Auditorium Building | Favorite Architecture

The Auditorium Building in Chicago is one of the best-known designs of Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler. Completed in 1889, the building is located at the northwest corner of South Michigan Avenue and Congress Street (now Ida B. Wells Drive). The building, which when constructed was the largest in the United States and the tallest in Chicago, was designed to be a multi-use complex, including offices, a theater, and a hotel. As a young apprentice, Frank Lloyd Wright worked on some of the interior design,More info:wiki

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#10       AUDITORIUM BUILDING,More info:architecture

When business and the arts collide, beautiful architecture can emerge.

The Auditorium Theatre is the result of collaboration between civic leaders who envisioned a building that might make opera and the arts accessible to people in every income bracket. This building helped to bring fine arts to the citizens of Chicago and establish the city as a center for “democratic” cultural amenities.

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Now a National Historic Landmark, the Auditorium Building has been a cornerstone of Chicago’s arts and cultural community since its opening in 1889. A crown jewel of famed architects Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, with a young Frank Lloyd Wright as draftsman, the Auditorium Building was the first mixed-use building ever built and the tallest in Chicago when it opened. More than 125 years later, its gilded inner spaces still sparkle for events of all kinds. Browse Auditorium Building spaces below.

 

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#5     The Auditorium,More info:mikehigginbottominterestingtimes

It’s easy to walk straight past Chicago’s Auditorium Building (1889) on South Michigan Avenue.  Once the tallest building in the city, it’s now one of the magnificent group of structures that form the “streetwall” overlooking Grant Park.

The philanthropist Ferdinand Wythe Peck (1848-1924), supported by such luminaries as Marshall Field (1834-1906) and George Mortimer Pullman (1831-1897), intended it as a major cultural centre and with a strongly egalitarian emphasis, following the bitter and tragic Haymarket Riot of 1886, which first provoked the celebration of May Day as a workers’ festival.

Peck wanted a civic auditorium that would provide equally good sight-lines and acoustics for every seat and, as originally conceived, no private boxes.  Built at a cost of $3,200,000, it was one of the earliest American buildings to be air-conditioned and lit by incandescent electric lights.

 

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Chicago experienced extraordinary growth in the 19th century serving as the primary economic link between Eastern capital and Western hinterland resources. Chicago grew as the lake, rivers, canals, and railroads transported grain, livestock, lumber, coal, steel, farm implements, consumer merchandise and people.

Rumors of canal building fueled the city first speculative land bubble in the 1830s. By 1848 Chicago opened the Illinois & Michigan canal, built its first railroad, and established the Board of Trade. Chicago’s post 1848 growth created substantial wealth and capital from commodity trade, manufacturing, and the city’s role as a national entrepôt.

 

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The bronze may originally have not been intended to oxidize, but here the matte green patina works perfectly to show the beautiful design subtlety Sullivan was notorious for. Look at the use of rusticated and polished stone together.

I was only in Chicago a few days. I spent one morning walking around downtown so I could see a few things before heading to the Art Institute. The difference to me in NYC and Chi is that, one is always updating and the other one know when to leave things alone. So Chicago has a lot of “vintage” buildings which have been left alone.

 

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