Tabassum Blog 9

The Auditorium Building in Chicago is one of the best-known designs of Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler his partner. It was completed in 1889, built at the northwest corner of South Michigan Avenue and Congress Street (now Congress Parkway). The Auditorium was built for a group of businessmen to house a large civic opera house; later on to provide an economic base it was decided to wrap the auditorium with a hotel and office block. Therefore Adler & Sullivan had to plan a complex multiple-use building. Fronting on Michigan Avenue, overlooking the lake, was the hotel (now Roosevelt University) while the offices were placed to the west on Wabash Avenue. The entrance to the auditorium is on the south side beneath the tall blocky seventeen-story tower. The rest of the building is a uniform ten stories, organized in the same manner as Richardson's Marshall Field Wholesale Store. The interior embellishment was wholly Sullivan's creativity. Some of the details were closest equivalents to European Art Nouveau architecture, because of their continuous curvilinear foliate themes. The Auditorium is a heavy, impressive structure externally, and was more striking in its day when buildings of its scale were less common. When the building was completed it was tallest building in the city and largest in the US. It was declared as a National Historic Landmark by the U.S. Department of the Interior in 1975.