Customer Reviews

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

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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