Louis Sullivan, America's First Modern Architect

• One year of architecture studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Worked for architect Frank Furness in Philadelphia
• Worked for architect William LeBaron Jenney in Chicago
• One year at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris

• Wainwright Building
• National Farmers'Bank (Sullivan's "Arch")
• The Bradley House

"It is the pervading law of all things organic, and inorganic,
of all things physical and metaphysical,
of all things human and all things super-human,
of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law."

• Frank Lloyd Wright
• Frank Furness
• William LeBaron Jenney

Louis Sullivan is widely considered America's first truly modern architect. Instead of imitating historic styles, he created original forms and details. Older architectural styles were designed for buildings that were wide, but Sullivan was able to create aesthetic unity in buildings that were tall.

Sullivan's designs often used masonry walls with terra cotta designs. Intertwining vines and leaves combined with crisp geometric shapes. This Sullivanesque style was imitated by other architects, and his later work formed the foundation for the ideas of his student, Frank Lloyd Wright.

Louis Sullivan believed that the exterior of an office building should reflect its interior structure and its interior functions. Ornament, where it was used, must be derived from Nature, instead of from classical architecture of the past. The work of Louis Sullivan is often associated with the Art Nouveau movement in architecture.