Summary Watkin: A History of Western Architecture – 523-564 :
Chapter 9: Sullivan and the origin of the skyscraper
- 1871: devastating fire in Chicago need to rebuild rapidly in fireproof materials
encouraged architect William Le Baron Jenney to take the first step towards the
development of the skyscraper. The development of the technology of the elevator
in New York made the development of the skyscraper possible. Jenney’s best known
work: ten-storeyed Home Insurance Building of 1884. It incorporated a skeleton of
cast-iron and steel beams and wrought iron girders on to which were bolted cast-iron
shelves.
- Holabird and Roche had both worked in Jenney’s office and were responsible for the
Tacoma Building in Chicago. Here they made more consistent use of the techniques
pioneered in the Home Insurance Building and introduced a novel foundation
consisting of reinforced concrete rafts which were valuable as stabilizing elements.
- Louis Henry Sullivan designed the Chicago Auditorium Theatre and Hotel Building in
1887. The facades are of load-bearing brickwork faced with granite and limestone,
the floor, vault and roof loads of the theatre are carried on a remarkable framework
of cast and wrought iron.
- In later buildings, Sullivan and his partner Adler rejected the duality of the Chicago
Auditorium and adopted full steel-skeleton construction. At the Wainwright Building
he introduced false brick piers in between the structural piers on the façade which
are of steel clad in brick. Their presence is required to create a vertical emphasis.
- At the Guaranty Building, the piers are connected at the top by arches and there is a
far less emphatic cornice. But it’s also way more ornamented. The effect produced by
the facades is close to the poetic industrial style devised by Schinkel.
- In the Carson Pirie and Scott Department Store, Sullivan gave the building a
horizontal rhythm to emphasize the flat selling floors in contrast to the vertically
offices of the Wainwright and Guaranty buildings.
- In his book, Sullivan called for a temporary ban on architectural decorations,
believing that the 19th century had suffered from a surfeit of repetitive historically
inspired ornaments. The new style would harmonize with the American democratic
experiment, which coincided with his believe in inevitable development and
progress.
Mckim, Mead and White and the return to classicism:
- 1893: Sullivan designs the Transportation Building for the World’s Columbian
Exposition at Chicago. The exposition in Chicago was the largest up to date, and was
dominated by a huge entrance arch with rich abstract ornament. It was a move away
from classicism, which had taken over New York and the east.
- Daniel Burnham, the chief of construction for the fair, planned a vast Court of Honor
flanked with monumental buildings. These were temporary buildings.
- Architects McKim, Mead and White, Hunt, and Charles Atwood designed the only
permanent structure associated with the Fair, the Palace of Fine Arts. They had been
responding to the need for new public and commercial buildings and rejected the
skyscraper. They sought to create an urban environment out of the common
language of classicism. They respected local traditions and materials and tended to
adopt different classical sources for different categories of buildings: public buildings
= monuments of ancient Rome, etc.
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, - First major works: Villard Houses and the premises of the American Safe Deposit
Company and Columbia Bank, both in New York. The latter is a Sullivanesque
composition with the two lowest floors in rusticated sandstone. The Villard Houses
formed a street composition of dignity by resembling a single monumental palazzo.
- The Boston Public Library was taken as a symbol of the new American classicism.
With its plain white granite it established Boston as a centre of western culture. The
building is of traditional construction with load-bearing walls, its interiors were richly
embellished with murals and sculptures. This cooperation between architects,
painters and sculptors was new in American architecture, but was extensively
imitated.
- Pennsylvania Station, New York = highest achievement of the firm, uniting the
splendours of the ancient world with the conveniences of modern transport and
constructional techniques. The general waiting-room was modelled on the
tepidarium of the Baths. Of Caracalla. The adjacent concourse was entirely of steel
and glass but divided into three high groin vaults. The building has probably never
been equalled as a triumph of engineering and organization in which the classical
language was used to ennoble a mundane activity.
Town planning – The 18th century legacy:
- 17th and 18th century town planning provided powerful images for 19th century cities.
Napoleon saw himself as the dynamic creator of towns and empires and he drew on
the Baroque convention of closing vistas with dominant porticoes in his remodelling
of Paris.
- Germany: ideals of the Enlightenment which stressed public buildings as the
expression of civic virtue found fruit in the planning of Karlsruhe by Friedrich
Weinbrenner and of Berlin and Munich by Schinkel and Leo von Klenze. It was a royal
idealism which went back in Germany to Frederick the Great, and which produced a
humane urbane fabric incorporating cultural institutions.
- Continent: cities kept following Baroque practice. Leo von Klenze designed a new
town plan for the new city of Athens, this was dependent on Versailles.
- Baron Hausmann added features to the Parisian town planning and established
traditions of papal Rome, but did not change anything in the terms of planning.
Model industrial towns:
- 19th century: huge expansion in population in the city. new problems on a massive
scale. A new world dominated by industrial manufacturing, was created. This was a
threat to the life and forms of the traditional European city. Town planning in the 19 th
and 20th century is a reaction to this development.
- Robert Owen, social reformer, created a community in Scotland, New Lanark. This
community was created not primarily for profit but to provide good conditions for
workers. Success second model in New Harmony, Indiana became called a
green belt.
- Ledoux’s plan for the Ideal Town of Chaux was one of the first to suggest a vast,
planned industrial town. It was a social collective.
- J.B. Godin was inspired by this and built the familistère in France, where 400 families
would share the fruits of their labour.
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