Louis Sullivan was one of the most influential architects to come out of the Chicago School of architecture. He is often called the “father of the skyscraper”, the “prophet of modern architecture” and conceived the most famous phrase ever to come out of his profession, “form follows function” (or, more accurately, “form ever follows function”). This credo, which placed the demands of practical use above aesthetics, would later be taken by influential designers to imply that decorative elements, which architects call “ornament”, were superfluous in modern buildings. But Sullivan himself neither thought nor designed along such dogmatic lines during the peak of his career.

Louis Sullivan was committed to establishing an authentic, American style of architecture, free of historic. Sullivan’s most profound influence can be found in the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, who spent more than six years as Sullivan’s chief draftsman before going on his own to advance Sullivan’s idea of American architecture into his Prairie Houses and, more generally, the Prairie School of the early 1900s. Louis Sullivan’s architecture is a mixture of plain geometry and undisguised massing punctuated with elaborate pockets of ornamentation in stone, wood and terra cotta. Fragments of his ornamentation hang in some of the most prestigious museums in the world, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York. He died in 1924, penniless and forgotten to the public, and was buried in Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery.

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