Historians have called Chicago architect Louis Sullivan “the
father of skyscrapers” and “the father of modernism.” Together
with H. H. Richardson and Frank Lloyd Wright, Sullivan forms the
“recognized trinity of American architecture,” according to the
eminent scholar James O’Gorman. He was the philosophical leader
of the Prairie School, the Midwest manifestation of the Arts and
Crafts movement, and the teacher of Wright, who was his chief
draftsman for five years. Completed in 1894, Sullivan’s
thirteen-story Stock Exchange was an early triumph of the
skyscraper—that signature edifice of America, perfected in
Chicago. Made possible by the development of steel framing in
the 1880s, the skyscraper was not invented by Sullivan and his
partner Dankmar Adler. Rather, their revolutionary contribution
was to take the skyscraper away from the prevailing vocabulary
of historical styles and create one derived from the nature of
the material (steel and iron). Rejecting Greek and Roman
classicism, Sullivan used abstracte