“Louis Sullivan's Building for John D. Van Allen and Son”

AboutJoseph Siry's detailed architectural-historical study of Sullivan's John D. Van Allen and Son department store (1913–1915) in Clinton, Iowa, is based on extensive surviving Sullivan–Van Allen correspondence in the Burnham Library, Art Institute of Chicago. Siry reconstructs the commission's origins — banker Frederick H. Shaver's recommendation of Sullivan following his People's Savings Bank in Cedar Rapids — the evolving structural and material design (interior column spacing, brick versus terra-cotta cladding), and offers an original explanation for the building's much-criticized ornamental vertical mullions on the south facade: that they resolve irregular structural bay widths, dramatize the wide long-span girders, and visually heighten the building relative to its planned but unbuilt taller future stories. The article situates the store within Clinton's civic-improvement ambitions and compares it to Sullivan's earlier Schlesinger and Mayer (Carson Pirie Scott) store in Chicago and his contemporary rural bank commissions.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-9808%28199003%2949%3A1%3C67%3ALSBFJD%3E2.0.CO%3B2-4