An American Architect 
vision, consisting of the 
finishing storey, its bal¬ 
cony and frieze of win¬ 
dows, and the high, pic¬ 
turesque roof, finds its 
raison d'etre in the fact 
that there is here a single 
great apartment, indi¬ 
cated on the exterior by 
the large window in the 
gable end. 
To come upon this 
refined, charming and 
distinguished building 
amid the ruck of Middle 
Western architecture 
with which it is sur¬ 
rounded, gives one a 
shock first of surprise 
and then of pleasure, 
and inspires the thought 
that if the architecture 
of our city streets were 
conceived in something 
of this spirit we should 
not have need to take 
ship for Europe to feed 
our starved eyes on 
beauty in ponderable 
forms. 
Mr. Sullivan works 
most unerringly when 
most restrained bv prac¬ 
tical limitations of all sorts. Some of his 
interiors, particularly, robbed of their sur¬ 
face ornament reveal no especial graces of 
form or of proportion. He is inclined to 
create continually new shapes for cornice, 
bracket, shaft and capital, instead of de¬ 
veloping and refining a few of the most 
rational. He furnishes a good illustration 
of the adage that a man’s faults are his 
good qualities carried to excess. Elis ad¬ 
mirable fecundity of invention,—the thing 
so lacking in most of our architects,—some¬ 
times betrays him. This fecundity expends 
itself legitimately in the devising of surface 
ornament so beautiful, so individual, so in 
the best sense original that the expression 
“ Sullivanesque ornament,” having become 
current in artistic circles, has given rise to 
the popular misapprehension that Mr. Sul¬ 
livan is primarily a decorator rather than an 
architect. His ornament 
has too exclusively en¬ 
gaged the attention of 
even his critics and com¬ 
mentators, w : ho seem to 
regard it as his most im¬ 
portant contribution to 
an American style of 
architecture. Mr. Sulli¬ 
van himself is far from 
so regarding it; to him 
it is only a personal ex¬ 
pression of a sense of 
beauty in pattern, and 
he is chagrined to find 
his ornament imitated 
and his architectural doc¬ 
trine ignored. He says: 
“ It would be greatly 
for our esthetic good if 
we should refrain en¬ 
tirely from the use of 
ornament for a period 
of years, in order that 
our thoughts might be 
concentrated acutely 
upon the production of 
buildings well formed 
and comely in the nude.” 
The word “nude” 
gives a clue to his con¬ 
ception of ornament as 
clothing, as adornment. 
Developing his thesis, he goes on to say: 
“We feel, intuitively, that our strong, ath¬ 
letic, and simple forms will carry with nat¬ 
ural ease the raiment of which we dream, 
and that our buildings thus clad in garments 
of poetic imagery, half hid as it were in 
choice products of the loom and mine, will 
appeal with redoubled power.” He con¬ 
tends that a building, like a person, has a 
certain individuality which characteristic or¬ 
nament, like a characteristic dress, assists in 
making plain. 
I have failed in my object if the reader 
has not by this time perceived that the atti¬ 
tude of Mr. Sullivan toward the art of which 
he is so distinguished a practitioner is philo¬ 
sophical and metaphysical to an unusual 
degree for one so unmistakably an artist 
born, because an artist usually “ follows 
the rules without knowing them.” His 
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