Auditorium building
| Auditorium building | |||
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| National Register of Historic Places | |||
| National Historic Landmark | |||
 Auditorium building |
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| location | Chicago , Illinois | ||
| Coordinates | 41 ° 52 '33.9 " N , 87 ° 37' 30.6" W | ||
| Built | 1887-89 | ||
| architect | Dankmar Adler , Louis Sullivan | ||
| NRHP number | 70000230 | ||
| Data | |||
| The NRHP added | April 17, 1970 | ||
| Declared as an NHL | May 15, 1975 | ||
The Auditorium Building ( Auditorium -building ) in Chicago is one of the most famous works of the architects Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan . The building is located near Grant Park in southern downtown.
The Auditorium Theater is part of the building and was the premier venue for the Chicago City Opera and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra . Today the Auditorium Building is the headquarters of the private Roosevelt University . It was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1975 . In addition, it has been one of the city's official landmarks ( Chicago Landmark ) since September 16, 1976 . It is part of the historic Michigan Boulevard district .
planning
The businessman Ferdinand Peck registered the Chicago Auditorium Association as a public company in December 1886. His goal was to make the auditorium competitive with large theaters like the Metropolitan Opera House in New York . Peck reportedly tried to make the upscale cultural events more accessible to the Chicago working class.
The building contained an office section and a luxury hotel. Ferdinand Peck convinced several magnates from the Chicago business world for his cause. These included Marshall Field , Edson Keith , Martin Ryerson and George Pullman , among others . The association commissioned the famous architecture firm of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan to design the planned building. At the time, the young Frank Lloyd Wright was employed as a draftsman in the company .
architecture
Adler and Sullivan constructed a tall structure with load-bearing outer walls. The exterior is based in part on Henry Hobson Richardson's Marshall Field's wholesale store in Chicago. The auditorium was an unusually large building, especially at the time it was built. When completed, it was the tallest structure in the city and the largest building complex in the United States .
One of the most innovative parts of the building was the massive foundation slab , designed by Dankmar Adler in collaboration with engineer Paul Mueller. The ground below consists of a 30-meter-deep layer of soft clay , which made conventional foundations unthinkable. The architects constructed the plate from railway sleepers and overlying steel rails , embedded in concrete . The whole thing was covered in bad luck .
On the foundation plate, the great weight of the outer walls was distributed over a large area. Nevertheless, the foundation was deformed in the more than a hundred years, so that the building is now partially over 70 centimeters lower. The curvature is clearly visible in the reception area of the theater, where the mosaic floor is very sloping towards the outer walls. The column settlement did not result from a tree Angel , but the construction plans were changed even during construction. The original plan was to cover the facade with light terracotta . Instead of terracotta, however, after the foundation slab had been completed, stone was chosen. Most of the deformations took place in the first ten years after the Auditorium Building opened. In the meantime, there was a project that required corrections to the interior of the building. They have not yet been put into practice.
A lecture hall with 4327 seats was set up in the center of the building. This was primarily intended for grand opéra performances . The arrangement of the seats corresponded to Ferdinand Peck's ideas. All spectators should have a good view of the stage and not have to do without good acoustics. Lodges were not originally planned. When they were included in the plan, they were not given any advantage over the other seats.
In 1890 a further 136 offices and a hotel with 400 rooms were built around the central part of the building to provide financial support for the opera. The actual auditorium building, however, was not intended as a commercial facility. The proceeds from the hotel operations and the rent for the offices were used to keep the ticket prices for the opera low. However, within a few years, both the hotel and the office block became unprofitable.
history
On October 5, 1887, then US President Grover Cleveland laid the foundation stone for the Auditorium Building. The nominating convention of the Republican Party in 1888 was held in the partially completed structure, in which Benjamin Harrison was nominated as presidential candidate. President Harrison inaugurated the building on December 9, 1889, and architects Adler and Sullivan set up their new offices on floors 16 and 17 of the tower.
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra gave its first concert on October 16, 1891. It was located in the Auditorium Building from its inception until 1904. Then it moved to the Chicago Orchestra Hall. Theodore Roosevelt gave his famous Bull Moose speech in the auditorium in 1912 and was nominated as a presidential candidate by the Independent Progressive Party .
The opera company moved to the Civic Opera House in 1929. A short time later, during the Great Depression , the Auditorium-Theater was closed. In 1941, the city of Chicago took over the building to use it as a center for WWII soldiers . Five years later, Roosevelt University moved into the Auditorium Building. However, this did not restore the theater's former glory.
The Auditorium Theater reopened on October 31, 1967 to serve as Chicago's premier rock concert venue until about 1975. During this time, artists such as Jimi Hendrix , The Who and Grateful Dead appeared. On April 17, 1970, the Auditorium Building was added to the National Register of Historic Places as a monument . On May 15, 1975, the Home Office added the auditorium to its list of National Historic Landmarks .
The auditorium building was equipped with an air conditioning system at an extremely early stage , and the theater was the first to be completely lighted with incandescent lamps . In 2001 a restoration began, which provides for the restoration of the colors originally used in the theater.
Comments
“The Auditorium was built for a syndicate of businessmen to house a large civic opera house; to provide an economic base it was decided to wrap the auditorium with a hotel and office block. Hence Adler & Sullivan had to plan a complex multiple-use building. Fronting on Michigan Avenue, overlooking the lake, was the hotel (now Roosevelt University) while the offices were placed to the west on Wabash Avenue. The entrance to the auditorium is on the south side beneath the tall blocky eighteen-story tower. The rest of the building is a uniform ten stories, organized in the same way as Richardson's Marshall Field Wholesale Store. The interior embellishment, however, is wholly Sullivan's, and some of the details, because of their continuous curvilinear foliate motifs, are among the nearest equivalents to European Art Nouveau architecture. "
“The auditorium was built for a syndicate of businessmen to house a large city opera house. In order to provide an economic basis, it was decided to convert the auditorium with a hotel and an office building. So Adler & Sullivan had to design a multi-purpose building. Located on Michigan Avenue, facing the lake, the hotel (now Roosevelt University) stood, while the offices were located on Wabash Avenue, which runs west. The entrance to the auditorium is on the south side below the mighty eighteen-story tower. The remainder of the building has a uniform ten-story structure, similar to that of Richardson's Marshall Field's Wholesale Store. The interior decorations, however, are entirely Sullivan's work, and some of the details resemble similar examples of European Art Nouveau because of their curvy foliage motifs. "
gallery
Capital in the whole hall
Auditorium theater
Auditorium theater
Hotel dining room
literature
- Joseph M. Siry: The Chicago Auditorium Building: Adler and Sullivan's Architecture and the City. (Chicago Architecture and Urbanism) University of Chicago Press, 2002, 580 pp., Hardback, ISBN 9780226761336 ; paperback, 2005, ISBN 9780226761343 , table of contents .
- Crombie Taylor, Jeffrey Plank: The Early Louis Sullivan Building Photographs. W. Stout, San Francisco 2001, 250 pages, ISBN 097097311X .
- "Chicago's Auditorium Building: Opera or Anarchism" Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 57: 2, June 1998.
Movie
- Sullivan & Adler: Auditorium Building. Documentary, France, 2002, 26 min., Script and director: Stan Neumann, production: arte France, series: Baukunst , German first broadcast: September 6, 2003, summary by arte.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Listing of National Historic Landmarks by State: Illinois. National Park Service , accessed July 22, 2019.
- ↑ Auditorium Building . City of Chicago Dept. of Pl. and Devpmt., Landmarks Div. 2003. Archived from the original on August 23, 2007. Retrieved June 4, 2007.
- ^ Sir Banister Fletcher: A History of Architecture . S. 1241 .
- ^ John Sarkowski: The Idea of Louis Sullivan . Bulfinch Press, 1956, ISBN 0-8212-2667-3 , p. 22.
- ^ A b Henning, Joel: Form Follows Function, Elegantly: Louis Sullivan designed the Auditorium Theater's interior to complement its acoustics-driven shape . In: Wall Street Journal . Dow Jones & Company, Inc. . September 6, 2008. Retrieved September 7, 2008.
- ^ Carey, Heidi Pawlowski: Auditorium Building . In: The Electronic Encyclopedia of Chicago . Chicago Historical Society. 2005. Retrieved September 7, 2008.
- ^ Auditorium Building, Roosevelt University on the National Register Information System. National Park Service , accessed August 9, 2017.
Web links
more photos and information
- Bluffton.edu
- City of Chicago
- greatbuildings.com
- Roosevelt University ( December 27, 2009 memento on the Internet Archive )