An American Architect 
of Chicago and in the architectural profession 
at large, that Mr. Sullivan’s genius obtained 
public and general recognition from his 
peers. The French architects and Commis¬ 
sioners of Art whom the Exposition had at¬ 
tracted, with what seemed to many of us 
strange perversity, admired Adler & Sulli¬ 
van’s Transportation Building, relegated to 
what might be termed the Exposition’s back 
yard, in preference to the Peristyle and the 
other classic confections which surrounded 
and composed the Court of Honor. These 
men had seen classic architecture before, and 
better than we could show them, but the like 
of the Transportation Building, the Audito¬ 
rium Hotel and the Schiller Theatre they 
had never seen. At these they marveled, 
and them they admired. The hard-headed 
investors who had employed Messrs. Adler 
& Sullivan to build for them economical, 
practicable, rentable buildings had enter¬ 
tained an angel unawares; their buildings 
were everything that had been demanded, 
and they were interesting from an artistic 
standpoint as well. 
In speaking of the work of the firm of Ad¬ 
ler & Sullivan as though it were solely Mr. 
Sullivan’s, as I shall henceforward in this 
article, 1 would not minimize Mr. Adler’s 
part in it, which, while their partnership lasted 
(it was dissolved in i 895), was co-equal in im¬ 
portance with Mr. Sullivan’s, but of a differ¬ 
ent kind. Mr. Adler was the engineer, the 
business man, and Mr. Sullivan was the de¬ 
signer, the artist. In the most successful 
architectural partnerships the work usually 
divides itself in this way. On the other 
hand, I would not, by this explanation, lead 
the reader into the greater error of suppo¬ 
sing that Mr. Sullivan was obliged at any 
time to depend upon some one else for what 
is, after all, the essential of good architec¬ 
ture—sound construction. On the contrary, 
he has planned and carried to successful 
48 
