Wainwright Building, Saint Louis, Missouri

Related people

Robert Wandel (was created by)
Louis Henri Sullivan (architect)
Dankmar Adler (architect)

Date

1890-1891

Description

"The eleven-storey Wainwright Building represents Sullivan's first attempt at a truly multi-storey format, in which the device of the suppressed transom taken from the facade of Richardson's Marshall Field Store, Chicago of 1888, is used to impart a decidedly vertical emphasis to the building's overall form...The two-storey base of the classical tripartite composition is faced in fine red sandstone set on a two-foot-high string course of red Missouri granite. While the middle section consists of red brick pilasters with decorated terra cotta spandrels, the top is rendered as a deep overhanging cornice faced in an ornamented terra cotta skin to match the enrichment of the spandrels and the pilasters below." - Frampton, K. & Futagawa, Y. (1983). Modern Architecture 1851-1945. New York: Rizzoli. p.62. Keywords: United States, Missouri, St. Louis, commercial structures, multistory buildings, Adler & Sullivan, Wainwright State Office Building. Submitted by Robert Livesey.

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