The Chicago Auditorium Building: Adler and Sullivan's Architecture and the City (Chicago Architecture and Urbanism)
Description
Winner of the Alice Davis Hitchcock Award from the Society of Architectural Historians
When the magnificent Auditorium Building opened on Chicago's Michigan Avenue in December 1889, it marked Chicago's emergence both as the leading city of the Midwest and as a metropolis of international stature. In this lavishly illustrated book, Joseph M. Siry explores not just the architectural history of the Auditorium Building but also the crucial role it played in Chicago's social history. Covering the Auditorium from the early design stage to its opening, its later renovations, its links to culture and politics in Chicago, and its influence on later Adler and Sullivan works (including the Schiller Building and the Chicago Stock Exchange Building), this volume recounts the fascinating tale of a building that helped to define a city and an era.
Praise for The Chicago Auditorium Building: Adler and Sullivan's Architecture and the City (Chicago Architecture and Urbanism)
"Siry writes history with a storyteller's gift. His book is often dense with detail, but he weaves even arcane references as part of a broad narrative that conveys the complex relationships that were the reality of the late 19th-century American city. The hefty tome sports the extensive visual documentation expected of a book focused on an architectural gem, and Siry makes the most of it, deftly weaving these illustrations into the course of his text."
— Edward Keegan
"This meticulous, abundantly illustrated, and wide-ranging 580-page chronicle of the building's funding, design, and construction is as much a social history as an architectural one. . . . Siry also details (in an approach that is somewhat refreshing for an art historian) the building's triumph in engineering as well as in aesthetic design."
— Atlantic Monthly
"Where the book really shines . . . is Siry's reconstruction of the social and historical context that gave rise to and helped guide the development of the Auditorium Building. This makes the text a true find for architectural historians and worthwhile reading for a much broader audience. . . . The result is a book with a scope and detail to match both the magnificence of the building and the depth of thought that went into its conception, design, and construction."
— Brendan Powers
