With the exception of John Root, Paul Lautrup, Robert Craik McLean, then editor of The Inland Architect, now the Western Architect, and perchance a few others, the effusion did not take. The consensus of opinion was to the effect that “they” did not know what Louis was talking about and did not believe “he” did; that he was plainly crazy, for what had all this flowery stuff to do with architecture anyhow? Louis fully agrees with “them,” considering their point of view. As to McLean, the essay stuck in his red wild Canadian hair like a burr, through the years. Indeed, in a pious orgy as late as 1919, he, in his magazine, wrote this: “Some thirty-five years ago, at Chicago, a young man read a poetical essay before a group of architects, representative of the profession in the Middle West. Few understood the metaphor, but all recognized the fervor of aspiring and inspired genius that produced Louis H. Sullivan’s ‘Inspiration.’ He called this most remarkable blank versification a ‘Spring Song,’ and, though unconsciously, perhaps, it was his architectural thesis. His executions since that faraway time, with a remarkable measure of success, have been expressive of those fundamentals held by his hearers to be but abstract symbolisms.”
What delicious and inspired euphemisms!
Louis regards the work as a bit sophomoric, and over-exalted, but the thought is sound. Excepting specifications he did not write again for a number of years. He was too busy thinking, working; he preferred the world of action. Still, later on, among the murals of the Auditorium Theatre, were two in reminiscence, one bearing the legend “O, soft, melodious Springtime! Firstborn of life and love!” and its pendant, inscribed: “A great life has passed into the tomb, and there, awaits the requiem of Winter’s snows.”
The drawings of the Auditorium Building were now well under way. Louis’s heart went into this structure. It is old-time now, but its tower holds its head in the air, as a tower should. It was the culmination of Louis’s masonry “period.”
Referring again to the essay: Louis thought he would try it on the higher culture. So he sent a copy to his aged friend, Professor of Latin in the University of Michigan, who wrote in return: “The language is beautiful, but what on earth you are talking about I have not the faintest idea.”
Alas, an arm chair and a class room have been known to shut out the world.
Retrospect
In Chicago, the progress of the building art from 1880 onward was phenomenal. The earlier days had been given over to four-inch ashlar fronts, cylinder glass, and galvanized iron cornices, with cast iron columns and lintels below; with interior construction of wood joists, posts and girders; continuous and rule-of-thumb foundations of “dimension stone.” Plate glass and mirrors came from Belgium and France; rolled iron beams—rare and precious—came from Belgium; Portland cement from England. The only available American cements were “Rosendale,” “Louisville” and “Utica”—called natural or hydraulic cements. Brownstone could be had from Connecticut, marble from Vermont, granite from Maine. Interior equipments such as heating, plumbing, drainage, and elevators or lifts, were to a degree, primitive. Of timber and lumber—soft and hard woods—there was an abundance. This general statement applies mainly to the business district, although there were some solid structures to be seen. And it should be noted that before the great fire, a few attempts had been made to build “fireproof” on the assumption that bare iron would resist fire. As to the residential districts, there were increasing indications of pride and display, for rich men were already being thrust up by the mass. The vast acreage and square mileage, however, consisted of frame dwellings; for, as has been said, Chicago was the greatest lumber market “in the world.” Beyond these inflammable districts were the prairies and the villages.
The Middle West at that time was dominantly agricultural; wheat, corn, other grains, hogs, while cattle and sheep roamed the unfenced ranges of the Far Western plains. Lumbering was a great industry with its attendant saw mills and planing mills, and there were immense lumber yards along the south branch of the Chicago River, which on occasion made gallant bonfires. And it so happened that, as Louis heard a banquet orator remark, in the spread eagle fashion of the day, Chicago had become “the center of a vast contiguous territory.”
Great grain elevators gave accent to the branches of the river. There was huge slaughter at the Stock Yards, as droves of steers, hogs and sheep moved bellowing, squealing, bleating or silently anxious as they crowded the runways to their reward. The agonized look in the eyes of a steer as his nose was pulled silently down tight to the floor ring, in useless protest, the blow on the crown of the skull; an endless procession of oncoming hogs hanging single file by the heel—a pandemonium of terror—one by one reaching the man in the blood-pit; the knife pushed into a soft throat then down, a crimson gush, a turn in the trolley, an object drops into the scalding trough, thence on its way to the coterie of skilled surgeons, who manipulate with amazing celerity. Then comes the next one and the next one and the next, as they have been coming ever since, and will come.
Surely the story of the hog is not without human interest. The beginning, a cute bit of activity, tugging in competition with brothers and sisters of the litter, pushing aside the titman, while she who brought these little ones to the light lies stretched full length on her side, twitching a corkscrew tail, flapping the one ear, grunting softly even musically as the little ones push and paw, heaving a sigh now
