Sullivanesque: Urban Architecture and Ornamentation/The Chicago Auditorium Building: Adler and Sullivan's Architecture and the City

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, Winter 2003/2004 by Gorman, Carma R

Sullivanesque: Urban Architecture and Ornamentation. By Ronald E. Schmitt (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2002. Pp. x, 350. 156 photographs (some in color), 16 line drawings, appendix, index. Cloth, $60.00).

The Chicago Auditorium Building: Adler and Sullivan's Architecture and the City. By Joseph M. Siry (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002. Pp. xviii, 550. 200 halftones, 16 color plates, appendix, bibliography, index. Cloth, $55.00).

On the surface, these two impressive works of architectural history have a great deal in common. Both were published in 2002 by university presses in Illinois; both are attractive, oversize, copiously illustrated books that would look nice on a coffee table; and both address (among other things) the work of the famed Chicago architect Louis H. Sullivan (1856-1924). Given these books' significant similarities, it comes as something of a jolt to discover how very different from one another they really are. In scope and approach, these books are diametric opposites-so much so that it is a wonder that they can both be as useful and enjoyable as they are.

Ronald E. Schmitt's object of study in Sullivanesque is not buildings pur se, but rather an early twentieth-century architectural style that he defines as being "based on an aesthetic derived from the designs of Louis H. Sullivan (1856-1924) and adapted to mass production." (1) The overarching argument of the book is more accurately an aesthetic judgment than a historical assessment. Schmitt's primary contention is that the architects and builders of Sullivanesque "decorated sheds," by "successfully integrat[ing] 'high art' with functional construction," and ultimately gave "focus and distinction to inexpensive, utilitarian buildings in Chicago's commercial strips and throughout the Midwest." (1, 260). A secondary claim, which Schmitt suggests in the fairly standard introductory chapters on Sullivan's life and works and summarizes at the end of the book, is that "the Sullivanesque paralleled the fortunes of Louis Sullivan," in that it shifted from an initial, "optimistic" phase to a phase of "decline" and eventual obscurity. (260)

Given the "vernacular" nature of Schmitt's objects of inquiry (most of the Sullivanesque buildings Schmitt illustrates are modest commercial buildings from the upper Midwest), his traditional "Great Architecture" approach to his subject-that is, his emphasis on biography and stylistic development-comes as something of a surprise. As opposed to most other typological studies of large numbers of vernacular buildings-for example, Henry Glassie's classic Folk Housing in Middle Virginia and others of its kind-Schmitt does not deal with floor plans (he illustrates not a one) nor with patrons/users (other than in the most cursory fashion). Schmitt's selective approach to the material is certainly understandable, given the prodigious number of buildings he discusses. But there is much more that could be said about these buildings and about the Sullivanesque style. Though Schmitt has laid an admirable foundation for further study by both cataloguing the buildings that are instances of this style and by providing information about the designers and terra cotta suppliers who were crucial to its development and popularity, supplementing his style-and-architect-centered approach with a more plan-and-program-centered, social-and cultural-historical "vernacular architecture" approach would be one way of making this already-interesting work even more useful to scholars of other forms of early twentieth-century architecture.

Whereas Schmitt's book defines, catalogues, and "defends" an oft-overlooked vernacular style, Siry's book, in contrast, dramatically repositions a single well-known monument of "Great Architecture"-usually discussed in terms of its ornamental style and precursordom to modernism-by implicating it instead in discourses about class, ethnicity, civic identity, power, labor conflict, Italian and German operatic culture, and European and American theater, music hall, and luxury hotel architecture. From Siry's initial deployment of the fighting word "capitalist" in the first paragraph of the introduction, it is clear that this is primarily a work about social and political conflict rather than architectural style and influence. Siry ultimately sees the Auditorium Building as a symbol of the triumph of capital over labor, arguing that it is the fruit of a deliberate ploy by elite patron Ferdinand Peck (1848-1924) to create a civic institution that would both placate and reeducate Chicago's working classes into greater docility. in rousing Marxist rhetoric, Siry concludes that "The building fit ideologically within an urban environment ordered by capital; its cultural functions were inextricable from the local economic order." (323)

In opposition to Schmitt, who implies that Sullivan's genius or "influence" is the reason that the Sullivanesque style is of interest, Siry claims that "It was the impulse and support of clients like Ferdinand Peck that provided the situational framework within which Adler and Sullivan could excel." (387) Siry not only credits patrons with more importance than Schmitt does, but also seems very deliberately to decline to discuss the lives of the architects of the Auditorium Building. No doubt this is a reaction to the plethora of biographical narratives already available on Adler and Sullivan, but it is nonetheless a puzzling absence in a book that otherwise so exhaustively addresses so many aspects of the building's sociopolitical and architectural contexts.