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Auditorium Building

Architect
Adler & Sullivan
Year
1886
Style
Chicago School
City
Chicago, IL
Collections
adler & sullivanthe chicago school
Auditorium Building
Photo: Cervin Robinson, photographer., Public domain
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The Auditorium Building is a multi-use complex of offices, a hotel, and a theater that Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan completed in 1889 at Michigan Avenue and Ida B. Wells Drive. Chicago businessman Ferdinand Peck incorporated the Chicago Auditorium Association in December 1886 to build it, aiming to give the city a world-class civic theater alongside enough rentable office and hotel space to pay for it. The Auditorium Theatre inside became the first home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Chicago Civic Opera, and a young Frank Lloyd Wright worked on the interior as an apprentice in Adler & Sullivan's office.

the building

Theater engineering. Dankmar Adler engineered landmark structural and acoustic solutions to fit a full-scale theater inside a mixed-use office-and-hotel block, solving the sound and sightline problems of housing a major performance hall within a masonry commercial building at a scale rarely attempted before.

A young Wright's start. Frank Lloyd Wright worked on some of the building's interior design as an apprentice in the Adler & Sullivan office, one of his first professional jobs before he struck out on his own.

the style

Chicago School (c. 1880–1910): The first skyscrapers: steel frames shown as honest grids, huge three-part windows, ornament saved for base and top.

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the architect

Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler designed the Auditorium as partners in one of the most influential firms in American architecture; the commission, one of the largest and most technically ambitious of their partnership, helped establish Sullivan's reputation before he later mentored Frank Lloyd Wright in the same office.

significance

The Auditorium Building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1970, declared a National Historic Landmark in 1975, and designated a Chicago Landmark on September 15, 1976; it is also a contributing property to the Michigan Boulevard District. Roosevelt University has occupied the building since 1947.

nearby

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