Louis Sullivan

In 1899, he married Mary Azona Hattabaugh, known as Margaret, a 27-year-old divorcee, fifteen years younger than him. She left him 10 years later - the couple was childless.

Louis Henry Sullivan was born on September 3, 1856 to Patrick Sullivan and Andrienne List. His parents had immigrated to America in the late 1840s from Ireland and Switzerland respectively. He had an older brother, Albert Walter.

Sullivan studied in public schools in Boston, and spent considerable time on his grandparents’ farm in South Reading. When his parents transferred to Chicago in 1869, he preferred to remain with his grandparents.

In 1872, he joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He, however, left after his first year, planning to either study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris or be an architect’s apprentice.

Following the suggestion of Richard Morris Hunt, a successful architect, he worked with the Philadelphia firm of Furness and Hewitt. In 1873, he was employed by architect, William Le Baron Jenney in Chicago.

In 1874, he got enrolled at Beaux-Arts in Paris, but was irregular in his studies. He remained in Paris for a year and was an apprentice to the architect Émile Vaudremer.

Returning to Chicago in 1875, Sullivan became a draftsman with Joseph S. Johnston & John Edelman. He designed the interior decorative "fresco secco" stencils (stencil applied on dry plaster) of the Moody Tabernacle.

In 1879, he joined Dankmar Adler as his employee, and soon became a partner in his firm. They became famous as experts in theatre architecture, first. Their designs found favor in Colorado and Washington.

The company’s theatre architecture phase ended with the 1889 Auditorium Building in Chicago, which consisted of a 4,200-seat theater, a hotel, an office building crowned by a 17-story tower, and commercial storefronts.

In the 1890s, the partners designed The Schiller Building, the Chicago Stock Exchange Building, the Guaranty or Prudential Building, New York, and the Carson Pirie Scott Department Store, Chicago.

His masterpiece, the Wainwright Tomb, a mausoleum in Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, constructed for Charlotte Dickson Wainwright in 1892, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and became a St. Louis Landmark.

One of the earliest skyscrapers in the world, the 10-storeyed Wainwright Building, in St. Louis, designed by Sullivan, soared vertically from ground to cornice. It is one of "10 Buildings That Changed America".

The classic Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building (the Sullivan Center), in Chicago had a corner visible from two avenues, designed by him. The ornamentation above the entrance was a distinct feature.