Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room: Stencil
1893/94
Medium
Oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Dimensions
145.5 × 307.5 cm (57 1/4 × 121 in.)
Classification
architecture
Department
Architecture and Design
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
37281
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The Chicago Stock Exchange building was one of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan’s most distinctive commercial projects. The centerpiece of this 13-story structure was the trading room—a dramatic, double-height space filled with Sullivan’s lush ornament and the multicolored, stenciled wall covering seen here. After an unsuccessful preservation battle in the late 1960s, the building was demolished, but the Art Institute was able to acquire the monumental entry arch, now located in a garden next to...
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...