Louis Sullivan: The Road to Grinnell
Bill Menner
October 24, 2005

For architect Louis H. Sullivan, the first day of 1915 was reason for optimism.
He was the man known as the “Father of the American Skyscraper,” the genius who single-handedly worked to forge a uniquely American architectural style and, in turn, became the spiritual leader of the Prairie School.  But for Sullivan, the previous decade had been disastrous. Work had slowed to a trickle, his marriage had dissolved and he was so deeply in debt that, in late 1909, he had been forced to auction off almost all of his personal belongings.  His physical health was declining and his mental health, at best, was unstable. However, Sullivan’s prospects were improving. 

Sullivan had completed seven designs between 1913 and 1914, his most productive span in twelve years.  Still, that compared starkly to the period from 1883-1895 when he and his partner, Dankmar Adler, designed some 158 buildings. Adler and Sullivan were then among the country’s most highly-sought architects.   Much had changed in those two decades.  

Still, on January 1, 1915, things were looking up.  Grand openings were scheduled that day for two of the small-town Midwestern banks Sullivan had designed: the tiny Purdue State Bank in West Lafayette, Indiana, and the Merchants National Bank in Grinnell, Iowa. The Van Allen Department Store in Clinton, Iowa, and a third bank, the Home Building Association in Newark, Ohio, would open within a few months.   

The three banks were the fourth, fifth and sixth of the so-called “jewel boxes,” a name Sullivan himself had attached to these structures.  The first, built in 1906, was the National Farmers’ Bank in Owatonna, Minnesota. The eighth and last, would open in 1920 – the Farmers and Merchants Union Bank in Columbus, Wisconsin.

These eight, stunning buildings – with trademark brick-box simplicity and organic ornamentation – capped Sullivan’s remarkable career.  They did not save him from dying alone and penniless in 1924.  They give him reason for hope, at least for a short time in early 1915.

Sullivan's Education
Louis Sullivan was born in Boston in 1856 to immigrant parents.  His Irish father ran a dance academy while his Swiss-born German mother occasionally worked as a French tutor.  Sullivan was fascinated by buildings at an early age and, in 1872 when he was 16, enrolled in the Building and Architecture program at MIT.  After a year there, he enrolled in the prestigious Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.  Both experiences left him frustrated by the preoccupation with classical styles among practicing architects.  Sullivan wanted to be creative, to blend design with both nature and art.  He found that impossible under the rules taught at MIT and the Ecole. So he moved to his parents’ new home in 1875.  They had moved from Boston to Chicago, a city that was still rebuilding from the fire of 1871.  It was there that Sullivan would make his mark.

Sullivan and Adler
Sullivan’s impact on both Chicago and American architecture is legendary.  In 1889, he and his partner Dankmar Adler designed the Auditorium – one of the greatest buildings of the 19th century.  The Transportation Building, designed for the 1893 Columbian Exposition, was stunning both for its size and its disregard for the classical styles that surrounded.  The 1891 Wainwright Building in St. Louis, reaching eleven stories with a steel frame, marked the beginning of the modern skyscraper era.  Sullivan would repeat that success with other skyscrapers in St. Louis, Chicago, Buffalo and New York City.

Though his partnership with Adler ended in 1895, Sullivan continued to design groundbreaking buildings, including the Chicago Stock Exchange, and the Schlesinger & Mayer department store (now Carson Pirie Scott) on State Street in Chicago.

But by 1903 Sullivan’s abrasive personality coupled with a lack of business skills contributed to a decline in commissions.  Though he received national acclaim for his designs, he had difficulty finding work.  Then, in late 1906, he agreed to design the Owatonna bank. 

The First Jewel Box Bank
The president of the National Farmers’ Bank had seen an article Sullivan had written and took a chance on the legendary-but-then-struggling architect.  He believed Sullivan could design a building that fit perfectly with the small-town, rural values the bank embraced.

The bank is a massive brick box featuring two enormous semi-circular arches. The arches contain stained glass windows set into the cube. The building is outlined by green and blue tile and terra cotta ornaments.  About the interior, Sullivan wrote to the bank president, "I want a color symphony and I am pretty sure that I am going to get it. I want something with many shades of the strings, and the wood winds and the brass...There has never been in my entire career such and opportunity for a color tone poem as your bank interior plainly puts before me."

The Owatonna bank prompted nationwide praise for Sullivan, but it did not result in more commissions.  In fact, he had only five projects from 1906 through 1908 – two of which were built. No one approached Sullivan about another bank until 1909, when he began working on the People’s Savings Bank in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  That structure took Sullivan’s groundbreaking vision of a Midwestern bank in new, innovative directions. 

Unlike the Owatonna bank, People’s Savings Bank was rectangular with a low-standing perimeter that highlighted a tall, central tower in which the banking room was located.  It gave the impression of two separate structures, but the overall product was limited by finances and is one of the less impressive of the jewel box banks.  Still, it likely contributed to the commission Sullivan received for the Algona, Iowa, bank that followed. However the next project, the Grinnell bank, likely came about through a complicated web of Prairie School architects and one visionary businessman.

Prairie School Architects and Grinnell
Benjamin J. Ricker was a Grinnell, Iowa, native and a graduate of Grinnell College.  After leaving his hometown for a few years, he returned to work for the local glove factory, later becoming a co-owner. Ricker was married to an Oak Park, Illinois, native. That was the town in which Frank Lloyd Wright, a former Sullivan employee, had established his studio and designed some of the first structures in what would become known as the Prairie School of architecture.  Ricker likely became acquainted with that style, which can be traced to Sullivan’s groundbreaking work of the 1880s and 1890s, through visits to his wife’s hometown.

Wright worked for Sullivan from 1887-1893 before leaving to start his own firm.  Wright, in turn, employed a talented young architect named Walter Burley Griffin who inherited a number of Wright’s projects when Wright and his mistress fled to Europe to escape the public outrage created by their relationship.  And when B.J. Ricker was ready to build a new house on the north side of Grinnell, he hired Griffin to do the job. The Ricker House is considered the prototype for the Prairie School homes Griffin designed.  In addition, Ricker was instrumental in the 1910 selection of Griffin to design a fountain in the city’s Central Park. Griffin’s impact on Ricker would ultimately influence the corner opposite that fountain for decades to come.

Ricker also served on the board of directors of the Merchants National Bank in Grinnell, which by 1913 was looking for a new home.  The bank was celebrating its 30th anniversary and needed more space.  Ricker took on the task of finding an architect for the bank, but Griffin was not an option. He was in Australia, designing the capital complex in Canberra.  So, Ricker’s attention turned toward Sullivan.  He was clearly aware of Sullivan, through his relationship with Griffin and through the attention Sullivan was receiving for his other bank projects.  Ricker and his fellow board members visited Owatonna and almost immediately invited Sullivan to Grinnell.

Sullivan Designs the Bank
Sullivan arrived in late November of 1913, met with the bank’s building committee, and spent several days surveying the community, the central business district, and the corner he would work with at Broad and Fourth streets.  Sullivan was absolute in his belief that there should be continuity between structures and their environment.  In the case of downtown Grinnell, his environment featured adjacent two-story buildings, built in the 1880s, in a traditional brick, commercial style of that era. Across the street to the east sat the town’s iconic structure, the Old Stone Church – home to the Congregational community that founded Grinnell.  At the opposite corner was Griffin’s fountain, and across the street to the south stood the so-called “Phoenix Block”, an 1889 collection of buildings designed in the aftermath of a devastating fire by MIT-trained architects, Josselyn & Taylor, who were based in Cedar Rapids.

During his 1913 visit, Sullivan spent time in the city park—likely near the Griffin-designed fountain—mulling his options for the Merchants National Bank.  His sketches from that time—still preserved—show a variation on the jewel-box theme that changed little from initial concept to final product.  Sullivan did much of the sketching in a room adjacent to the bank president’s office.  The bank’s entire board of director’s had intimate knowledge of the sketches as they progressed.

The two-story brick cube would feature prominent stained glass facing east, toward the Old Stone Church.  That was a common feature of his banks.  But Sullivan immediately identified a critical ornamentation for the Grinnell project—an intricate terra cotta entrance built around a cathedral-like window.

In 1916, Sullivan would describe his design experience in Grinnell to fellow architect Andrew Rebori, who would document it in his article for The Architectural Record, “An Architecture of Democracy.” Rebori recounted Sullivan’s process in that article.

“For three whole days he talked, drew, rubbing out as changes were made, fitting and adjusting to the satisfaction of all…. I asked Mr. Sullivan how it happened that his preliminary sketches were worked out in such definite manner, and he answered quite simply that ‘those were the requirements as given, and it only remained to jot them down on paper.’”

In fact, Sullivan did just that, using a notepad of yellow legal paper purchased from the drugstore located adjacent to the building site.  Working drawings were done by the end of February, 1914, and construction began. Ten months later, January 1, 1915, the doors were opened to the public.

Glass and Terra Cotta
The bank’s exterior featured tapestry brick, giving it a multi-colored hue.  The Louis Millet-designed stained glass on the east side provided a primary source of natural light to the interior.  It also linked the building to the remainder of the Broad Street block to the north.  Sullivan added two small, rectangular office windows at street level to the front of the building- elements that almost go unnoticed when considering the façade as a whole.

The dominant theme was the rose window medallion, using overlapping circles and squares to create something that looks like a shield.  The accompanying terra cotta ornamentation also used squares, circles and botanical forms, extending the relationship.

For this project, as with many others in his career, Sullivan turned to Kristian Schneider to sculpt his terra cotta designs.  Schneider was a Norwegian immigrant craftsman who worked for the American Terra Cotta company outside Chicago.  Schneider had first worked with Sullivan on the terra cotta in the Schiller Theater project in Chicago.   From that point in 1893, he learned to work from the very simplest of small scale drawings with no needs for details. Schneider could not originate designs, but his skills as a craftsman were unparalleled.  The magnificent terra cotta ornament in the National Farmers’ Bank was Schneider’s, as were the features at the Woodbury County Courthouse in Sioux City, a masterpiece of Sullivan’s protégé, George Elmslie.

The stained glass, as well as the mosaic surrounding the clock on the south interior wall, were the creations of Louis Millet, another long-time Sullivan collaborator. Millet was a major player in Chicago's vibrant art world of the early 20th century.  He founded the Chicago School of Architecture in 1893, which offered a multidisciplinary degree program between the Art Institute of Chicago and Armour Institute of Technology.  Millet also propelled the Arts and Crafts movement in the US by teaching decorative design at the Art Institute of Chicago to many talented students – predominantly women – to prepare them for higher-paying jobs in the industrial arts.

Millet’s stained-glass creations gave the bank’s interior an ever-changing feel, depending upon the date, time and weather.  They also helped Sullivan create a cathedral-like tone inside the commercial space.

Local Responses to the New Bank in 1914
There had been doubts voiced throughout the community during the ten-month construction, but they vanished once the project was completed.  There was praise for features ranging from access to public telephones and restrooms to the ventilation system that constantly circulated fresh air.  There was also a broad understanding that Sullivan had created something very special in Grinnell. 

A reporter from the Grinnell Herald was permitted a preview, and wrote a long, glowing article that appeared in the paper’s December 28, 1914, issue.

“Next Friday evening, the officers of the Merchants National Bank invite their friends into see their new banking room.  For the best part of a year, we have been watching the erection of the building from the outside; have criticized, favorably or otherwise, the plain lines of the long, high one-story building, the large window on the east, the ornamental front, even the golden-winged lions which guard the portal of the bank’s new home.”

In his review, the reporter was clearly mesmerized by what he had seen.  His article alludes to the Arabian Nights and Persian Fireworshippers, hinting that Sullivan’s immersion in that culture must have “worked like hashish.”  But, as the reporter acknowledged, the vision that emerged was sheer genius.

“The architecture of Merchants National Bank building is to represent strength, security and wealth.  When walking through it, notice the pains which have been taken with details regardless of expense. The design of the ornamentation of the terra cotta and the woodwork is not only Sullivanesque but was drawn originally for this building.  The figures in the front glass window were drawn by Mr. Sullivan and colored by Millet, a relative of the great French artist.  The effects in the lower half of the building are obtained by the use of Roman brick, marble, bronze and quarter-sawed oak:  and the fairest of these is the quarter-sawed oak.  The entire floor is of pink Tennessee marble, the walls halfway up and the counters, are of brick.  Where the counters are topped by a bronze grill, it means that space is reserved for the officers and employees of the bank.”

Another writer viewed the opening with equally awe-struck prose.

“The new Merchants Bank building is not a mere building.  It is a creation. It was realized first in the mind of Louis H. Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan dreamed the building. The building is his dream come true.” 

The most common sentiment expressed by the hundreds of visitors who squeezed into the bank on the evening of January 1, 1915, was quite basic: “This does not look like Grinnell.”  The Grinnell Herald  reporter warned his readers that a cursory tour of the building was not sufficient.

“Go back to the north end and turn around to the south.  Raise the eyes above the partitions and brickwork and catch the massive simplicity of the long beams along the ceiling: study the windowed colored by Millet and its mosaic replica below which surrounds the clock with face of gold.  Raise the eyes still higher to the skylight…  If you are in just the right mood in time you can hear the dash of the waters over Niagara Falls, listen to the winds that sweep across the prairies of the West, see the blue that hovers over the land of the azure sky and understand something of what Sullivan meant when he talked about the genius of America.”

Bibliography
Twombly, Robert, Louis Sullivan – His Life and Work, Elizabeth Sifton Books, NY, NY 1986

Morrison, Hugh, Louis Sullivan – Prophet of Modern Architecture, W.W. Norton & Co., Inc. NY,NY 1963

Sullivan, Louis, The Autobiography of an Idea, Press of the American institute of Architects, Inc., NY, NY 1924

Weingarden, L.S., Louis H. Sullivan: The Banks, MIT Press; 1987

Wilson, Richard Guy, The Prairie School in Iowa, Iowa State University Press, 1977

Rebori, Andrew N., The Architectural Record, December, 1916, “An Architecture of Democracy.”

The Grinnell Herald, December 28, 1914 and January 5, 1915