Event: Wainwright Building Completed
Category: Architecture
Brief Description: Louis Sullivan´s Wainwright Building, built in 1891, was the first high-rise office building to use a steel frame and preserve the look of a masonry building. Sullivan saw its design as a way to create architectural art and to express his written ideas in architectural form. The building is located on 7th and Chestnut. In keeping with his idea that form should follow function, Sullivan divided the building into three parts, whose inside functions are distinguished by their outside forms. The first two stories of plain masonry are commercial space, with the first floor distinguished by large windows. They are followed by seven floors of uniformly divided office space, whose plain piers are accentuated by terra-cotta spandrels, and a top attic story of service space, that crowns the building with an elaborate frieze. Sullivan´s intent in the design of the Wainwright building was to give architectural voice to his writings on the tall building; his desire to express the spirit of a functional skyscraper that also excites the imagination. Following its construction, the blocks around the Wainwright Building on Seventh Street filled with other high-rise buildings, and Seventh Street became one of the city´s most important.
Year: 1891
Decade: 1890 - 1899
Beginning Date: 1890
Ending Date: 1891
People
Adler, Dankmar
Adler and Sullivan,
Sullivan, Louis Henri
Structures
Wainwright Building
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