“The problem of the tall office building is one of the most stupendous...opportunities that the Lord of Nature in His beneficence has ever offered to the proud spirit of man.”

-Louis Sullivan, American architect, 1856-1924

Louis Sullivan has been called the Father of Skyscrapers. He was an architect of the Chicago School and a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, and he wrote much about the design of tall buildings. This quote comes from an article he wrote for Lippincott’s Magazine in 1896, titled ‘The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered’. In it, Sullivan outlines his theory of tall building design. These words are part of a longer train of thought in which he muses about the tall building problem, and his words jump off the page with the passion and belief of a true master:

"What is the chief characteristic of the tall office building? And at once we answer, it is lofty. This loftiness is to the artist-nature its thrilling aspect. It is the very open organ-tone in its appeal. It must be in turn the dominant chord in his expression of it, the true excitant of his imagination. It must be tall, every inch of it tall. The force and power of altitude must be in it, the glory and pride of exaltation must be in it. It must be every inch a proud and soaring thing, rising in sheer exaltation that from bottom to top it is a unit without a single dissenting line, that it is the new, the unexpected, the eloquent peroration of most bald, most sinister, most forbidding conditions.

The man who designs in this spirit and with this sense of responsibility to the generation he lives in must be no coward, no denier, no bookworm, no dilettante. He must live of his life and for his life in the fullest, most consummate sense. He must realize at once and with the grasp of inspiration that the problem of the tall office building is one of the most stupendous, one of the most magnificent opportunities that the Lord of Nature in His beneficence has ever offered to the proud spirit of man.

That this has not been perceived - indeed, has been flatly denied - is an exhibition of human perversity that must give us pause.”[1]


[1]: Sullivan, Louis H. "The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered." Lippincott's Magazine, March 1896, 406.