The Chicago Auditorium Building: Adler and Sullivan's Architecture and the City (Chicago Architecture and Urbanism) [Hardcover]

Joseph M. Siry (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2002 | ISBN-10: 0226761339 | ISBN-13: 978-0226761336 | Edition: 1

Winner of the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award from the Society of Architectural Historians

When the magnificent Auditorium Building opened on Chicago's Michigan Avenue in December 1889, it marked Chicago's emergence both as the leading city of the Midwest and as a metropolis of international stature. In this lavishly illustrated book, Joseph M. Siry explores not just the architectural history of the Auditorium Building but also the crucial role it played in Chicago's social history. Covering the Auditorium from the early design stage to its opening, its later renovations, its links to culture and politics in Chicago, and its influence on later Adler and Sullivan works (including the Schiller Building and the Chicago Stock Exchange Building), this volume recounts the fascinating tale of a building that helped to define a city and an era.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Siry writes history with a storyteller''s gift. His book is often dense with detail, but he weaves even arcane references as part of a broad narrative that conveys the complex relationships that were the reality of the late 19th-century American city. The hefty tome sports the extensive visual documentation expected of a book focused on an architectural gem, and Siry makes the most of it, deftly weaving these illustrations into the course of his text."

(Edward Keegan Chicago Tribune )

"This meticulous, abundantly illustrated, and wide-ranging 580-page chronicle of the building''s funding, design, and construction is as much a social history as an architectural one. . . . Siry also details (in an approach that is somewhat refreshing for an art historian) the building''s triumph in engineering as well as in aesthetic design."

(Atlantic Monthly )

"Where the book really shines . . . is Siry''s reconstruction of the social and historical context that gave rise to and helped guide the development of the Auditorium Building. This makes the text a true find for architectural historians and worthwhile reading for a much broader audience. . . . The result is a book with a scope and detail to match both the magnificence of the building and the depth of thought that went into its conception, design, and construction."

(Brendan Powers CAA Reviews )

From the Inside Flap

When the magnificent Auditorium Building opened on Chicago's Michigan Avenue in December 1889, American and European newspapers hailed the event as a defining moment for the city, the most important since the Great Fire of 1871. The Auditorium marked Chicago's emergence both as the leading city of the Midwest and as a metropolis of international stature.

In this lavishly illustrated book, Joseph M. Siry explores not just the architectural history of the Auditorium Building, but also the crucial role it played in Chicago's social history. Housing a luxurious 400-room hotel, 136 offices and stores, and a theater that could seat 4,200, the Auditorium Building was one of the earliest multipurpose civic centers in the United States, and its many technical and aesthetic innovations launched Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan's national reputation as creators of highly innovative architecture for large public buildings. (Frank Lloyd Wright was employed by Adler and Sullivan at the time, serving as Sullivan's draftsman.) But the Auditorium;s importance was not limited to architecture. Envisioned by its principal patron, Ferdinand W. Peck, as a means to counter the violent socialist agitation of the Haymarket era, the Auditorium Theater embodied Peck's capitalist ideal of a democratic variation on the European opera house that could provide affordable, high-class entertainment for the city's skilled workers.

Covering the Auditorium from the early design to its opening, its later renovations, its links to culture and politics in Chicago, and its influence on later Adler and Sullivan works (including the Schiller Building and the Chicago Stock Exchange Building), The Chicago Auditorium Building recounts the fascinating tale of a building that helped to define a city and an era.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 580 pages
• Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (November 1, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0226761339
• ISBN-13: 978-0226761336
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 8.7 x 3.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,699,325 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book on a great building and on issues often not talked about..., December 23, 2010

By 

Anthony C. Antoniades - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: The Chicago Auditorium Building: Adler and Sullivan's Architecture and the City (Chicago Architecture and Urbanism) (Paperback)

I just finished reading this extraordinary book (Dec 2010) , and can't believe I have not seen anybody write anything about in the Amazon reviews ; I run to it all by accident as I was trying to find out about possible connections between Frank Llowd Wright and the events in Chicago during the late 1880's , and how come main architectural historians I had been aware off had avoided refering to these aspects that shaped the city's architecture during these years. And I was extremely enlightened by a particular footnote and reference to John Edelmann,which sent me back to read again my readings of forty years ago on Louis Sullivan, actually re-reading his "The Autobiography of an Idea", and search further characters and people that might have had some influence on his "social order" enlightment,besides other issues; This book proved to be a treasor, not only of extraordinary research pertaining to one particularly great building, about which so much has been "silenced" over the years by main stream architectural historians, but also a treasor regarding the subject nobody seems to talk about,what I believe to have been a latent "anarchic" ingredient in great architects such as Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wrigh,both of which I consider to possess a "creative anarchist's"ingredient, in the same manner as that of Alvar Aalto about which Goran Schildt wrote in his Aalto biography. The book in concern here, has no direct discussion on these issues with reference to Sullivan or Wright (parenthtically), but there is substantial discussion pertaining to how the social-anarchic movements in Chicago, played a role in the making of the Auditorium building, particular architecture, particuluarly through Siry's very clear discussion and facts of the Germanic immigrant community, their struggles and ideas as well as the spaces they gothered, which eventually lead to the Auditorium as an antidote and advancement over them , a mediator and agent of brinking culture to a wider audience, an agent of peace with an eye to prosperity, all this a vision of the intuitive client Ferdinand Peck, and those two intuitive and great architects . A great book, deeply researched and meticulously documented, with in depth information at many levels, extraordinary photography and rare visual evidence from "period" sources, unique layout and Joyful to read as it has simple and clear writing, devoid of the esoteric and occasionally incomprehensible language of many academic writers, particularly of many Europeans. This is not a "coffee table book", but a deeply serious and yet very joyful book ;

A really great Book !

Anthony C.Antoniades,AIA

Former Professor of Architecture UTA

p.s I Had visited Chicago and the Building twice but this is the first time I can say, I really know the building