"Chicago School": Metamorphosis of a Term

Abstract

THE phrase Chicago School is one of the best known, yet most abused, of all terms in current usage by historians of modern architecture. Not only is there no strictly accepted definition of the phrase, but confusion has reached such proportions that some writers have emphatically denied that the term could mean what it has, in fact, meant for many decades. Thomas Tallmadge, the perceptive historian and architect, coined the name in I908 in his article on 'Chicago School' in the Architectural Review. He listed precisely which architects contributed to the school: most prominent architects who have furthered the movement, and whose work in some instances illustrates the context, are, Frank Lloyd Wright, Dean and Dean, Richard E. Schmidt, Garden and Martin, George Maher ..., Perkins and Hamilton, Nimmons and Fellows, Spencer and Powers, Arthur Heun, Max Dunning, Walter Griffin, Howard Shaw, and many others.' The Chicago School meant to Tallmadge the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and his contemporaries as manifest primarily in residential architecture after the turn of the century. Nowhere in his lengthy article did he mention Burnham, Holabird, Jenney, Roche, Root, Warren, or the other designers of tall commercial buildings. Louis Sullivan was the sole exception. He was accorded credit for giving impetus to the younger generation through his teaching and his work. The reason for excluding the others was clear. The tall buildings of the late nineteenth century, and their architects, were not part of the Chicago School. In 1935 Hugh Morrison, in his brilliant study of Louis Sullivan, Prophet of Modern Architecture, continued to use the phrase in its original context. From the middle nineties up to the time of the War, and even after, there was a small but vital current of fine work produced by these men, force-