The Chicago School of Architecture by Carl W. Condit is an academic examination and description of the architectural movement in Chicago after the Chicago fire, from about 1875 until about 1925. Because it was written in 1960s, some of the information may be dated, but it was still an informative introduction to the study of modern architecture, specifically the style prevalent in Chicago during those years. This is the first book I’ve ever read about architecture, and I certainly enjoyed the experience. I’m looking forward to reading more about the subject.

The architects that flocked to Chicago after the fire of 1871 found a willing city. Chicago was determined to rebuild, and the architects were eager to comply. The most interesting aspect was that for the first time in history, architects were able to look upward: new engineering techniques were encouraging taller buildings. Yet,

[I]t became more and more difficult for [the architect] to develop an exterior form that grew out of and gave expression to the dominant social factors of the time, chiefly the new conditions of urban life in the great centers of trade and manufacture. (page 2)

Thus, a new style was needed for the new type of taller and larger buildings that were being created.

Condit’s book had long sections at the beginning and end about architecture and where it was and is going. For example, “architecture is the only art that is both utilitarian and aesthetic and hence ought to express its practical function as well as the inspiration that leads to the creation of beauty” (page 9). These passages were slow and difficult for me to read, but I still learned a lot about architecture as an art, and I feel a new interest in this field of art. It may be a new favorite, along with photography which always has been.

What I liked most was the direct discussion about the specific buildings and how certain buildings were influential. I liked hearing what the architectures themselves said about their designs. One significant architect (and my favorite) was John Wellburn Root, who died in 1891. I wonder how the face of modern architecture would be different if he had lived longer!

For example, Root says,

As far as material conditions permit it to be possible, a building designated for a particular purpose should express that purpose in every part. The purpose may not be revealed by conventional means, but it must be so plainly revealed that it can be escaped by no appreciative student. . . . another essential characteristic of all true art work – moderation. (page 47-48, italics added)

The Monadnock

My favorite building that I read about was one of Root’s buildings, The Monadnock (mouth-watering but copyrighted picture here). It was one of the last masonry constructed buildings, and yet, it was in a design that seemed to indicated it was a sky scraper (a building which could only truly reach the sky once steel framing was readily adopted):

…[T]he projecting bays of the walls with their large glass area give the structure a light open appearance in spite of its great mass and the relatively small size of the windows. Stripped of every vestige of ornament, its rigorous geometry softened only by the slight inward curve of the wall at the top of the first story, the outward flare of the parapet, and the progressive rounding of the corners from bottom to top, subtly proportioned and scaled, the Monadnock is a severe yet powerfully expressive composition in horizontal and vertical lines. It presents in its relentless exactitude the formal beauty latent in the commercial style, but at the same time it demonstrates the limitations of the old method of construction. (page 68)

When I first read about this building, I thought back to Lost Chicago (thoughts here), which documented all the buildings in Chicago that have been torn down. I got very scared and ran to my computer: Is the Monadnock still standing?! Yes, it is. I love to look at this building: I keep searching for more pictures on the Internet (such as here and here). I can’t wait until my next visit to Chicago so I can go see it in person. (Yes, I am a nerd.)

I love it even more when I read the contemporary praise of this building:

This building has no precedent in architecture. It is itself a precedent. Yet is has a precedent outside of architecture; it comes up to an ideal, and by virtue of its correspondence with this ideal it becomes a work of art. (page 68, quote of Robert D. Andrews of Boston Architectural Club).

The Auditorium

Another significant Building was the Auditorium, built by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan. I didn’t feel any connection with the building, but it was interesting to see the impact:

Like the Monadnock, [the Auditorium] was the high point of masonry and iron construction in the new age of mechanized industrial techniques. It brought the old system of construction to a close and at the same time substantially advanced the new structural technique growing up and around it. (page 77)

I’m glad I didn’t start with a book about or by Louis Sullivan, even though he was one of the only architects I’d ever heard of. Sullivan was one of the most well-respected architects in the world, always encouraging “the rule with no exceptions in the concept ‘form follows function’” (page 36), and yet it seems he was a bit of a feisty, rude man. His own pride and his cantankerous personality were his downfall: once his partner left the firm, he was unable to gain any large commissions.

My History with Architecture

When I was in a seventh or eighth grade elective class (I think it was an art class), we had one week of lessons on architecture. As a special field trip, we walked around the houses near my junior high school and my teacher told us “That one is Victorian style” and “Notice the gables on that one” and so forth. That was all I’d ever learned about architecture.

Because I’ve been reading about Chicago lately, I have become quite interested in the buildings down town. They didn’t mean anything to me, so I researched, and apparently, there is an entire school of architecture based on the buildings created in late 1800s in Chicago! Duh! I should know these things.

While The Chicago School of Architecture was a slow and sometimes boring read, I’m so very glad I read this book. I look forward to learning more about various architectural styles, preferably the 19^th and twentieth century architecture styles.

Have you read any easy-to-approach architecture books? I’m in the middle of another dense one, and I’m hoping the next after that isn’t quite so academic.

What is your favorite type of art?

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