XV + 

Retrospect + 

When Louis Sullivan was in his eighteenth year, his mind a whorl of ambitious ideas, and at a time somewhat prior to his departure for Paris, he had occasion one day to pass in the neighborhood of Prairie Avenue and Twenty-first Street, Chicago. There, on the southwest corner of the intersection, his eye was attracted by a residence, nearing completion, which seemed far better than the average run of such structures inasmuch as it exhibited a certain allure or style indicating personality. It was the best-designed residence he had seen in Chicago. He crossed over to examine it in detail, and in passing around the corner of the building to analyze the other frontage he noticed a fine looking young man, perhaps ten years his senior, standing in the roadway absorbed in contemplation of the growing work. Louis, without ceremony, introduced himself, and the young man said: “Yes; it seems to me I’ve heard of you. Glad to meet you. My name’s Burnham: Daniel H. Burnham; my partner, John Root, is a wonder, a great artist; I want you to meet him some day; you’ll like him. The firm is Burnham and Root. We only started a few years ago. So far we’ve done mostly residences; we’re doing this one for my prospective father-in-law, John Sherman; you know him⁠—he’s a big stockyards man⁠—it’s the most expensive one yet. But I’m not going to stay satisfied with houses; my idea is to work up a big business, to handle big things, deal with big business men, and to build up a big organization, for you can’t handle big things unless you have an organization.” And so the chat went on for an hour. They exchanged enthusiasms, prophecies, ambitions, and even confidences. Louis found Burnham a sentimentalist, a dreamer, a man of fixed determination and strong will⁠—no doubt about that⁠—of large, wholesome, effective presence, a shade pompous, a mystic⁠—a Swedenborgian⁠—a man who readily opened his heart if one were sympathetic. Soon they were calling each other Louis and Dan, for Dan said he did not feel at ease when formal; he liked to be man to man. He liked men of heart as well as brains. That there was so much loveliness in nature; so much hidden beauty in the human soul, so much of joy and uplifting in the arts that he who shut himself away from these influences and immured himself in sordid things forfeited the better half of life. It was too high a price to pay, he said. He averred that romance need not die out; that there must still be joy to the soul in doing big things in a big personal way, devoid of the sordid. In parting he said spaciously: “Come around and see John. You two men must have much in common; he’ll welcome you as a kindred spirit. I’m proud of John as one man can be of another.” + 

Years later, probably in the early eighties, Louis met John and grew to know him well. At once he was attracted by Root’s magnetic personality. He, Root, was not of Burnham’s type, but redheaded, large bullet-headed, close-cropped, effervescent, witty, small-nosed, alert, debonair, a mind that sparkled, a keen sense of humor⁠—which Burnham lacked⁠—solidly put together, bull-necked, freckled, arms of iron, light blue sensuous eyes; a facile draftsman, quick to grasp ideas, and quicker to appropriate them; an excellent musician; well read on almost any subject; speaking English with easy exactitude of habit, ready and fluent on his feet, a man of quick-witted all-round culture which he carried easily and jauntily; and vain to the limit of the skies. This vanity, however, he tactfully took pains should not be too obtrusive. He was a man of the world, of the flesh, and considerably of the devil. His temperament was that of the well groomed freelance, never taking anything too seriously, wherein he differed from his ponderous partner, much as dragon fly and mastiff. Nor had he one tenth of his partner’s settled will, nor of said partner’s capacity to go through hell to reach an end. John Root’s immediate ambition was to shine; to be the center of admiration, pitifully susceptible to flattery; hence, a cluster of expensive sycophants and hangers on, in whose laps it was his pleasure to place his feet by way of reminder, as he allowed himself to be called “John” by the little ones. Nevertheless, beneath all this superficial nonsense Louis saw the man of power, recognized him, had faith in him and took joy in him as a prospective and real stimulant in rivalry, as a mind with which it would be well worth while to clash wits in the promotion of an essentially common cause. Louis, true to his form of appropriating to himself and considering as a part of himself the things and personalities he valued⁠—as he had done with Moses Woolson, Michelangelo, Richard Wagner, et alii⁠—immediately annexed John Root to his collection of assets; or, if one so wills to put it⁠—to his menagerie of personalities great and small. + 

Architecturally, John Root’s mania was to be the first to do this or that or the other. He grasped at novelties like a child with new toys. He thought them efficacious and lovely⁠—then one by one he threw them away. And the while, Burnham’s megalomania concerning the largest, the tallest, the most costly and sensational, moved on in its sure orbit, as he painfully learned to use the jargon of big business. He was elephantine, tactless, and blurting. He got many a humiliating knock on the nose in his quest of the big, but he faltered not⁠—his purpose was fixed. Himself not especially susceptible to flattery except in a sentimental way, he soon learned its efficacy when plastered thick on big business men. Louis saw it done repeatedly, and at first was amazed at Burnham’s effrontery, only to be more amazingly amazed at the drooling of the recipient. The method was crude but it worked. + 

Thus, there came into prominence in the architectural world of Chicago two firms, Burnham & Root, and Adler & Sullivan. In each firm was a man with a fixed irrevocable purpose in life, for the sake of which he would bend or sacrifice all else. Daniel Burnham was obsessed by the feudal idea of power. Louis Sullivan was equally obsessed by the beneficent idea of Democratic power. Daniel chose the easier way, Louis the harder. Each brooded incessantly. John Root was so self-indulgent that there was risk he might never draw upon his underlying power; Adler was essentially a technician, an engineer, a conscientious administrator, a large progressive judicial and judicious mind securing alike the confidence of conservative and radical, plenty of courage but lacking the dream-quality of Burnham; and such he must remain⁠—the sturdy wheel-horse of a tandem team of which Louis did the prancing. Unquestionably, Adler lacked sufficient imagination; so in a way did John Root⁠—that is to say, the imagination of the dreamer. In the dream-imagination lay Burnham’s strength and Louis’s passion. + 

So matters stood in the early eighties and onward. The practice of both firms grew steadily. + 

Meanwhile, throughout all the activities of professional life, Louis never ceased in steady contemplation of the nature of man and his powers, of the mystery of that great life which enfolds and permeates us all; the marvel of nature’s processes which the scientists call “laws”; and the imperturbable enigma of good and evil. He was too young to grasp the truth that the fair-appearing civilization within which he lived was but a huge invisible mantrap, man-made. Of politics he knew nothing and suspected nothing, all seemed fair on the surface. Of man’s betrayal by man on a colossal scale he knew nothing and suspected nothing. He had heard of the State and had read something about the State, but had not a glimmering of the meaning of the State. He had dutifully read some books on political economy because he thought he had to, and had accepted their statements as fact. He had also heard vaguely something about finance and what a mystery it was. In other words, Louis was absurdly, grotesquely credulous. How could it be otherwise with him? He believed that most people were honest and intelligent. How could he suspect the eminent? So Louis saw the real world upside down. He was grossly ignorant. He prospered, so the world was fair. Later he sent forth his soul into the world and by and by his soul returned to him with an appalling message. + 

For long Louis had lived in a fool’s paradise; it was well he so lived in illusion. For had the hideous truth come to him of a sudden, it would have “dashed him to pieces like a potter’s vessel.” So he kept on with his innocent studies, becoming more and more enamoured of the sciences, particularly those dealing with forms of life and the aspects of life’s urging, called functions. And amid the immense number and variety of living forms, he noted that invariably the form expressed the function, as, for instance, the oak tree expressed the function oak, the pine tree the function pine, and so on through the amazing series. And, inquiring more deeply, he discovered that in truth it was not simply a matter of form expressing function, but the vital idea was this: That the function created or organized its form. Discernment of this idea threw a vast light upon all things within the universe, and condensed with astounding impressiveness upon mankind, upon all civilizations, all institutions, every form and aspect of society, every mass-thought and mass-result, every individual thought and individual result. Hence, Louis began to regard all functions in nature as powers, manifestations of the all-power of Life, and thus man’s power came into direct relationship with all other powers. The application of the idea to the Architectural art was manifest enough, namely, that the function of a building must predetermine and organize its form. But it was the application to man’s thought and deeds; to his inherent powers and the results of the application of these powers, mental, moral, physical, that thrilled Louis to the depths as he realized that, as one stumbling upon a treasure, he has found that of which he had dreamed in Paris, and had promised himself to discover⁠—a universal law admitting of no exception in any phase or application whatsoever. + 

Thus Louis believed he had found the open sesame, and that his industry would do the rest. But this innocent and credulous young person was not yet cynical in inquiry; he was too much of an enthusiastic boy to suspect that within the social organism were mask-forms, counterfeit forms, forms with protective coloration, forms invisible except to those in the know. Surely, he was an innocent with his heart wrapped up in the arts, in the philosophies, in the religions, in the beatitudes of nature’s loveliness, in his search for the reality of man, in his profound faith in the beneficence of power. So he lived in his world, which, to be sure, was a very active world indeed. And yet, withal, he had a marked ability to interpret the physiognomy of things, to read character, to enter into personalities. He knew a dishonest man as readily as he knew a snake if he came in contact with him. Per contra he knew an honest man⁠—and there were many. What delighted him was to observe the ins and outs of personality⁠—wherein he was especially sensitive and keen to the slightest rhythms. + 

One day Louis dropped in to see John Root in his office in the Montauk, a large office building recently completed by his firm. John was in his private room at work designing an interesting detail of some building. He drew with a rather heavy, rapid stroke, and chatted as he worked. Burnham came in. “John,” he said, “you ought to delegate that sort of thing. The only way to handle a big business is to delegate, delegate, delegate.” John sneered. Dan went out, in something of a huff. Louis saw the friction of ideas between the artist and the merchant; a significant mismating which made him ponder. And he watched through the years the growing of Daniel Hudson Burnham into a colossal merchandiser. Louis at that time had not grasped the significance of choice, much less its social and antisocial phases, the ramification of its effects as a cause, its complete explanation of things that seemed veiled. Dan Burnham had chosen. + 

John Root also had chosen, and he had a temper. He knew at least the value of social prestige. To be the recognized great artist, the center of acclaim and réclame was his goal. But John did not live to carry out his program to the full, though he had a full grown moral courage that in Burnham was rudimentary. He departed this vale of tears, and this best of all possible worlds, 15 January, 1891, at the age of forty-one, leaving in Louis’s heart and mind a deep sense of vacancy and loss. For John Root had it in him to be great, as Burnham had it in him to be big. John Wellborn Root in passing left a void in his wake. + 

For several years there had been talk to the effect that Chicago needed a grand opera house; but the several schemes advanced were too aristocratic and exclusive to meet with general approval. In 1885 there appeared the man of the hour, Ferdinand W. Peck, who declared himself a citizen, with firm belief in democracy⁠—whatever he meant by that; seemingly he meant the “peepul.” At any rate, he wished to give birth to a great hall within which the multitude might gather for all sorts of purposes including grand opera; and there were to be a few boxes for the haut monde. He had a disturbing fear, however, concerning acoustics, for he understood success in that regard was more or less of a gamble. So he sought out Dankmar Adler and confided. + 

The only man living, at the time, who had had the intelligence to discern that the matter of acoustics is not a science but an art⁠—as in fact all science is sterile until it rises to the level of art⁠—was Dankmar Adler, Louis’s partner. His scheme was simplicity itself. With his usual generosity he taught this very simple art to his partner, and together they had built a number of successful theatres. Hence Peck, the dreamer for the populace, sought Adler, the man of common sense. Between them they concocted a scheme, a daring experiment, which was this: To install in the old Exposition Building on the lake front, a vast temporary audience room, with a huge scenic stage, and to give therein a two-weeks season of grand opera, engaging artists of world fame. + 

This was done. The effect was thrilling. An audience of 6,200 persons saw and heard; saw in clear line of vision; heard, even to the faintest pianissimo. No reverberation, no echo⁠—the clear untarnished tone, of voice and instrument, reached all. The inference was obvious: a great permanent hall housed within a monumental structure must follow. This feeling marked the spirit of the Chicago of those days. + 

Ferdinand W. Peck, or Ferd Peck as he was generally known⁠—now “Commodore” at seventy-five, took, on his slim shoulders, the burden of an immense undertaking and “saw it through.” To him, therefore, all praise due a bold pioneer; an emotionally exalted advocate of that which he, a rich man, believed in his soul to be democracy. The theatre seating 4,250 he called the Auditorium, and the entire structure comprising theatre, hotel, office building, and tower he named the Auditorium Building⁠—nobody knows just why. Anyway it sounded better than “Grand Opera House.” + 

For four long years Dankmar Adler and his partner labored on this enormous, unprecedented work. Adler was Peck’s man. As to Louis he was rather dubious, but gradually came around⁠—conceding a superior aesthetic judgment⁠—which for him was in the nature of a miracle. Besides, Louis was young, only thirty when the task began, his partner forty-two, and Peck about forty; Burnham forty⁠—Root thirty-six. + 

Burnham was not pleased; nor was John Root precisely entranced. It is said the ancient Egyptians held a belief that man’s shadow is a fifth or residual element of his soul. About this time⁠—the earlier days⁠—Burnham’s shadow seemed to precede or follow him on all fours with its nose to the ground, as if perturbed. Mr. Peck had an able board of directors; among them was a man named Hale, William E. Hale. Mr. Hale’s shadow seemed also perturbed and quadruped. Then came our old friend of Tech and Columbia, Prof. William R. Ware, whose shadow seemed serene. Then all shadows disappeared from the scene. + 

The unremitting strain of this work doubtless shortened Adler’s life. He did not collapse at the end as Louis did; rather the effect was deadly and constitutional. Louis’s case was one of utter weariness. He went to central California. The climate irritated him. Then he moved to Southern California⁠—the climate irritated him. This was during January and February, 1890. He had friends in San Diego and stayed there awhile. There he learned, at four o’clock one morning, what a “slight” earthquake shock is like. Then on to New Orleans. That filthy town, as it then was, disillusioned him. Here he met Chicago friends. They persuaded him to go with them to Ocean Springs, Mississippi, eighty odd miles to the eastward on the eastern shore of Biloxi Bay. He was delighted and soothed by the novel journey through cypress swamp, wide placid marsh with the sails of ships mysteriously moving through the green, and the piney woods; Bay St. Louis, so brilliant; more piney woods, then Biloxi Bay’s wide crossing; then, as dusk neared, the little frame depot with its motley platform crowd; the crippled hacks, the drive to the old hotel, pigs and cows wandering familiarly in the streets, all passing into silhouette, for night comes fast. Ah, what delight, what luxury of peace within the velvety caressing air, the odor of the waters and the pines. + 

With daylight there revealed itself an undulating village all in bloom in softest sunshine, the gentle sparkle of the waters of a bay landlocked by Deer Island; a village sleeping as it had slept for generations with untroubled surface; a people soft-voiced, unconcerned, easy going, indolent; the general store, the post office, the barber shop, the meat market, on Main Street, sheltered by ancient live oaks; the saloon near the depot, the one-man jail in the middle of the street back of the depot; shell roads in the village, wagon trails leading away into the hummock land; no “enterprise,” no “progress,” no booming for a “Greater Ocean Springs,” no factories, no anxious faces, no glare of the dollar hunter, no land agents, no hustlers, no drummers, no white-staked lonely subdivisions. Peace, peace, and the joy of comrades, the lovely nights of sea breeze, black pool of the sky oversprinkled with stars brilliant and uncountable. + 

Here in this haven, this peaceful quiescence, Louis’s nerves, long taut with insomnia, yielded and renewed their life. In two weeks he was well and sound. By day interesting rambles, little journeys of discovery in nook and byway, a growing desire to buy, which speedily floated as gossip concerning these Chicago millionaires, to the sharp ears of a Michigan Yankee who had settled there a while before, some miles to the eastward. He called. He said his name was Newcomb Clark, that he had been Speaker of the House in his State, and a volunteer Colonel in the Civil War. + 

“I came here for my health. I’ve cleared part of my land and built a house, but my wife is lonely, so far from town; we need neighbors more than trees. I’ve a fine piece of woodland. It’s pretty wild, now. But if you clear it of pines and undergrowth the live oaks will show. You can set your houses close to the road that runs along the shore. I’ll make the price right. Would you folks like to see it?” + 

Us folks certainly would like to see it right away. The trail wound up and down, crossed a bayou, then followed the shore, ascended a low bluff, following its edge, passing by some second growth at the left which gradually changed character, increased in height and density. Louis was becoming excited. At last the Colonel stopped, rose in his light wagon, and with a broad gesture as though addressing the House, he said: “This is my land.” + 

Louis clasped his hand to his heart in an ecstasy of pain. What he saw was not merely woodland, but a stately forest, of amazing beauty, utterly wild. Noncommercial, it had remained for years untouched by the hand of man. Louis, breathless, worked his way as best he could through the dense undergrowth. He nearly lost his wits at what he discovered; immense rugged short-leaved pines, sheer eighty feet to their stiff gnarled crowns, graceful swamp pines, very tall, delicately plumed; slender vertical Loblolly pines in dense masses; patriarchal sweet gums and black gums with their younger broods; maples, hickories, myrtles; in the undergrowth, dogwoods, Halesias, sloe plums, buckeyes and azaleas, all in a riot of bloom; a giant magnolia grandiflora near the front⁠—all grouped and arranged as though by the hand of an unseen poet. Louis saw the strategy. He knew what he could do. He planned for two shacks or bungalows, 300 feet apart, with stables far back; also a system of development requiring years for fulfillment. + 

The Colonel made the price right, not over ten times what he paid. The deed ran thus: Beginning at a cross on a hickory tree at the beach, thence north, so many chains (a quarter mile), then east, etc., and south to the beach, with riparian rights, etc. The building work was let to a local carpenter. On 12 March, 1890, the comrades light-heartedly looking toward the future, made their way toward Chicago. + 

This reverie is written in memoriam. After eighteen years of tender care, the paradise, the poem of spring, Louis’s other self, was wrecked by a wayward West Indian hurricane. + 

’Twas here Louis did his finest, purest thinking. ’Twas here he saw the flow of life, that all life became a flowing for him, and so the thoughts the works of man. ’Twas here he saw the witchery of nature’s fleeting moods⁠—those dramas gauged in seconds. ’Twas here he gazed into the depths of that flowing, as the mystery of countless living functions moved silently into the mystery of palpable or imponderable form. ’Twas here Louis underwent that morphosis which is all there is of him, that spiritual illumination which knows no why and nowherefor, no hither and no hence, that peace which is life’s sublimation, timeless and spaceless. Yet he never lost his footing on the earth; never came the sense of immortality: One life surely is enough if lived and fulfilled: That we have yet to learn the true significance of man; to realize the destruction we have wrought; to come to a consciousness of our moral instability: For man is godlike enough did he but know it⁠—did he but choose, did he but remove his wrappings and his blinders, and say goodbye to his superstitions and his fear. + 

Arrived in Chicago, Louis at once went to work with his old-time vim. Important work was at hand in other cities as well as in Chicago. The steel-frame form of construction had come into use. It was first applied by Holabird & Roche in the Tacoma Office Building, Chicago; and in St. Louis, it was given first authentic recognition and expression in the exterior treatment of the Wainwright Building, a nine-story office structure, by Louis Sullivan’s own hand. He felt at once that the new form of engineering was revolutionary, demanding an equally revolutionary architectural mode. That masonry construction, in so far as tall buildings were concerned, was a thing of the past, to be forgotten, that the mind might be free to face and solve new problems in new functional forms. That the old ideas of superimposition must give way before the sense of vertical continuity. + 

Louis welcomed new problems as challenges and tests. He had worked out a theory that every problem contains and suggests its own solution. That a postulate which does not contain and suggest its solution is not in any sense a problem, but a misstatement of fact or an incomplete one. He had reached a conviction that this formula is universal in its nature and in application. In this spirit he continued his aggressive research in creative architecture, and, simultaneously⁠—it may seem a far cry⁠—his studies in the reality of man. For he had reached the advanced position that if one wished to solve the problem of man’s nature, he must seek the solution within man himself, that he would surely find the suggestion within man’s powers; but, that to arrive at a clear perception of the problem, he must first remove the accumulated mythical, legendary overlay, and then dissolve the cocoon which man had spun about himself with the thread of his imaginings. This, in considerable measure, he had succeeded in doing. + 

The work of the firm had taken Louis over a large part of the country, as Adler did not care much for travel. Louis, on the contrary, retained his boyhood delight in it, and took pains to do as much of it as possible by daylight. For there was fascination in the changing scene, in the novel aspects of locality. Thus in time, and on his own account, he had acquired a bird’s-eye view of the broad aspects of his native land, having been in all the States except Delaware, Oklahoma, and the northern parts of New England. And he came to wonder how many people could visualize their country as a whole, in all its superb length and breadth, in its varied topography, its changing flora, its mountain ranges, its hilly sections, its immense prairies and plains, vast rivers and lakes, deserts and rich soils, immense wealth within the soil and above and below it. He visualized its main rhythms as south to north, and north to south; that in crossing the continent at various parallels from east to west, or west to east, one obtained superb cross-sections. + 

And he dramatized the land and the seasons. + 

He saw, as a vast moving picture, Spring, coming from the Gulf, moving gently northward, its Vanguard awakening that which sleeps; with its joyous trumpets sounding the call of rejuvenescence, luring forth the multicolored blossoming of tree and shrub, and herb, the filigree of verdure growing into opulence; setting the plow in motion, and the sowing of crops; its vast frontage, sweeping northward, ever northward toward the arctic. + 

In its wake follows sober Summer, ripening the procreative ecstasy of Spring⁠—soon the waving grain, the laden bough, the hour of maturity of Nature’s lavish gifts to Man. + 

Then the menopause. + 

Then the reversal, as Winter begins its vast migration from the polar spaces. It, too, heralds its coming with trumpets, sonorous in major chords, as the woods burst into painted flames as the Vanguard moves on, creeping toward the south with its fires. + 

And then the modulation into melancholy; grey skies, leafless trees, brown faded stubble; a modulation into the minor mode, as winter trombones and violins sigh and moan with the winds over hill and dale, mountain and plain, and the frost glimmers in the moonlight, all sap sinks into the ground, miserere chants, shrill fifes announce sharp winds, snow flurries, as nature passes into somber resignation. Winter, in mass, moving south, ever southward, its Vanguard now lost in the blue waters; its serried ranks sifting snow flakes in the air till the sleeping earth lies still under beauteous coverlet of white within the vast brooding power that came from the north. + 

Again the menopause. + 

Again the call of Spring. + 

Again a menopause. + 

Again the flaming banners and the field of white. Northward and southward, southward and northward, moving in superb rhythms of alternate urging, o’er the expanse of what was once a virgin sleeping continent, now peopled by millions with one language in common, but no soul, a people unaware, their shadows rummaging like swine in the muck of cupidity. A people of enormous power⁠—and devil take the hindmost. A time of laissez faire and unto him that hath, if he can grab it, shall be given; with here and there a soul pleading for kindness, and peace, and sanity. + 

Louis, through the years, had become powerfully impressed by two great rhythms discernible alike in nature and in human affairs, as of the same essence. These two rhythms he called Growth and Decadence; and in 1886 he wished to say something about them. He wished, for the first time, to put his thoughts in writing; and a convention of The Western Association of Architects furnished the pretext and occasion. He called his essay “Inspiration.” The thesis fell into three parts: “Growths: A Spring Song”; “Decadence: An Autumn Reverie”; “The Infinite: A Song of the Sea”; the transition from part to part effected by two interludes; the thought sustained to the point of rhapsody, in utterance, lyric and dramatic, of flowing prose: The poet in solitude, alone with nature’s moods; first ecstasy, then sorrow and bewilderment, then tragic appeal that the sea might give answer: + 

Deny me not, Oh sea! for indeed I am come to thee as one aweary with long journeying returns expectant to his native land. + 

Deny me not that I should garner now among the drifted jetsam on this storm-wash shore, a fragmentary token of serenity divine. For I have been, long wistful, here beside thee, my one desire floating afar on meditation deep, as the helpless driftwood floats, and is borne by thee to the land. + 

With the exception of John Root, Paul Lautrup, Robert Craik McLean, then editor of The Inland Architect, now the Western Architect, and perchance a few others, the effusion did not take. The consensus of opinion was to the effect that “they” did not know what Louis was talking about and did not believe “he” did; that he was plainly crazy, for what had all this flowery stuff to do with architecture anyhow? Louis fully agrees with “them,” considering their point of view. As to McLean, the essay stuck in his red wild Canadian hair like a burr, through the years. Indeed, in a pious orgy as late as 1919, he, in his magazine, wrote this: “Some thirty-five years ago, at Chicago, a young man read a poetical essay before a group of architects, representative of the profession in the Middle West. Few understood the metaphor, but all recognized the fervor of aspiring and inspired genius that produced Louis H. Sullivan’s ‘Inspiration.’ He called this most remarkable blank versification a ‘Spring Song,’ and, though unconsciously, perhaps, it was his architectural thesis. His executions since that faraway time, with a remarkable measure of success, have been expressive of those fundamentals held by his hearers to be but abstract symbolisms.” + 

What delicious and inspired euphemisms! + 

Louis regards the work as a bit sophomoric, and over-exalted, but the thought is sound. Excepting specifications he did not write again for a number of years. He was too busy thinking, working; he preferred the world of action. Still, later on, among the murals of the Auditorium Theatre, were two in reminiscence, one bearing the legend “O, soft, melodious Springtime! Firstborn of life and love!” and its pendant, inscribed: “A great life has passed into the tomb, and there, awaits the requiem of Winter’s snows.” + 

The drawings of the Auditorium Building were now well under way. Louis’s heart went into this structure. It is old-time now, but its tower holds its head in the air, as a tower should. It was the culmination of Louis’s masonry “period.” + 

Referring again to the essay: Louis thought he would try it on the higher culture. So he sent a copy to his aged friend, Professor of Latin in the University of Michigan, who wrote in return: “The language is beautiful, but what on earth you are talking about I have not the faintest idea.” + 

Alas, an arm chair and a class room have been known to shut out the world. + 

Retrospect + 

In Chicago, the progress of the building art from 1880 onward was phenomenal. The earlier days had been given over to four-inch ashlar fronts, cylinder glass, and galvanized iron cornices, with cast iron columns and lintels below; with interior construction of wood joists, posts and girders; continuous and rule-of-thumb foundations of “dimension stone.” Plate glass and mirrors came from Belgium and France; rolled iron beams⁠—rare and precious⁠—came from Belgium; Portland cement from England. The only available American cements were “Rosendale,” “Louisville” and “Utica”⁠—called natural or hydraulic cements. Brownstone could be had from Connecticut, marble from Vermont, granite from Maine. Interior equipments such as heating, plumbing, drainage, and elevators or lifts, were to a degree, primitive. Of timber and lumber⁠—soft and hard woods⁠—there was an abundance. This general statement applies mainly to the business district, although there were some solid structures to be seen. And it should be noted that before the great fire, a few attempts had been made to build “fireproof” on the assumption that bare iron would resist fire. As to the residential districts, there were increasing indications of pride and display, for rich men were already being thrust up by the mass. The vast acreage and square mileage, however, consisted of frame dwellings; for, as has been said, Chicago was the greatest lumber market “in the world.” Beyond these inflammable districts were the prairies and the villages. + 

The Middle West at that time was dominantly agricultural; wheat, corn, other grains, hogs, while cattle and sheep roamed the unfenced ranges of the Far Western plains. Lumbering was a great industry with its attendant saw mills and planing mills, and there were immense lumber yards along the south branch of the Chicago River, which on occasion made gallant bonfires. And it so happened that, as Louis heard a banquet orator remark, in the spread eagle fashion of the day, Chicago had become “the center of a vast contiguous territory.” + 

Great grain elevators gave accent to the branches of the river. There was huge slaughter at the Stock Yards, as droves of steers, hogs and sheep moved bellowing, squealing, bleating or silently anxious as they crowded the runways to their reward. The agonized look in the eyes of a steer as his nose was pulled silently down tight to the floor ring, in useless protest, the blow on the crown of the skull; an endless procession of oncoming hogs hanging single file by the heel⁠—a pandemonium of terror⁠—one by one reaching the man in the blood-pit; the knife pushed into a soft throat then down, a crimson gush, a turn in the trolley, an object drops into the scalding trough, thence on its way to the coterie of skilled surgeons, who manipulate with amazing celerity. Then comes the next one and the next one and the next, as they have been coming ever since, and will come. + 

Surely the story of the hog is not without human interest. The beginning, a cute bit of activity, tugging in competition with brothers and sisters of the litter, pushing aside the titman, while she who brought these little ones to the light lies stretched full length on her side, twitching a corkscrew tail, flapping the one ear, grunting softly even musically as the little ones push and paw, heaving a sigh now and again, moving and replacing a foot, flies buzzing about thick as the barnyard odors; other hogs of the group moving waywardly in idle curiosity, grunting conversationally, commenting on things as they are; others asleep. The farmer comes at times, leans over the fence and speculates on hog cholera; for these are his precious ones; they are to transmute his corn. Mentally he estimates their weights; he regards the sucklings with earnest eyes; he will shave on Sunday next. To him this is routine, not that high comedy of rural tranquillity, in peace and contentment, seen by the poet’s eye, as he hangs his harp upon the willow and works the handle of the pump, and converses in city speech with the farmer of fiction and of fact, in the good old days, as the kitchen door opens suddenly and the farm wife throws out slops and disappears as quickly. Such were the home surroundings of the pretty white suckling, such were to form the background of his culture; all one family, crops and farmer, weather fair or untoward, big barn, little house, barnyard and fields, horses, ploughs, harrows, and their kin; cows, chickens, turkeys, ducks, all one family, with the little pig’s cousins that romped and played⁠—one perhaps to dream and go to Congress, others to dream and, when the time should come that their country needed them, would answer their country’s call, it may be to fill little holes in the ground where poppies grow and bloom. + 

Meanwhile the little white suckling grows to full pig stature, which signifies he has become a hog, with all a hog’s background of culture. He, too, answers his country’s call, though himself not directly bent on making the world safe for democracy. He is placed by his friends in a palace car with many of his kind, equally idealistic, equally educated. The laden train moves onward. At the sidings our hero is watered to save shrinkage, and through the open spaces between the slats⁠—the train at rest⁠—he gazes at a new sort of human being, men doing this and that; they, too, answering their country’s call, at so much per call, and he wonders at a huge black creature passing by grunting most horribly. Again the train moves on, stops, and moves on. In due time what was once the pink and white suckling, meets the man with the knife. But he is not murdered, he is merely slaughtered. Yet his earthly career is not ended; for soon he goes forth again into the work⁠—much subdivided it is true⁠—to seek out the tables of rich and poor alike, there to be welcomed and rejoiced in as benefactor of mankind. Thus may a hog rise to the heights of altruism. It does not pay to assume lowly origins as finalities, for it is shown that good may come out of the sty, as out of the manger. Thus the life story of the hog gains in human interest and glory, as we view his transfiguration into a higher form of life, wherein he is not dead but sleepeth. And yet, upon reflection, what about other pink and whites at the breast today? Are they to grow up within a culture which shall demand of them their immolation? or shall they not? + 

Inasmuch as all distinguished strangers, upon arrival in the city, at once were taken to the Stock Yards, not to be slaughtered, it is true, but to view with salutary wonder the prodigious goings on, and to be crammed with statistics and oratory concerning how Chicago feeds the world; and inasmuch as the reporter’s first query would be: “How do you like Chicago?” Next, invariably: “Have you seen the Stock Yards?” and the third, possibly: “Have you viewed our beautiful system of parks and boulevards?” it may be assumed that in the cultural system prevailing in those days of long ago, the butcher stood at the peak of social eminence, while slightly below him were ranged the overlords of grain, lumber, and merchandising. Of manufacturing, ordinarily so called, there was little, and the units were scattering and small. + 

Then, presto, as it were, came a magic change. The city had become the center of a great radiating system of railways, the lake traffic changed from sail to steam. The population had grown to five hundred thousand by 1880, and reached a million in 1890; and this, from a pitiful 4,000 in 1837, at which time, by charter, the village became a city. Thus Chicago grew and flourished by virtue of pressure from without⁠—the pressure of forest, field and plain, the mines of copper, iron and coal, and the human pressure of those who crowded in upon it from all sides seeking fortune. Thus the year 1880 may be set as the zero hour of an amazing expansion, for by that time the city had recovered from the shock of the panic of 1873. Manufacturing expanded with incredible rapidity, and the building industry took on an organizing definition. With the advance in land values, and a growing sense of financial stability, investors awakened to opportunity, and speculators and promoters were at high feast. The tendency in commercial buildings was toward increasing stability, durability, and height, with ever bettering equipment. The telephone appeared, and electric lighting systems. Iron columns and girders were now encased in fireproofing materials, hydraulic elevators came into established use, superseding those operated by steam or gas. Sanitary appliances kept pace with the rest. + 

The essential scheme of construction, however, was that of solid masonry enclosing-and-supporting walls. The Montauk Block had reached the height of nine stories and was regarded with wonder. Then came the Auditorium Building with its immense mass of ten stories, its tower, weighing thirty million pounds, equivalent to twenty stories⁠—a tower of solid masonry carried on a “floating” foundation; a great raft 67 by 100 feet. Meanwhile Burnham and Root had prepared plans for a sixteen-story solid masonry office building to be called the “Monadnock.” As this was to be a big jump from nine stories, construction was postponed until it should be seen whether or not the Auditorium Tower would go to China of its own free will. The great tower, however, politely declined to go to China, or rudely rack the main building, because it had been trained by its architects concerning the etiquette of the situation, and, like a good and gentle tower, quietly responded to a manipulation of pig iron within its base. Then the “Monadnock” went ahead; an amazing cliff of brickwork, rising sheer and stark, with a subtlety of line and surface, a direct singleness of purpose, that gave one the thrill of romance. It was the first and last word of its kind; a great word in its day, but its day vanished almost over night, leaving it to stand as a symbol, as a solitary monument, marking the high tide of masonry construction as applied to commercial structures. + 

The Bessemer process of making “mild” steel had for some time been in operation in the Pennsylvania mills, but the output had been limited to steel rails; structural shapes were still rolled out of iron. The Bessemer process itself was revolutionary, and the story of its early trials and tribulations, its ultimate success, form a special chapter in the bible of modern industry. + 

Now in the process of things we have called a “flow,” and which is frequently spoken of as evolution⁠—a word fast losing its significance⁠—the tall commercial building arose from the pressure of land values, the land values from pressure of population, the pressure of population from external pressure, as has been said. But an office building could not rise above stairway height without a means of vertical transportation. Thus pressure was brought on the brain of the mechanical engineer whose creative imagination and industry brought forth the passenger elevator, which when fairly developed as to safety, speed and control, removed the limit from the number of stories. But it was inherent in the nature of masonry construction, in its turn to fix a new limit of height, as its ever thickening walls ate up ground and floor space of ever increasing value, as the pressure of population rapidly increased. + 

Meanwhile the use of concrete in heavy construction was spreading, and the application of railroad iron to distribute concentrated loads on the foundations, the character of which became thereby radically changed from pyramids to flat affairs, thus liberating basement space; but this added basement space was of comparatively little value owing to deficiency in headroom due to the shallowness of the street sewers. Then joined in the flow an invention of English origin, an automatic pneumatic ejector, which rendered basement depths independent of sewer levels. But to get full value from this appliance, foundations would have to be carried much deeper, in new buildings. With heavy walls and gravity retaining walls, the operation would be hazardous and of doubtful value. It became evident that the very tall masonry office building was in its nature economically unfit as ground values steadily rose. Not only did its thick walls entail loss of space and therefore revenue, but its unavoidably small window openings could not furnish the proper and desirable ratio of glass area to rentable floor area. + 

Thus arose a crisis, a seeming impasse. What was to do? Architects made attempts at solutions by carrying the outer spans of floor loads on cast columns next to the masonry piers, but this method was of small avail, and of limited application as to height. The attempts, moreover, did not rest on any basic principle, therefore the squabblings as to priority are so much piffle. The problem of the tall office building had not been solved, because the solution had not been sought within the problem itself⁠—within its inherent nature. And it may here be remarked after years of observation, that the truth most difficult to grasp, especially by the intellectuals, is this truth: That every problem of whatsoever name or nature, contains and suggests its own solution; and, the solution reached, it is invariably found to be simple in nature, basic, and clearly allied to common sense. This is what Monsieur Clopet really meant when he said to Louis in his Paris student days: “Our demonstrations will be such as to admit of no exception.” Monsieur Clopet carried the principle no further than his mathematics, but Louis saw in a flash the immensity and minuteness of its application, and what a world of research lay before him; for with the passing of the flash he saw dimly as through a veil, and it needed long years for the vision to reclarify and find its formula. + 

As a rule, inventions⁠—which are truly solutions⁠—are not arrived at quickly. They may seem to appear suddenly, but the groundwork has usually been long in preparing. It is of the essence of this philosophy that man’s needs are balanced by his powers. That as the needs increase the powers increase⁠—that is one reason why they are herein called powers. + 

So in this instance, the Chicago activity in erecting high buildings finally attracted the attention of the local sales managers of Eastern rolling mills; and their engineers were set at work. The mills for some time past had been rolling those structural shapes that had long been in use in bridge work. Their own ground work thus was prepared. It was a matter of vision in salesmanship based upon engineering imagination and technique. Thus the idea of a steel frame which should carry all the load was tentatively presented to Chicago architects. + 

The passion to sell is the impelling power in American life. Manufacturing is subsidiary and adventitious. But selling must be based on a semblance of service⁠—the satisfaction of a need. The need was there, the capacity to satisfy was there, but contact was not there. Then came the flash of imagination which saw the single thing. The trick was turned; and there swiftly came into being something new under the sun. For the true steel-frame structure stands unique in the flowing of man and his works; a brilliant material example of man’s capacity to satisfy his needs through the exercise of his natural powers. The tall steel-frame structure may have its aspects of beneficence; but so long as a man may say: “I shall do as I please with my own,” it presents opposite aspects of social menace and danger. For such is the complexity, the complication, the intricacy of modern feudal society; such is its neurasthenia, its hyperesthesia, its precarious instability, that not a move may be made in any one of its manifold activities, according to its code, without creating risk and danger in its wake; as will be, further on, elaborated. + 

The architects of Chicago welcomed the steel frame and did something with it. The architects of the East were appalled by it and could make no contribution to it. In fact, the tall office buildings fronting the narrow streets and lanes of lower New York were provincialisms, gross departures from the law of common sense. For the tall office building loses its validity when the surroundings are uncongenial to its nature; and when such buildings are crowded together upon narrow streets or lanes they become mutually destructive. The social significance of the tall building is in finality its most important phase. In and by itself, considered solus so to speak, the lofty steel frame makes a powerful appeal to the architectural imagination where there is any. Where imagination is absent and its place usurped by timid pedantry the case is hopeless. The appeal and the inspiration lie, of course, in the element of loftiness, in the suggestion of slenderness and aspiration, the soaring quality as of a thing rising from the earth as a unitary utterance, Dionysian in beauty. The failure to perceive this simple truth has resulted in a throng of monstrosities, snobbish and maudlin or brashly insolent and thick lipped in speech; in either case a defamation and denial of man’s finest powers. + 

In Chicago the tall office building would seem to have arisen spontaneously, in response to favoring physical conditions, and the economic pressure as then sanctified, combined with the daring of promoters. + 

The construction and mechanical equipment soon developed into engineering triumphs. Architects, with a considerable measure of success, undertook to give a commensurate external treatment. The art of design in Chicago had begun to take on a recognizable character of its own. The future looked bright. The flag was in the breeze. Yet a small white cloud no bigger than a man’s hand was soon to appear above the horizon. The name of this cloud was eighteen hundred and ninety-three. Following the little white cloud was a dark dim cloud, more like a fog. The name of the second cloud was Baring Brothers. + 

During this period there was well under way the formation of mergers, combinations and trusts in the industrial world. The only architect in Chicago to catch the significance of this movement was Daniel Burnham, for in its tendency toward bigness, organization, delegation, and intense commercialism, he sensed the reciprocal workings of his own mind. + 

In the turmoil of this immense movement railroads were scuttled and reorganized, speculation became rampant, credit was leaving terra firma, forests were slaughtered, farmers were steadily pushing westward, and into the Dakotas; immense mineral wealth had been unearthed in Colorado, South Dakota, Northern Wisconsin, Peninsular Michigan, the Mesaba Range in Minnesota. The ambitious trader sought to corner markets. The “corner” had become an ideal, a holy grail. Monopoly was in the air. Wall Street was a seething cauldron. The populace looked on, with open-mouthed amazement and approval, at the mighty men who wrought these wonders; called them Captains of Industry, Kings of this, Barons of that, Merchant Princes, Railroad Magnates, Wizards of Finance, or, as Burnham said one day to Louis: “Think of a man like Morgan, who can take a man like Cassatt in the palm of his hand and set him on the throne of the Pennsylvania!” And thus, in its way, the populace sang hymns to its heroes. + 

The people rejoiced. Each individual rejoiced in envious admiration, and all rejoiced in the thought that these great men, these mighty men, had, with few and negligible exceptions, risen from the ranks of the common people: That this one began as a telegraph operator at a lonely way-station, and this one was boss of a section gang on such and such a railroad; another started in life as a brakeman; that one was clerk in a country store; this one came to our hospitable shores as a penniless immigrant; that one was a farmer boy; and their hymn arose and rang shimmering as a paean to their mighty ones, and their cry went up to their God, even as a mighty anthem, lifting up its head to proclaim to all the world that this, their Country, was vastly more than the land of the free and the home of the brave; it was the noble land of equal opportunity for all; the true democracy for which mankind has been waiting through the centuries in blood and tears, in hope deferred. This, they cried, as one voice, is the Hospitable Land that welcomes the stranger at its gates. This is the great Democracy where all men are equal and free. All this they sang gladly as they moved up the runways. + 

Thus the Land was stirring and quivering in impulses, wave upon wave. The stream of immigration was enormous, spreading over vast areas, burrowing in the mines, or clinging to the cities. Chicago had passed St. Louis in population and was proud. Its system of building had become known as the “Chicago Construction.” It was pushing its structures higher and higher, until the Masonic Temple by John Root had raised its head far into the air, and the word “skyscraper” came into use. Chicago was booming. It had become a powerful magnet. Its people had one dream in common: That their city should become the world’s metropolis. There was great enthusiasm and public spirit. So things stood, in the years 1890, 1891 and 1892. John Root had said to Louis: “You take your art too seriously.” Burnham had said to Louis: “It is not good policy to go much above the general level of intelligence.” Burnham had also said: “See! Louis, how beautiful the moon is, now, overhead, how tender. Something in her beauty suggests tears to me.” + 

And Chicago rolled on and roared by day and night except only in its stillest hours toward dawn. There seemed to reside in its dreams before the dawn during these years something not wholly material, something in the underlying thoughts of men that aspired to reach above the general level of intelligence and the raucous hue and cry. At least Louis thought so. Then, as now, was the great Lake with its far horizon, the sweeping curve of its southern shore, its many moods, which every day he viewed from his tower windows. And there was the thought, the seeming presence of the prairies and the far-flung hinterland. In such momentary trance his childhood would return to him with its vivid dream of power, a dream which had now grown to encompass the world; from such reverie he would perchance awaken to some gossip of Adler, standing by, concerning the inside story of some of the city’s great men, all of which was grist for Louis’s mill, for Adler was quite literal when he told these anecdotes, and Louis listened keenly to them, and learned. The two frequently lunched together. Shop talk was taboo. But they did not talk about the coming World’s Fair, as authorized by Act of Congress in 1890. It was deemed fitting by all the people that the four hundredth anniversary of the discovery of America by one Christopher Columbus, should be celebrated by a great World Exposition, which should spaciously reveal to the last word the cultural status of the peoples of the Earth; and that the setting for such display should be one of splendor, worthy of its subject. + 

Chicago was ripe and ready for such an undertaking. It had the required enthusiasm and the will. It won out in a contest between the cities. The prize was now in hand. It was to be the city’s crowning glory. A superb site on the lake adjoined the southern section of the city. This site was so to be transformed and embellished by the magic of American prowess, particularly in its architectural aspects, as to set forth the genius of the land in that great creative art. It was to be a dream city, where one might revel in beauty. It was to be called The White City by the Lake. + 

Now arose above the horizon the small white cloud. It came from eastward. It came borne upon the winds of predestination. Who could fancy that a harmless white cloud might cast a white shadow? Who could forecast the shape of that shadow? It was here that one man’s unbalanced mind spread a gauze-like pall of fatality. That one man’s unconscious stupor in bigness, and in the droll fantasy of hero-worship, did his best and his worst, according to his lights, which were dim except the one projector by the harsh light of which he saw all things illuminated and grown bombastically big in Chauvinistic outlines. Here was to be the test of American culture, and here it failed. Dreamers may dream; but of what avail the dream if it be but a dream of misinterpretation? If the dream, in such a case, rise not in vision far above the general level of intelligence, and prophesy through the medium of clear thinking, true interpretation⁠—why dream at all? Why not rest content as children of Barnum, easy in the faith that one of “them” is born every minute. Such in effect was the method adopted in practice while the phrase-makers tossed their slogans to and fro. + 

At the beginning it was tentatively assumed that the firm of Burnham & Root might undertake the work in its entirety. The idea was sound in principle⁠—one hand, one great work⁠—a superb revelation of America’s potency⁠—an oration, a portrayal, to arouse that which was hidden, to call it forth into the light. But the work of ten years cannot be done in two. It would require two years to grasp and analyze the problem and effect a synthesis. Less than three years were available for the initiation and completion of the work entire, ready for the installation of exhibits. The idea was in consequence dismissed. As a matter of fact there was not an architect in the land equal to the undertaking. No veteran mind seasoned to the strategy and tactics involved in a wholly successful issue. Otherwise there might have arisen a gorgeous Garden City, reflex of one mind, truly interpreting the aspirations and the heart’s desire of the many, every detail carefully considered, every function given its due form, with the sense of humanity at its best, a suffusing atmosphere; and within the Garden City might be built another city to remain and endure as a memorial, within the parkland by the blue waters, oriented toward the rising sun, a token of a covenant of things to be, a symbol of the city’s basic significance as offspring of the prairie, the lake and the portage. + 

But “hustle” was the word. Make it big, make it stunning, knock ’em down! The cry was well meant as things go. + 

So in the fall of 1890 John Root was officially appointed consulting architect, and Daniel Burnham, Chief of Construction. + 

Later, with the kindly assistance of Edward T. Jefferey, Chairman of the Committee on Buildings and Grounds, Burnham selected five architects from the East and five from the West, ten in all. Burnham and Jefferey loved each other dearly. The thought of one was the thought of both, as it were⁠—sometimes. Burnham had believed that he might best serve his country by placing all of the work exclusively with Eastern architects; solely, he averred, on account of their surpassing culture. With exquisite delicacy and tact, Jefferey, at a meeting of the Committee, persuaded Daniel, come to Judgment, to add the Western men to the list of his nominations. + 

A gathering of these architects took place in February, 1891. After an examination of the site, which by this time was dreary enough in its state of raw upheaval, the company retired for active conference. John Root was not there. In faith he could not come. He had made his rendezvous the month before. Grace-land was now his home. Soon above him would be reared a Celtic cross. Louis missed him sadly. Who now would take up the foils he had dropped on his way, from hands that were once so strong? There was none! The shadow of the white cloud had already fallen. + 

The meeting came to order. Richard Hunt, acknowledged dean of his profession, in the chair, Louis Sullivan acting as secretary. Burnham arose to make his address of welcome. He was not facile on his feet, but it soon became noticeable that he was progressively and grossly apologizing to the Eastern men for the presence of their benighted brethren of the West. + 

Dick Hunt interrupted: “Hell, we haven’t come out here on a missionary expedition. Let’s get to work.” Everyone agreed. Burnham came out of his somnambulistic vagary and joined in. He was keen enough to understand that “Uncle Dick” had done him a needed favor. For Burnham learned slowly but surely, within the limits of his understanding. + 

A layout was submitted to the Board as a basis for discussion. It was rearranged on two axes at right angles. The buildings were disposed accordingly. By an amicable arrangement each architect was given such building as he preferred, after consultation. The meeting then adjourned. + 

The story of the building of the Fair is foreign to the purpose of this narrative, which is to deal with its more serious aspects, implications and results. Suffice it that Burnham performed in a masterful way, displaying remarkable executive capacity. He became open-minded, just, magnanimous. He did his great share. + 

The work completed, the gates thrown open 1 May, 1893, the crowds flowed in from every quarter, continued to flow throughout a fair-weather summer and a serenely beautiful October. Then came the end. The gates were closed. + 

These crowds were astonished. They beheld what was for them an amazing revelation of the architectural art, of which previously they in comparison had known nothing. To them it was a veritable Apocalypse, a message inspired from on high. Upon it their imagination shaped new ideals. They went away, spreading again over the land, returning to their homes, each one of them carrying in the soul the shadow of the white cloud, each of them permeated by the most subtle and slow-acting of poisons; an imperceptible miasm within the white shadow of a higher culture. A vast multitude, exposed, unprepared, they had not had time nor occasion to become immune to forms of sophistication not their own, to a higher and more dexterously insidious plausibility. Thus they departed joyously, carriers of contagion, unaware that what they had beheld and believed to be truth was to prove, in historic fact, an appalling calamity. For what they saw was not at all what they believed they saw, but an imposition of the spurious upon their eyesight, a naked exhibitionism of charlatanry in the higher feudal and domineering culture, conjoined with expert salesmanship of the materials of decay. Adventitiously, to make the stage setting complete, it happened by way of apparent but unreal contrast that the structure representing the United States Government was of an incredible vulgarity, while the building at the peak of the north axis, stationed there as a symbol of “The Great State of Illinois” matched it as a lewd exhibit of drooling imbecility and political debauchery. The distribution at the northern end of the grounds of many state and foreign headquarters relieved the sense of stark immensity. South of them, and placed on the border of a small lake, stood the Palace of the Arts, the most vitriolic of them all⁠—the most impudently thievish. The landscape work, in its genial distribution of lagoons, wooded islands, lawns, shrubbery and plantings, did much to soften an otherwise mechanical display; while far in the southeast corner, floating in a small lagoon or harbor, were replicas of the three caravels of Columbus, and on an adjacent artificial mound a representation of the Convent of La Rabida. Otherwhere there was no evidence of Columbus and his daring deed, his sufferings, and his melancholy end. No keynote, no dramatic setting forth of that deed which, recently, has aroused some discussion as to whether the discovery of America had proven to be a blessing or a curse to the world of mankind. + 

Following the white cloud, even as a companion in iniquity, came the gray cloud. It overwhelmed the land with a pall of desolation. It dropped its blinding bolt. Its hurricane swept away the pyramided paper structures of speculation. Its downpour washed away fancied gains; its raindrops, loaded with a lethal toxin, fell alike upon the unjust and the just, as in retribution, demanding an atonement in human sacrifice. The thunder ceased to roll, the rain became a mist and cleared, the storm subsided, all was still. Overhead hung the gray cloud of panic from horizon to horizon. Slowly it thinned, in time it became translucent, vanished, revealing the white cloud which, in platoons, unseen, had overrun the blue. Now again shone the sun. “Prosperity” awakened from its torpor, rubbed its eyes and prepared for further follies. + 

It is said that history repeats itself. This is not so. What is mistaken for repetition is the recurrent feudal rhythm of exaltation and despair. Its progressive wavelike movement in action is implicit in the feudal thought, and inevitable, and so long as the feudal thought holds dominion in the minds of men, just so long and no longer will calamity follow upon the appearance of prosperity. The end is insanity, the crumbling and the passing of the race, for life is ever saying to Man: “If you wish to be destroyed I will destroy you.” The white cloud is the feudal idea. The gray cloud, the nemesis contained within that idea. The feudal idea is dual, it holds to the concept of good and evil. The democratic idea is single, integral. It holds to the good alone. Its faith lies in the beneficence of its power, in its direct appeal to life. Its vision reveals an inspiring vista of accomplishment. Its common sense recognizes man as by nature sound to the core, and kindly. It as clearly sees, in the feudal scheme, a continuous warfare⁠—as well in so-called times of peace as in sanguinary battle. It views all this as lunacy, for its own word is kindness. It bases its faith upon the heart in preference to the intellect, though knowing well the power of the latter when controlled. It knows that the intellect, alone, runs amuck, and performs unspeakable cruelties; that the heart alone is divine. For it is the heart that welcomes Life and would cherish it, would shield it against the cannibalism of the intellect. + 

From the height of its Columbian Ecstacy, Chicago drooped and subsided with the rest, in a common sickness, the nausea of overstimulation. This in turn passed, toward the end of the decade, and the old game began again with intensified fury, to come to a sudden halt in 1907. There are those who say this panic was artificial and deliberate, that the battle of the saber-toothed tigers and the mastodons was on. + 

Meanwhile the virus of the World’s Fair, after a period of incubation in the architectural profession and in the population at large, especially the influential, began to show unmistakable signs of the nature of the contagion. There came a violent outbreak of the Classic and the Renaissance in the East, which slowly spread westward, contaminating all that it touched, both at its source and outward. The selling campaign of the bogus antique was remarkably well managed through skillful publicity and propaganda, by those who were first to see its commercial possibilities. The market was ripe, made so through the hebetude of the populace, big business men, and eminent educators alike. By the time the market had been saturated, all sense of reality was gone. In its place had come deep-seated illusions, hallucinations, absence of pupillary reaction to light, absence of knee-reaction⁠—symptoms all of progressive cerebral meningitis: The blanketing of the brain. Thus Architecture died in the land of the free and the home of the brave⁠—in a land declaring its fervid democracy, its inventiveness, its resourcefulness, its unique daring, enterprise and progress. Thus did the virus of a culture, snobbish and alien to the land, perform its work of disintegration; and thus ever works the pallid academic mind, denying the real, exalting the fictitious and the false, incapable of adjusting itself to the flow of living things, to the reality and the pathos of man’s follies, to the valiant hope that ever causes him to aspire, and again to aspire; that never lifts a hand in aid because it cannot; that turns its back upon man because that is its tradition; a culture lost in ghostly mésalliance with abstractions, when what the world needs is courage, common sense and human sympathy, and a moral standard that is plain, valid and livable. + 

The damage wrought by the World’s Fair will last for half a century from its date, if not longer. It has penetrated deep into the constitution of the American mind, effecting there lesions significant of dementia. + 

Meanwhile the architectural generation immediately succeeding the Classic and Renaissance merchants, are seeking to secure a special immunity from the inroads of common sense, through a process of vaccination with the lymph of every known European style, period and accident, and to this all-around process, when it breaks out, is to be added the benediction of good taste. Thus we have now the abounding freedom of Eclecticism, the winning smile of taste, but no architecture. For Architecture, be it known, is dead. Let us therefore lightly dance upon its grave, strewing roses as we glide. Indeed let us gather, in procession, in the night, in the rain, and make soulful, fluent, epicene orations to the living dead we neuters eulogize. + 

Surely the profession has made marvelous improvements in trade methods, over the old-fashioned way. There is now a dazzling display of merchandise, all imported, excepting to be sure our own cherished colonial, which maintains our Anglo-Saxon tradition in its purity. We have Tudor for colleges and residences; Roman for banks, and railway stations and libraries⁠—or Greek if you like⁠—some customers prefer the Ionic to the Doric. We have French, English and Italian Gothic, Classic and Renaissance for churches. In fact we are prepared to satisfy, in any manner of taste. Residences we offer in Italian or Louis Quinze. We make a small charge for alterations and adaptations. Our service we guarantee as exceptional and exclusive. Our importations are direct. We have our own agents abroad. We maintain also a commercial department, in which a selective taste is not so necessary. Its province is to solve engineering problems of all kinds, matters of cost, income, maintenance, taxes, renewals, depreciation, obsolescence; and as well maintenance of contact, sales pressure, sales resistance, flotations, and further matters of the sort. We maintain also an industrial department in which leading critics unite in saying we have made most significant departures in design. These structures however, are apart from our fashionable trade. Our business is founded and maintained on an ideal service, and a part of that service we believe to consist in an elevation of the public taste, a setting forth of the true standards of design, in pure form, a system of education by example, the gradual formation of a background of culture for the masses. In this endeavor we have the generous support of the architectural schools, of the colleges and universities, of men of wealth, and of those whose perspicacity has carried them to the pinnacle of eminence in finance, industry, commerce, education and statesmanship. Therefore we feel that we are in thorough accord with the spirit of our times as expressed in its activities, in its broad democratic tolerance, and its ever-youthful enthusiasms. It is this sense of solidity, solidarity and security that makes us bold, inspires us with the high courage to continue in our self-imposed task. We look for our reward solely in the conviction of duty done; our profound belief that we are preparing the way for the coming generation through the power of our example, our counsel and our teachings, to the end that they may express, better than we ourselves have done, the deep, the sincere, the wholesome aspirations of our people and of our land, as yet not fully articulated by the higher culture, in spite of our best efforts toward that end. This task we are quite aware we must eventually leave to the young who are crowding upon us, and we wish them joy in their great adventure when we relinquish our all. + 

In the better aspects of eclecticism and taste, that is to say, in those aspects which reveal a certain depth of artistic feeling and a physical sense of materials, rather than mere scene-painting or archaeology, however clever, there is to be discovered a hope and a forecast. For it is within the range of possibilities, one may even go so far as to say probabilities, that out of the very richness and multiplicity of the architectural phenomena called “styles” there may arise within the architectural mind a perception growing slowly, perhaps suddenly, into clearness, that architecture in its material nature and in its animating essence is a plastic art. This truth, so long resisted because of the limited intellectual boundaries and deficient sympathy of academic training, must eventually prevail because founded upon a culture of common sense and human recognition. Its power is as gentle and as irresistible as that of the Springtime⁠—to which it may be likened, or to sunrise following the night and its stars, and herein lies beneath the surface and even on the surface the inspiration of our High Optimism, with its unceasing faith in man as free spirit! as creator, possessed of a physical sense indistinguishable from the spiritual, and of innate plastic powers whose fecundity and beneficence surpass our present scope of imagination. Dogma and rule of the dead are passing. The Great Modern Inversion, for which the world of mankind has been preparing purblindly through the ages, is now under way in its worldwide awakening. The thought of the multitudes is changing, withdrawing its consent, its acquiescence; the dream of the multitudes is metamorphosing, philosophy is becoming human and immersing itself in the flow of life; science is pushing the spectres back into the invisible whence they came. The world is in travail, smeared with blood, amid the glint of bayonets; the feudal idea has reached the pitch of its insanity, yet by the way of compensation the veils are lifting rapidly, all the veils of hypocrisy and sinister intent, all the veils of plausible, insidious speech, of propaganda, of perfidy, of betrayal. It requires courage to remain steadfast in faith in the presence of such pollution. Yet it is precisely such courage that marks man in his power as free spirit. For beneath this corruption the enlightened one perceives the everlasting aspirations of mankind, the ever-yearning heart in its search for kindness, peace and a safe anchorage within its world, and to such, the compassionate one gives out words of encouragement and prophecy, even as the gray clouds hover from horizon to horizon; a prophecy that this cloud shall melt away, and reveal aloft a shining white cloud, in the blue, announcing the new man and the new culture of faith. + 

It seems fitting, therefore, that this work should close with the same child-dream in which it began. The dream of a beauteous, beneficent power, which came when, winter past, the orchards burst into bloom, and the song of spring was heard in the land. + 

That dream has never ceased. That faith has never wearied. With the passage of the years, the dream, the faith, ever expanding in power, became all-inclusive; and with the progress of the dream and the faith, there emerged in confirmation a vague outline, growing year after year more luminous and clear. When the golden hour tolled, all mists departed, and there shone forth as in a vision, the reality of man, as Free Spirit, as Creator, as Container of illimitable powers, for the joy and the peace of mankind. + 

It was this unseen nearby presence, messenger of Life in its flowing, that sang its song of spring to the child, and the child heard what no one heard; the child saw what no one saw. + 

It is questionable how much of social value one who has had access to the treasures of the past, access to the best and the worst in the thought of his day, may leave behind him in his fruitage, as a quantum⁠—an idea. + 

This narrator agrees, in such connection, that the initial instinct of the child, as set forth, is the basis of all fruitful ideas, and that the growth in power of such ideas is in itself a work of instinct; that, if it has been convincingly shown that instinct is primary and intellect secondary in all the great works of man, this portrayal is justified. + 

It is further the belief of this narrator, in this connection, that if he has succeeded in setting clearly forth the basic fruitful power of the idea permeating and dominating this narrative of a life-experience, physical and spiritual, he has done well in thus making a record in words to be pondered in the heart. + 