Louis Louis..oh no...we gotta go

I'm so queer.

Last night I went to dinner with an old friend from high school. She's so pretty, you would all think so if you met her. Just a beauty. I haven't seen her in about 5 years and it was really nice. We went to Cafe Atwood which is the restaurant in the Reliance Building. And the Reliance is my favorite! The Reliance Building is now called the Burnham hotel (named after the architect Daniel HUDSON Burnham) and his partner John Root. John Root died while they were still building the hotel and Charles Atwood helped Burnham finish the building.

Anyhoo, that was really neat and if you blur your eyes, you can imagine it's 1893 and you're hanging out with Burnham and Atwood in what was then a fancy office building.

Then I went to go see "Tall" at the Gene Siskel center. It was about poor Louis Sullivan and his differences with my hero...Daniel HUDSON Burnham. So weird, when I started with what little I knew, Burnham was the saving grace of this city, he was what made it what it was. But now, poor Little Louis got screwed by the semi-whimpy Burnham and it's just weird to have my Burnham knocked off his horse.

Sullivan was all into the Emerson/Thereau(Sp?) way of thinking at the time. We are rooted in nature (no pun intended) and our buildings should show that right? On the Carson Pirie Scott building, the ornate decoration is all prarie flowers and seeds and bushes. Louis would never tolerate something like the Art Institute or our Federal Bank Buildings with their big greek columns. What are greek columns doing on an Urban Chicago bank right? Right.

Chicago was moving away from the past, from the columns, we were building new things, out of iron and steel, we didn't need the "old" way anymore.

So Louis was cruising in his way, getting big commissions, doing his crazy ornamental thing with Adler and Frank Lloyd Wright and BOOM! Burnham goes and gets the 1893 Worlds Fair. And BOOM! Burnham decides it's going to be the White City.

And BOOM! Burnham brings in a bunch of wussy New Yorkers who are still "experimenting" with greek columns and builds a whole white city in exactly the greek classical style. Sullivan was one of the only local architects involved and he did his best to make his Transportation Building as "form follows function" as possible.

Well of course Burnham got famous, got tons of work, started a whole new rush of building classical buildings (tribune, wrigley, etc) and Louis was stuck out in the middle of nature with nuthin!

He died old, alone, in poverty, lost his partner his wife and managed to keep his one friend (after much fighting) Frank Lloyd Wright, who continued to call him "My master" throughout his whole life.

Whew!

Watching Alias tonight, going to Portillos for cheese fries and looking forward to the weekend!

YAY ME