Auditorium Building: Column Capital and Portion of a Frieze
Adler & Sullivan, Architects
1887–89
Medium
Painted wood
Dimensions
Capital: 25.5 × 42 × 15 cm (10 1/16 × 16 9/16 × 5 15/16 in.); Frieze: 28 × 70 × 4.2 cm (11 1/16 × 27 9/16 × 1 11/16 in.)
Classification
architectural fragment
Department
Architecture and Design
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
35464
About the Artist
Adler & Sullivan, Architects · 1883–1896
Adler & Sullivan was the Chicago architectural partnership that laid the conceptual and structural foundations for the modern American skyscraper. Dankmar Adler (1844–1900), a German-born engineer celebrated for his mastery of building acoustics and structural systems, hired Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) in 1879; the two became full partners in 1883. Sullivan had trained at the Massachusetts Institut...