LOUIS HENRY SULLIVAN

his BIOGRAPHY

Louis Henry Sullivan was born in Boston, Massachusetts to immigrant parents on September 3, 1856. His father, Patrick a dancing master, had migrated to the city alone from his native Ireland in 1847, three years before Louis's mother, Andrienne List, arrived with her family from Switzerland.

The second of their two sons, Louis lived with his grandparents and aunt and uncle, as well as with his mother and father until the age of five in a culturally and intellectually rich home environment. Members of household spoke Gaelic, French, and German; were proficient at dance, drawing, and playing musical instruments; and held religious attitudes ranging from atheism and agnosticism to Baptism and Menonism. In 1862, his gandparents bought a farm in South Reading (now Wakefield), Massachusetts, enabling Louis to spend summers and occasionally entire school years in the country, from which Louis Sullivan developed a lifelong love of nature. At the same time, as Louis Sullivan and his father regularly explored Boston on foot, Louis Henry Sullivan learned to appreciate urban life and architecture.

Louis accompanied his parents when they established short-lived dancing academies in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Newburyport and Gloucester, Massachusetts, hat by the time Louis Henry Sullivan was 12 he had lived in a range of physical settings. This array of experiences and exposures made him an exceptionally independent boy. Having decided around age 11 to become an architect, Louis Henry Sullivan was willing to stay behind with his grandparents to study in Boston when his family moved to Chicago in 1868.

Commuting 20 mi round trip each day from Wakefield, young Louis Henry Sullivan graduated from the Rice Grammar School 1870. In his sophomore year at English High Louis Henry Sullivan came under the influence of Moses Woolson, a gifted and imaginative teacher, who reinforced and stimulated Louis's intelectual inclinations. Eager to begin his life's work and bored as a junior, Louis Henry Sullivan applied in 1872 for early admisssion to the Building and Architecture program at the Masachusetts Institute of Technology, the only architecture school in the country at the time. Louis Henry Sullivan was accepted as 5-year-old special student without a high school diploma after passing a rigorous battery of tests. But Louis Henry Sullivan found the MIT program, which was modeled on that of the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, to be too traditional and too lttle concerned with social and architectural theory. So Louis Henry Sullivan left college in June 1873 after his first year to take a job white Frank Furness, a boisterous, innovative Philadelphia architect responsible for several major buildings in a i of Greco-Gothic style and an outstanding ornamentalist after the manner of the Welsh theorist, Owen Jones. Laid off in November during the recession that year, Louis Henry Sullivan followed his parents to Chicago where Louis Henry Henry Sullivan found a position with the prominent architect William Le Baron Jenney, a pioneer of metal frame construction in tall dings. 

After six fruitful months with Jenney, Louis Henry Sullivan decided to return to school for theoretical grounding, this time to the acknowledged source of architectural wisdom, Ecole des Beaux Arts. Louis Henry Sullivan sailed from New York in July 1874, arrived in Paris in August and, after a period of determined preparation, entered the Ecole in October wherere Louis Henry Sullivan remained for approximately three months. But Louis Henry Sullivan found the Ecole as disappointing as MIT, in large part because of its concentration on Renaissance and classical ideas. After a tour of southern France and northern Italy, where Louis Henry Sullivan was staggered by Michelangelo's work, especially at the Sistine Chapel, Louis Henry Sullivan returned to Chicago in June 1875 as a free-lance draftsman.

One of the several architects Louis Henry Sullivan worked for during the next six years was Dankmar Adler, who was so impressed with Louis Henry Sullivan 's drawing talent and his ability to devise architectural ornament that Louis Henry Sullivan made him a junior partner late in 1881 or early in 1882 and then full partner in the new firm of Adler & Sullivan, organized May 1, 1883. From the beginning of their association until July 11, 1895, when Adler temporarily quit architecture because of the national depression, Adler & Sullivan designed approximately 180 buildings. Of these, some 60 or one-third of the total-most commissioned before 1890-were single or multiple residences; 33 (18%) were commercial buildings (generally offices and stores); 27 (15%) were for manufacturing; 17 (9%) were theaters, music halls, and auditoriums; and 11 (6%) were warehouses. The remaining 31 (17%) ran the gamut from stables and mausoleums to railroad stations and libraries.

Adler and Sullivan complemented each other perfectly. Recognized as an outstanding acoustical and structural engineer as well as a reliable architect, Adler nonetheless understood his own limitations as a designer. Though eight years senior to his 26-year-old partner in 1883, Adler turned over to Louis Henry Sullivan full responsibility for fa�ade composition and decorative work. Generally speaking, Adler took care of mechanicals and structurals, Louis Henry Sullivan handled the art, and together they worked out the program. Their mutual talents were first recognized in the theater and concert hall genre. Beginning in 1879, with Louis Henry Sullivan a free-lance assistant on Central Music Hall in Chicago, the partners produced eight reconstructions and one new theater over the next seven years, culminating in their grandest structure, the Chicago Auditorium Build ing (1886-1890).

The reconstruction of Chicago's Hooley's Theater in 1882 was the first commission to generate praise for Louis Henry Sullivan independent of Adler. Louis Henry Sullivan was, said one commentator, "the master spirit directing and shaping the creation" (1) of the new interior. By the time McVicker's Theater was remodeled in 1885, Louis Henry Sullivan 's work was "the best" of its kind in Chicago, according to one critic, "superior to anything heretofore seen in any public building in this country", in the eyes of another. Even more impressive to contemporaries than Sullivan 's rich enfoliated ornament in a carefully coordinated array of colors, however, was his handling of incandescent light. Adler & Sullivan 's theaters did away with flaming chandeliers in favor of electric light fixtures worked into overhead decoration continuing down and around the room sides. The totality, evenness, and clarity of light startled observers accustomed to flickering gas lamps. Together with Adler's impressive acoustics and uninterrupted sight lines, Sullivan 's lighting and ornament earned the firm a well-deserved reputation for excellence in theater design.

The same was said of Adler & Sullivan 's offices commercial structures, and factories. In the series of sions in the 1880s-the 1881 Rothschild, 1882 Jeweler's, 1884 Troescher, and the 1887 Wirt Dexter and Selz, Schwab buildings being the best known-they developed several trademarks. Using isolated footings instead of continuous foundations when possible, Adler widened the spans between masonry-clad columns, thereby increasing fenestration. In his facade compositions, Louis Henry Sullivan projected the comparatively thin columns slightly fbrward of the building's main mass. The result as his tentative thrust at a system of vertical construction as well as illumination "far greater than is usually obtained by other architects," said a local building magazine. Their alleged motto, "let there be light," this magazine continued, assured them "abounding orders from con�ding clients." Their private dwellings were also marked by "originality" and "common sense".

This kind of reputation, but especially their theater successes, landed them the commission for the Auditorium Building on December 22, 1886. At $3,200,000, it was the costliest edifice in the city, and at 8,737,000 ft3 of volume the largest in the nation. Running from Michigan Boulevard along Congress Street to Wabash Avenue, it was 63,350 ft2 m plan in 10 stories plus a seven-�oor, 40 x 70 ft tower. The program was ultimately arranged as a 400-room hotel on Michigan and partway down Congress, 136 offices and stores on Wabash and in the tower, and a 4200-seat concert hall that, with support facilities, occupied half the total area and one-third the volume of the entire structure, the largest permanent concert hall ever built at the time. The nonsteel building of load-bearing masonry walls weighing 110,000 tons confronted Adler with as many structural challenges as did the acoustics of the vast auditorium. But Louis Henry Sullivan solved them as successfully as Louis Henry Sullivan did the aesthetics. 

Basing his facade composition loosely on Henry obson Richardson's Marshall Field Wholesale Store (1885-1887) in Chicago, Louis Henry Sullivan articulated the granite-and-lime-stone exterior in a rhythmic and utilitarian manner befitting ting both the cultural and commercial nature of its interior functions. The lavish auditorium, the main dining room, and the banquet hall were among the finest interior spaces Louis Henry Sullivan ever conceived. Taking his cue from Adler's acoustical requirements, his Auditorium Theater featured four elliptical arches, wider and higher toward the rear, dividing the ceiling into smooth ivory panels of the most delicate lacelike tracery. The arches were not structural, although they appeared to be, and Louis Henry Sullivan made them the basis of his decorative scheme. 

Chevron moldings divide their faces into hexagons enclosing enfoliated designs that �ower into electric lights, into grilled bosses hiding air inlets, and into smaller triangles with additional foliage. The lights run down the arches and across the boxes illuminating the entire room softly and completely. To the rear ofthe hall where the coved ceiling soars dramatically to provide sight lines for the gallery, Louis Henry Sullivan placed an immense stained-glass skylight. In the great hall, one reviewer wrote, "the sight is one of the most remarkable . . . in the world", an assessment echoing the general sentiment, including that of Montgomery Schuyler, the sober Architectural Record critic, who concluded, after considering the pros and cons of the building, that Louis Henry Sullivan was "one of the most striking and interesting individualities among living architects".

The Chicago Auditorium was completed in detail in February 1890. Its enormous success transformed the nature of Adler & Sullivan 's practice, bringing in larger commissions from further a�eld. One new project that year provided Louis Henry Sullivan with the opportunity to tackle a problem that would consume his interest for the rest ofthe decade. Its solution ensured his place in history.

The problem was the high-rise office building, the skyscraper, as it came to be called in the 1890s. The challenge for Louis Henry Sullivan was not so much structural, for most of the load-bearing and mechanical obstacles to great height had already been solved, as it was the aesthetics of structure. Louis Henry Sullivan was convinced that this historically new building type required a new design treatment, not one based on analogies to other kinds ofbuildings or one rooted in history, as most architects believed. Louis Henry Sullivan saw the skyscraper as a symbol of U.S. business that was the basis of the national culture, and therefore as an opportunity to create a long-anticipated indigenous architectural style. So when Adler and Louis Henry Sullivan received a commission in 1890 from St. Louis brewer and real estate promoter Ellis Wainwright for what came to be a 10-story rental structure, Louis Henry Sullivan made the most of it.

His solution to the skyscraper problem did not come easily. Frank Lloyd Wright, his principal assistant at the time, remembered how Louis Henry Sullivan struggled over the facade composition, leaving the office for long walks, throwing away sketch after sketch, until �nally Louis Henry Sullivan burst into Wrigh�s room and threw a drawing on the table. "I was perfectly aware of what had happened," Wright recalled. 'This was Louis Henry Sullivan 's greatest moment-his greatest effort. The 'skyscrape� . . . as an entity with . . . beauty all its own, was born".

Louis Henry Sullivan outlined his skyscraper theory six years later in his most famous essay, 'The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered". By carefully analyzing the program requirements, Louis Henry Sullivan decided that skyscrapers had three major clusters of functions, each of which should be expressed separately. The first was public-seen on the one-or two-story base-consisting of entering and leaving, meeting and greeting, waiting, shopping, and locating the entrance from the outside. The second set offunctions was private: various kinds of office work. And the third was architectural: the housing of mechanical equipment and storage in an attic that could also serve as an aesthetic device for terminating the facade in a decisive way.

Louis Henry Sullivan had in fact designed the Wainwright Building according to his as yet unwritten theory, with a two-story base treated in an expansive, sumptuous way with an easily identified entrance flanked by broad display windows; a shaft ofseven identically articulated �oors to indicate the similar nature of work in the various offices; and a richly decorated attic suggesting a crisp termination, and that the functions there were ofyet a third and different order.

All this was but one aspect of Louis Sullivan 's thinking. It was necessary to differentiate the three principal functions, to be sure, but it was equally important to unite them harmoniously at the same time, because Louis Henry Sullivan believed, as Louis Henry Sullivan had written earlier, that every building should reveal "a single, germinal impulse or idea, which shall permeate the mass and its every detail," so that "there shall effuse from the completed structure a single sentiment . . .". What was the skyscraper's single sentiment? Or, as Louis Henry Sullivan asked himself in his 1896 essay: "What is the chief characteristic of the tall office building?" Louis Henry Sullivan answered in some of his most direct but most memorable prose. "It is lofty. ... It must be tall, every inch of it tall. ... It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exultation . . . from bottom to top . . . without a single dissenting line". So Louis Henry Sullivan recessed the horizontals, projected forward the structural columns and nonstructural mullions, and took the corner piers all the way from sidewalk to cornice. His "system of vertical construction" was now complete.

But in his 1896 essay Louis Henry Sullivan had one more point to make, the most important point of all. Working from the particular to the general, Louis Henry Sullivan advanced his "final, comprehensive formula" for the solution of the skyscraper problem, indeed, of all architectural problems. All things in nature had shapes, forms, and outward appearances "that tell us what they are, that distinguishes them . . . from each other," Louis Henry Sullivan asserted. "Unfailingly in nature these shapes express the inner life," and when analyzed reveal that "the essence of things is taking shape in the matter of things." 

Life seeks form in response to needs, the life and the form being "absolutely one and inseparable." "Where function does not change," Louis Henry Sullivan insisted, "form does not change," so it was "the pervading law of all things . . .that form ever follows function. That," Louis Henry Sullivan emphasized, "is the law". With the Wainwright Building and the assertion of "form follows function," Louis Sullivan 's place in architectural history was assured.

Between 1890 and 1895 Adler & Sullivan designed some 13 high-rise projects, only 5 of which were built: the Wainwright and the Union Trust Building (1892) in St. Louis, the Schiller Building (1891) and the Stock Exchange (1893) in Chicago, and the Guaranty Building (1894-1895) in Buffalo. But together with "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered," they established Louis Henry Sullivan as the premier theorist of skyscraper design with a pioneering style of national importance. 

One of the most significant unbuilt skyscraper projects was the 36-story Odd Fellows or Fraternity Temple Building (1891) for Chicago featuring a system of setbacks. Had it been built, the Temple would have been the tallest edifice in the nation. Its impressive scale-450 ft in height occupying an entire 177 x 210 ft block-dramatized certain social problems of which Louis Henry Sullivan was intensely aware, principally those of air and light for tenants and neighbors and of street congestion. In the December 1891 issue of The Graphic, a Chicago pictorial review, Louis Henry Sullivan proposed an innovative solution. 

The idea was that above a specified limit-twice the width, or 132 ft on a typical 66-ft thoroughfare, for example-building area should be reduced to 50% of the lot. At twice the limit it should be halved again to 25% and so on indefinitely. To prevent the city from becoming a maze of walled canyons, Louis Henry Sullivan would apply the formula to frontage as well as area, and for comer lots with one narrow and one wide street suggested the distance before setback be the sum of the two. Louis Henry Sullivan had already incorporated the principle vertically and horizontally in his 1891 Schiller Building, possibly the first true setback high-rise in the United States. And 25 years later in 1916, New York City's zoning law, which became a model for the nation, incorporated a variation on the theme by dividing central Manhattan into districts with setbacks beginning from one and one-quarter to twice the width of the streets.

By 1895 Louis Sullivan 's reputation had crossed the Atlantic. His "Golden Doorway" on the Transportation Building (1891) at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair was awarded a medal the next year by the Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs in Paris, which exhibited models of his work. The Russian School of Applied Arts in Moscow also asked Louis Henry Sullivan to loan examples of his designs. 

His skyscrapers, by now even more refined and coherent than the Wainwright Building, were applauded by critics at home, as were his other buildings-tombs, synagogues, hotels, and opera houses conspicuous among them. Much in demand as a speaker and essayist, Louis Henry Sullivan was elected to the Board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects in 1894 and in 1895 to the Board's Executive Committee. A good measure of his standing was Montgomery Schuyler's conclusion in an 1895 issue of The Architectural Record that Louis Henry Sullivan "is of the first rank among his contemporaries throughout the world".

Under the surface, however, things had already begun to sour. The economic depression beginning in 1893-the worst in U.S. history to that point-had a devastating effect on architecture. In 1894, Adler & Sullivan received only six new commissions, less than half as many a year as from 1890 to 1893, and four of those were not constructed. With a wife and three children to support, 51-year-old Dankmar Adler terminated the partnership on July 11, 1895, to become architectural consultant and supervising sales manager for the Crane Elevator Company at the enviable salary of $25,000 a year. Although Louis Henry Sullivan soon realized Louis Henry Sullivan was unsuited to the work, returning to architecture just after the new year, Adler would not resume the partnership, believing that Louis Henry Sullivan had slighted him by claiming sole authorship of the Guaranty Building. 

For his part, Louis Henry Sullivan could not forgive Adler's disloyalty by leaving a 12-year association for what Louis Henry Sullivan took to be selfish reasons. There was no going back for the two proud men. Louis Henry Sullivan carried on alone in the old firm office atop the Auditorium Building Tower while Adler rented a suite several flights down. Although they collaborated briefly on a portion of a Schlesinger & Mayer Department Store project in 1898, their relationship remained strained. Dankmar Adler died suddenly from a stroke on April 16, 1900, at the age of 55.

The remainder of Louis Henry Sullivan 's career was a long, sad story of decline, not in design ability or intellectual power, but in his ability to get clients. From 1895 until his last architectural job in 1922, Louis Henry Sullivan received some 56 commissions-2 per year on average-of which only 31 were executed. Only 3 were major works: the 1897-1898 Bayard-Condict Building in New York City, a 12-story loft structure, and 2 for the Schlesinger & Mayer Department Store (1898, 1902) in Chicago. The rest were mostly residences, small banks, factories, and shops. 

When the nation emerged from the depression in 1898 it seemed at first that Louis Henry Sullivan would also recover quite nicely, because between 1896 and 1899 Louis Henry Sullivan received 16 commissions, including 7 from Schlesinger & Mayer for alterations and new buildings. However, without that firm Louis Henry Sullivan would have had very little work. Never again after 1902 would Louis Henry Sullivan get more than 4 jobs in a single year or see to completion more than 2 a year. After 1899 Louis Henry Sullivan slowly sank into grinding poverty.

The many reasons for this are complexly interwoven. Although Louis Henry Sullivan was accomplished in structural and mechanical aspects of design-thanks to Adler's tutelage-Sullivan was perceived as an idealistic artist, unsuitable for unrarified jobs; but because Louis Henry Sullivan was nonetheless recognized as a commercial architect, few people approached him for houses. Louis Henry Sullivan was known for giving clients exactly what they wanted, that is, for providing eminently workable and practical programs, but Louis Henry Sullivan was also known for doing things only his way, in his style, no discussion allowed. 

Louis Henry Sullivan was a reasonably good businessman, but not in public relations. Unless Louis Henry Sullivan liked people, felt comfortable with them, and respected their cultural sophistication, Louis Henry Sullivan was abrupt and condescending, frightening potential customers away. Louis Henry Sullivan was also prone to fits of anger, to arrogance, and to conveying the impression of superiority. With very few exceptions, Louis Henry Sullivan preferred his own company to that of others. Louis Henry Sullivan had also alienated the architectural establishment, specifically the AIA, with a series of intemperate public statements around 1900 condemning not only the "mustiness" of the profession generally but also the "stupidity," indeed, the "criminality" of particular individuals and groups. When all these factors conspired to drive clients away, Louis Henry Sullivan turned to alcohol that, beginning as an effect, soon became a cause of client trepidation. Frustration at his declining status and with the conservatism of the profession combined to make Louis Henry Sullivan a very bitter man.

When Louis Henry Sullivan found work after 1900 and was willing to do it-he lost a number of commissions in his last years by provoking fights over totally irrelevant matters-he produced beautiful results. Best known after 1906 was his series of eight executed banks, including one remodeling, scattered across the Midwest in small cities and towns. The National Farmer's Bank (1906) in Owatonna, Minnesota, was a simple cube, 68 ft square by 40 ft high, in tapestry brick, punctuated by 38-ft-diameter semicircular stained-glass windows on two facades. The main banking room, with over 200 tints of color, was ringed by service and officers' areas, suggested on the exterior by small windows at eye level. Soft, diffused light saturated the building that conveyed two important images: a strongbox effect for the securing of valuables and an open, inviting feeling to reassure the agricultural clientele. The bank was such a huge success that the Architectural Record reported in 1912 that 25 strangers visited Owatonna each day just to see it.

There followed smaller banks in Cedar Rapids and Grinnell, Iowa; Newark and Sidney, Ohio; Columbus, Wisconsin; Manistique, Michigan; and West Lafayette, Indiana, designed in 1914 for a mere $14,700, an indication of his much-reduced circumstances. All of the banks bore a strong family resemblance, but Louis Henry Sullivan never quite repeated the program, ornament, or form. Each was beautiful, workable, and highly acclaimed by critics; all but one are used today for their original purpose. Paying respect to the scale of the neighborhood, Louis Henry Sullivan nevertheless set new standards for community aesthetics; each one remains a "jewel box" in its prairie surroundings. The banks also addressed their social and philosophical milieu. 

Louis Henry Sullivan called them "democratic," examples of the indigenous U.S. architecture Louis Henry Sullivan had devoted his life to creating. Louis Henry Sullivan meant that they were literally and visually accessible to customers. Officers sat in the open, not hidden away in remote sanctuaries. The main entrance was as welcoming as the vault was available, directly in view when customers entered, reassuring them that their valuables were safe. The buildings suggested that farmer and banker might come together easily in business and neighborly dialogue, as their murals in several cases depicted. Sullivan 's banks were as important as his skyscrapers in his own work and in his contribution to the national architectural heritage.

In his last years, writing took up more of Sullivan 's time than ever. Specific subjects changed, but once Louis Henry Sullivan had solidified his thinking in the 1890s his essential message remained the same. Louis Henry Sullivan always returned to the importance of architects studying nature to learn the secrets of structure, form, and creativity. Louis Henry Sullivan insisted that architecture should be about social life and values in its time and place and not be based on historic styles. Buildings, Louis Henry Sullivan argued, were about specific ideas, not about the bare facts of structure alone. Louis Henry Sullivan believed that U.S. architecture should democratic in form and function, that is, it should endorse culturally agreed on customs, ideas, and feelings in familiar materials. Louis Henry Sullivan was probably the first U.S. architect to contend that architecture was fundamentally an expression of social life. His antihistoricism and his cultural interpretation of design were taken up by Frank Lloyd Wright among others of the next generation who gave them permanent place in the mainstream of U.S. design thinking.

As his commissions dwindled away, Louis Henry Sullivan produced the three books for which Louis Henry Sullivan is remembered. Kindergarten Chats first appeared in 1901-1902 in an obscure Cleveland journal. Constructed as a dialogue between an architectural master and his naive student, the Chats comprise some of Sullivan 's most penetrating and accessible thinking on design and social issues. His memoirs, The Autobiography of an Idea, and his monograph, A System of Architectural Ornament, were published in 1924 at the time of his death. The Autobiography is an idiosyncratic example of its genre because it covered Sullivan 's life only to 1893. Its real purpose was to chronicle the evolution of his quite private architectural inspiration and emotional development. A System is a series of 19 ornament plates with commentary explaining how Louis Henry Sullivan derived his exquisite patterns through geometric manipulation of organic forms. (A fourth book, Democracy: A Man-Search, was published posthumously in 1961, as was Kindergarten Chats in book form, the first time in 1934.) The Autobiography and A System were Louis Sullivan 's last major works.

The few years before his death were painful ones indeed. Deeply in debt, by 1909 Louis Henry Sullivan auctioned off his household goods and most of his architectural library in December. His wife of 10 years, Mary Azona Hattabaugh, left him a few days later. In 1910 Louis Henry Sullivan sold the beloved vacation home Louis Henry Sullivan had built for himself in 1890 in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. Unable to meet his club and organizational dues, Louis Henry Sullivan was dropped from their rolls. By 1918 Louis Henry Sullivan could no longer pay his rent, and with his former staff of 50 reduced to 1 or 2 draftsmen, gave up his Auditorium Tower office for much smaller rooms on Chicago's far South Side. Sometimes Louis Henry Sullivan had no office at all. Many of his days were spent atop the Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue where the Cliff Dwellers Club let him have a writing desk for free.

Louis Henry Sullivan survived his last years largely on the handouts of friends. Architects Sidney K. Adler (Dankmar's son). Max Dunning, George Nimmons, and Frank Lloyd Wright, plus associates at the American and Northwestern Terra Cotta companies, paid his bills, loaned him money, and often bought his meals. When Louis Henry Sullivan died on April 14, 1924, of kidney disease and inflammation of the cardiac muscles, they covered his funeral expenses and cleared up his financial obligations. The $189 in his bank account, which had also come from them, was almost all Louis Henry Sullivan owned.

Louis Henry Sullivan was buried on April 16, 1924, next to his father, Patrick, and his mother, Andrienne, in Chicago's Graceland Cemetery. In its obituary, The New York Times called him the "dean of American architects", and in short order the pages of the architectural magazines were filled with praise of his greatness. But Louis Henry Sullivan had died in poverty, in a cheap South Side hotel room, without an architectural job for his last two years. 

Later on Louis Henry Sullivan would be remembered as the man who insisted that nature was the best design guide, who preached "progress before precedent," who argued that architecture was basically a social act, who first brought a coherent aesthetic system to the skyscraper, whose ornament was perhaps the finest ever produced in the United States, who built the first modern banks, who trained Frank Lloyd Wright, who influenced generations of progressive architects, and who was the first thoroughgoing innovator in U.S. architectural history.