“Outstanding Recent Accessions: 19th-Century Architecture for the American Wing: Sullivan and Wright”

AboutThis Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin notice by curator Morrison H. Heckscher announces two major acquisitions for the American Wing: four cast-iron ornamental staircases salvaged from Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler's Chicago Stock Exchange Building (1893–95) before its demolition, and the entire living room from Frank Lloyd Wright's Francis W. Little House (1912–15) on Lake Minnetonka, Minnesota. Heckscher recounts Sullivan and Adler's partnership and the Stock Exchange's engineering significance — notably Adler's pioneering caisson foundation — before describing the staircases' ironwork, cast by the Winslow Brothers Company's Ornamental Iron Works, with their star and pinwheel motifs and electroplated bronze finish. He then traces Wright's early career as a Sullivan draftsman before Wright's independent domestic practice and the development of the Prairie style, culminating in the Little House commission, built for a client Wright had also served in Peoria. The essay describes the Little House living room's spatial and material qualities in detail — its leaded-glass window bank, clerestory, stained-glass skylights, white oak trim, and surviving Wright-designed furniture — as it was being reinstalled at the Museum. Heckscher frames both acquisitions as rescue efforts prompted by the demolition or endangerment of significant American buildings, hoping their display will build public support for architectural preservation ahead of the Bicentennial.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-1521%28197206%2F07%292%3A30%3A6%3C300%3AORA1AF%3E2.0.CO%3B2-0