English: Wainwright Building, 709 Chestnut Street. Adler, Sullivan, and Ramsey, Architects. Vertical photograph of tall building with exterior sculptural relief decoration and a cornice. Louis Sullivan’s masterpiece, The Wainwright Building, was built in 1891, heralding a new age in modern skyscrapers. Faced with the problem of incorporating design that was never intended for tall buildings into skyscrapers, architects were struggling on how to treat the new construction innovation of the skyscraper. Sullivan solved this problem by treating the tall office building as a column, evidenced by the overt “base, shaft, cornice” design in the Wainwright Building. Sullivan’s creating led to an architectural style so revolutionary and personal that it came to be called Sullivanesque. Frank Lloyd Wright called the Wainwright Building “Louis Sullivan’s great moment,” and credited Sullivan as influencing his own career, one of the few he acknowledged. Today the Wainwright Building is an office building for the state of Missouri.
Title: Wainwright Building, 709 Chestnut Street. Adler, Sullivan, and Ramsey, Architects.