Eye On Illinois: What would Sullivan say about the needs of modern office space?

Form ever follows function.

So wrote famed architect Louis Sullivan, born this day in 1856. A Boston native, Sullivan moved to Chicago at 17, from where he launched a legendary career. Sullivan credited the concept to the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, who wrote all buildings should have strength, utility and beauty.

When I was on staff at the Clinton (Iowa) Herald, I had the pleasure of not only working just a few steps from Sullivan’s rugged Van Allen Building on Fifth Avenue South, but also of extensively covering historic preservation efforts that centered on converting a beloved department store into a first-floor pharmacy underneath three stories of modern, affordable apartments that better suited the needs of an evolving downtown district.

That experience led me to consider both Sullivan’s approach to design and the constant – albeit inconsistently – way societal changes force reconsideration of public spaces. And not public in the sense of government property, but in terms of large chunks of prominent land in parts of our cities and towns where many residents feel a sense of ownership or investment, regardless of which private entity holds the deed.

Sullivan’s famous phrase appeared near the conclusion of a March 1896 essay he penned for Lippincott’s Monthly Magazine titled “The Tall Office Building Artistically Considered.” But as I revisited that piece, chunks of the third paragraph rattled in my brain:

“Offices are necessary for the transaction of business; the invention and perfection of the high-speed elevator make vertical travel, that was once tedious and painful, now easy and comfortable; development of steel manufactures has shown the way to safe, rigid, economical constructions rising to a great height; continued growth of population in the great cities, consequent congestion of centers and rise in value of ground, stimulate an increase in number of stories’ these, successfully piled one upon another, react on ground values; – and so on, by action and reaction, interaction and inter-reaction.”

Sullivan died 100 years ago in Chicago. I can only speculate how his assessment would be different if rendered today. Decades of suburban sprawl, relegation of public transit into steep subservience to the passenger vehicle, the advent and predominance of instant communication, videoconferences and remote work … these are the broadly agreeable facts before approaching the more subjective societal and economic issues also at play.

No one is alive who remembers the way elevators transformed architecture, but we all now live with the consequences of the working world making obsolete billions of square feet that are otherwise in literal good standing.

Sullivan believed “it is of the very essence of every problem that it contains and suggests its own solution.” I’d love to know his approach to this great modern challenge.

• Scott T. Holland writes about state government issues for Shaw Local News Network. Follow him on X @sth749. He can be reached at sholland@shawmedia.com.