This is the Sullivan Center — originally the Carson Pirie Scott department store — and it was designed by Louis Sullivan, the most important architect you've never heard of.
Louis Sullivan is called "the father of the skyscraper." He coined the phrase "form follows function." He was Frank Lloyd Wright's mentor and employer. He invented an entirely new language of architectural ornamentation — look at the ironwork on the corner entrance here. Those swirling, organic patterns. Nobody had ever done anything like that before. Nobody has really done it since.
Sullivan believed that American architecture should be American — not Greek columns, not Gothic cathedrals, not copies of European styles. New buildings for a new country. He was right.
And the world did not care.
By the early 1900s, tastes had shifted back toward classical revival. Sullivan's style fell out of fashion. His partnership dissolved. He developed a drinking problem. His commissions dried up. His former student Frank Ll
oyd Wright became internationally famous while Sullivan couldn't get work.
His last major project request — a small bank in Columbus, Ohio — was rejected because the client thought his ornamental style looked "old-fashioned." Sullivan died six months later, in 1924, alone in a cheap hotel room on the South Side of Chicago. He was 67 years old.
Wright — who had barely spoken to Sullivan in years
