Louis H. Sullivan, Schlesinger & Mayer Building (later Carson Pirie Scott)

0:00Dr. Steven Zucker: We are at the very busy intersection of Madison and State in the loop in Chicago, looking at one of the great examples, Chicago School of Architecture, this is Louis Sullivan's Schlesinger and Mayer Building, later known as Carson, Pirie, Scott, but now known to most people in Chicago, likely by the store that occupies its bottom floors, Target. Dr. Beth Harris: And I think to fully appreciate this building, we need to do a little bit of time travel back to the 1890s and early years of the 20th century to a time when department stores were new and exciting places. You could shop there, you could eat there, there were phone booths for making phone calls. The buildings along State

0:51Street that were designed as department stores were meant to entice viewers into the stores to purchase and to have an experience. Dr. Steven Zucker: And that experience was not so different from what Chicagoans and people from all over the country, and for many parts of the world had experienced just a few years earlier when Chicago had hosted a great world exposition known as the White City. Where goods from all over the world, manufacturing techniques, new technology had been put on display, but here in Schlesinger Mayer, luxury goods could be purchased.

1:25Dr. Beth Harris: And so you had this idea that the buyers at a store like Schlesinger Mayer, were scouring the world for the finest products, the best workmanship, and bringing it all here to this building designed by Louis Sullivan. And the fact that the building was designed by Sullivan was part of its draw. Dr. Steven Zucker: Sullivan had gained fame most recently for the Auditorium Building in Chicago, and he's taken his talents and applied them to this commercial retail environment. And what is most notable about his design is an incredibly intricate and dynamic ornament that brings the surface to life. It's literally as if the building is teeming with a kind of organic growth. Dr. Beth Harris: We see

2:10floral forms, forms that look like they are tendrils and interlacing, and just an incredible depth that speaks to a commercial culture that embodied ideas of freedom and the city, and a kind of cosmopolitanism. Dr. Steven Zucker: This was a modern building in a modern city.

2:30The center of the city of Chicago had been burned to the ground in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, but the city was commercially dynamic, its economy was exploding, and so architects flocked around the country because so much rebuilding needed to be done here.

2:45Dr. Beth Harris: And the kind of building that was so ambitious where retailers competed to have the most accommodations for shoppers. Dr. Steven Zucker: And modern architects had a problem that they needed to solve, which is that buildings of this scale had little precedent. This is a 12 story building, which was possible only because of the passenger elevator that had been developed in the 19th century, and building on this scale created a series of problems, how do you create an elegant structure of this size? This building uses the newest technology, that is, it uses a steel skeletal frame. All of that is completely hidden from our view, but can be made out in the thicker piers between the windows,

3:29and what results is a facade that is known as a curtain wall. That is, that all of the material that we're seeing on the exterior is actually hung from the interior structure at each story. And so unlike older buildings where one brick or one stone was placed atop the next to help support the structure, this structure is supported by a steel armature from within. Dr. Beth Harris: And one of the great benefits of that was that the walls would be able to be opened up to have larger windows, and that was especially crucial on the ground floors where Sullivan designed some of the widest windows for displaying goods that would entice customers into the store.

4:09Dr. Steven Zucker: Sullivan had been working with Schlesinger and Mayer on an earlier structure, and the building was expanded. But what it leaves us with is this unified facade that is incredibly captivating. The bottom is by far the most ornate. It's metal that has been electroplated with a thin layer of copper bronze, which allows for this incredibly intricate metal work. And then above that, the curtain allowed Sullivan to use this white terracotta, which is actually created in molds, and so is a kind of mass production that carries his ornament up to the highest stories.

4:46Dr. Beth Harris: And so, instead of carefully cut expensive stone work, we're using a modern material that's easily reproducible. The same thing for all of the decorative iron work that we see, so combining that serious artistry and level of design with modern technology.

5:07Dr. Steven Zucker: One of my favorite aspects of this building is the curved corner, which creates a kind of pivot point that unifies both flanks of the building. But it doesn't just turn horizontally from one street to the next, it also brings our eye upward with these beautiful Gothic inspired, engaged colonnettes that rise up to one of the most decorative elements of this building, which is the cornice. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it's common to see large buildings with substantial cornices.

5:37This is actually a reference back to the palazzo architecture of Renaissance Italy. It creates a kind of end point for our eyes to that while we can revel in the verticality of the building, almost like a hat, it ends the building. Our eye does not continue up to the sky. Dr. Beth Harris: And one of the things that looks so modern to me is the emphasis on the horizontal, so that between each floor, the terracotta of the ceramic tiles form continuous horizontal bands that are uninterrupted. And there's something about the horizontality that reads to me as very streamlined and very modern and differentiates it, I think, from so many of the other department stores that were going up at this time, like Marshall Fields. Dr. Steven Zucker: It's

6:22so easy to imagine an early 20th century consumer being attracted to this opulent palace of dry goods because this was a time before the term "department store" was common. Dr. Beth Harris: Well, we know that it was primarily women who went shopping in these stores, and that kind of shopping experience in the city was born of a new kind of freedom that was available to women at the turn of the century. Elizabeth Sparhawk Jones in 1911 actually gives us an image of the inside of one of these department stores where you get the sense of the bustle of women who are shoe shopping. Dr. Steven Zucker: And the sense of dynamism in that painting is a perfect reflection of the dynamism of the ornament

7:03on the exterior. This is a city that is growing, that is on the move and everything was changing. You can get a real sense of what this building meant when it was first opened by looking at some of the many advertisements that Herald did in its opening. Dr. Beth Harris: Here's one from five days before the building opened: Our new building, which will be formally opened Monday, October 12th, is a modern building of steel and stone 12 stories above ground and three below.

7:30It has no old parts reconstructed. We threw away the old as we have built the new. We have the best location, we believe, in Chicago. With our commercial advantages, this should give us the best opportunity in Chicago to develop another great store of the first class and like no other. We built new from top to bottom and all between. Not a detail in structure, equipment, furnishing, stock or method that would facilitate convenience and comfort has been overlooked.

8:03Dr. Steven Zucker: This is such a testament to what modern meant in the early 20th century.