Film Screening: Louis Sullivan: The Struggle for American Architecture

Thursday, June 8
6:00 to 8:00 p.m.


The Landmarks Preservation Resource Center
744 Rebecca Avenue
Wilkinsburg, PA 15221

Louis H. Sullivan was one of the most influential architects to come out of the Chicago School of architecture in the late 1800s. He is often called the “father of the skyscraper” and the “prophet of modern architecture.” He conceived the most famous phrase ever to come out of his profession, “form follows function” (or, more accurately, “form ever follows function”).

Among his most outstanding surviving works are the Auditorium Theater, the Carson, Pirie Scott department store, and the Charnley House in Chicago; the Wainwright Building and Union Trust Building in St. Louis; the Guaranty Building in Buffalo, New York; and eight small “Jewel Box” banks that are among the most treasured pieces of historic architecture in the United States.

Louis Sullivan was committed to establishing an authentic, American style of architecture, free of historic imitations like the Beaux Arts style that fellow Chicagoan Daniel Burnham of Burnham & Root had made popular as a result of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.

This film screening is free to PHLF Members. Non-members: $10. RSVPs are appreciated: marylu@phlf.org or 412-471-5808 ext 527.