic structures of the Chicago school. The ornate decorative panels on the lowest stories of the building are now generally credited to George Grant Elmslie who was Sullivan's chief draftsman after Frank Lloyd Wright left the firm. When Elmslie left the firm himself the same distinct intricate scrollwork panels left with him and appear in his own designs; and Sullivan's style proceeds elsewhere.

THE CHICAGO SCHOOL

L.H. Sullivan : Carson Pirie Scott, Chicago 1899-1906

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Biography

first two years at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology by passing a series of examinations, Sullivan entered MIT at the age of sixteen. After one year of study, he moved to Philadelphia and talked himself into a job with architect Frank Furness. The Depression of 1873 dried up much of Furnesss work, and he was forced to let Sullivan go. At that point Sullivan moved on to Chicago in 1873 to take part in the building boom following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. He worked for William LeBaron Jenney, the architect often credited with erecting the first steel-frame building. After less than a year with Jenney, Sullivan moved to Paris and studied at the cole des Beaux-Arts for a year. Renaissance art inspired Sullivans mind, and he was influenced to direct his architecture to emulating Michelangelo's spirit of creation rather than replicating the styles of earlier periods. He returned to Chicago and began work for the firm of Joseph S. Johnston & John Edelman as a draftsman. Johnston & Edleman were commissioned for interior design of the Moody Tabernacle, which was completed by Sullivan.[2] In 1879 Dankmar Adler hired Sullivan; a year later, he became a partner in the firm. This marked the beginning of Sullivan's most productive years. And it was at this firm that Sullivan would deeply influence a young designer named Frank Lloyd Wright, who came to embrace Sullivan's designs and principles as the inspiration for his own work.

Louis Sullivan
was born to an Irish-born father and a Swiss-born mother, both of whom had emigrated to the United States in the late 1840s. He grew up living with his grandmother in South Reading (now Wakefield), Massachusetts. Louis spent most of his childhood learning about nature while on his grandparents farm. In the later years of his primary education, his experiences varied quite a bit. He would spend a lot of time by himself wandering around Boston. He explored every street looking at the surrounding buildings. This was around the time when he developed his fascination with buildings and he decided he would one day become a structural engineer/architect. While attending high school Sullivan met Moses Woolson, whose teachings made a lasting impression on him, and nurtured him until his death. After graduating from high school, Sullivan studied architecture briefly at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Learning that he could both graduate from high school a year early and pass up the
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Adler and Sullivan initially achieved fame as theater architects. While most of their theaters were in Chicago, their fame won commissions as far west as Pueblo, Colorado, and Seattle, Washington (unbuilt). The culminating project of this phase of the firm's history was the 1889 Auditorium Building in Chicago, an extraordinary mixed-use building which included not only a 3000-seat theater, but also a hotel and office building. Adler and Sullivan reserved the top floor of the tower for their own office. After 1889 the firm became known for their office buildings, particularly the 1891 Wainwright Building in St. Louis and the 1899 Carson Pirie Scott Department Store on State Street in Chicago, Louis Sullivan is considered by many to be the first architect to fully imagine and realize a rich architectural vocabulary for a revolutionary new kind of building: the steel high-rise.

The development of cheap, versatile steel in the second half of the 19th century changed those rules. America was in the midst of rapid social and economic growth that made for great opportunities in architectural design. A much more urbanized society was forming and the society called out for new, larger buildings. The mass production of steel was the main driving force behind the ability to build skyscrapers during the mid 1880s. As seen with the data below the prices dropped significantly during this period. Louis Sullivan coined the phrase "form ever follows function," which, shortened to "form follows function," would become the great battle-cry of modernist architects. This credo, which placed the demands of practical use above aesthetics, would later be taken by influential designers to imply that decorative elements, which architects call "ornament," were superfluous in modern buildings. But Sullivan himself neither thought nor designed along such dogmatic lines during the peak of his career. Indeed, while his buildings could be spare and crisp in their principal masses, he often punctuated their plain surfaces with eruptions of lush Art Nouveau and something like Celtic Revival decorations, usually cast in iron or terra cotta, and ranging from organic forms like vines and ivy, to more geometric designs, and interlace, inspired by his Irish design heritage. Terra cotta is lighter and easier to work with than stone masonry. Sullivan used it in his architecture because it had a malleability that was appropriate for his ornament. Probably the most famous example is the writhing green ironwork that covers the entrance canopies of the Carson Pirie
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Sullivan and the steel highrise

Prior to the late 19th century, the weight of a multistory building had to be supported principally by the strength of its walls. The taller the building, the more strain this placed on the lower sections of the building; since there were clear engineering limits to the weight such "load-bearing" walls could sustain, large designs meant massively thick walls on the ground floors, and definite limits on the building's height.

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Scott store on South State Street. These ornaments, often executed by the talented younger draftsman in Sullivan's employ, would eventually become Sullivan's trademark; to students of architecture, they are his instantly-recognizable signature. Another signature element of Sullivan's work is the massive, semi-circular arch. Sullivan employed such arches throughout his career - in shaping entrances, in framing windows, or as interior design. All of these elements can be found in Sullivan's widelyadmired Guaranty

Building, which he designed while

partnered with Adler. Completed in 1895, this office building in Buffalo, New York was visibly divided into three "zones" of design: a plain, wide-windowed base for the ground-level shops; the main office block, with vertical ribbons of masonry rising unimpeded across nine upper floors to emphasize the building's height; and an ornamented cornice perforated by round windows at the roof level, where the building's mechanical units (like the elevator motors) were housed. The cornice crawls with Sullivan's trademark Art Nouveau vines; each ground-floor entrance is topped by a semi-circular arch.

Prudential Building
28 Church Street Buffalo, New York (888) 228-3369

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the historic Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building designed by Louis Sullivan, built in 1899 for the retail firm Schlesinger & Meyer, and expanded and sold to Carson Pirie Scott in 1904. (U.S. National Historic Landmark) The building is remarkable for its steel structure, which allowed a dramatic increase in window area, which in turn allowed more daylight into the building interiors, and provided larger displays of merchandise to outside pedestrian traffic. The lavish cast-iron ornamental work above the rounded tower was also meant to be functional. Sullivan designed the corner entry to be seen from both State and Madison, and that the ornamentation, situated above the main entrance, would be literally attractive. The building is one of the classic structures of the Chicago school. The ornate decorative panels on the lowest stories of the building are now generally credited to George Grant Elmslie who was Sullivan's chief draftsman after Frank Lloyd Wright left the firm. When Elmslie left the firm himself the same distinct intricate scrollwork panels left with him and appear in his own designs; and Sullivan's style proceeds elsewhere.

Guaranty Building

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