Louis Sullivan and George Grant Elmslie,
Elevator medallion from the Schlesinger and Mayer Store, Chicago, 1898-1899
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The Schlesinger and Mayer department store (today called Carson, Pirie, Scott & Co.) was the last of nine Chicago skyscrapers Sullivan built with his partner, the engineer Dankmar Adler. A wave of building followed in the decades after the great Chicago fire of 1871, and many of the new structures were skyscrapers, in their engineering if not in their height. Most were ten to fifteen storys. The innovation of an internal steel structure supporting the exterior shell is what made skyscrapers possible; the invention of the elevator made them feasible.
In 1904 a reviewer for the Architectural Record wrote about Sullivan's design for the Schlesinger and Mayer store: "Here is L'Art Nouveau indigenous to the United States, nurtured upon American problems." The exterior is divided into two distinct levels. The upper floors are tiled and relatively plain. Below, a two-story jewel box of ornamental metal, similar to the intricate interlace seen in the slide, frames the entrances and display windows. While the upper levels were utilitarian spaces, the lower level was meant to entice shoppers.
Sullivan's attention to differing functions (and some remarks about ornamentation taken out of context) are sometimes -- and mistakenly -- used to paint the architect as protomodernist. But his quest was not to eliminate ornament. Rather he sought to find ornamentation suitable for a modern world and for this new type of building. In step with other art nouveau designers, he turned to nature and science with a tinge of mysticism. Like Viollet- le-Duc, Sullivan believed that each natural function expresses its necessary form and that these should be visible. Decoration should not mask but amplify. In an essay entitled "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered," Sullivan wrote, "It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things superhuman, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law."
Learning Activities
Art
• Look at the ornament of skyscrapers in your town. Are the interior and exterior related? What are some of the sources of the ornamentation?
• Identify structures in your town whose functions are clear from they way they look. And some whose functions are not obvious.
• Read and discuss essays written by Sullivan.
Science/Art
• Research the materials used in skyscrapers today.
• Compare the materials used in the construction of two recent buildings of different style. Did the materials used affect the overall appearance? If so, how?
Social Science
• Research the impact of various inventions (e.g., elevator, car, airplane) on architecture and/or urban planning.
| The Department Store Le Bon Marché, which opened in Paris in 1869, is usually cited as the first department store. The importance of these new institutions should not be overlooked. For one thing, they offered women a new public space. They employed lower-class women in respectable work and gave middle-class women a socially acceptable destination outside the home. They also presented the perfect venue for modern design, created to sell modern products to modern consumers. Moreover, modern materials like metal and glass lent themselves perfectly to their large, bright displays. Several art nouveau artists designed department store buildings or interiors: Louis Majorelle was commissioned by the Galleries Lafayette in Paris to design its grand center stair; in Brussels Victor Horta built one of the city's largest stores, appropriately named "Innovation." |
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