991376

Chicago's Auditorium Building: Opera or Anarchism
Author(s): Joseph M. Siry

Source: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Jun., 1998), pp.
128-159
Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the Society of Architectural Historians
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Auditorium
Chicago's
Building
OperaorAnarchism
JOSEPH M. SIRY,WesleyanUniversity
buildings in the modern period have been as closely
identified with a city's architectural culture as Adler and
Sullivan's Auditorium Building in Chicago, designed and built
from 1886 to 1890 (Figure 1). Regarded as a definitive monu-
Few
ment for its place and period, it is a work that did much to
launch Chicago's reputation as a major center for modern
architecture. The Auditorium Building has always figured
centrally in accounts of Adler and Sullivan's oeuvre because of
its technical and aesthetic virtuosity, both as a construction
and as a theater.1 This study attempts to situate the Auditorium
Building within the social history of Chicago in the 1880s,
when the city's theatrical and musical culture was part of a
larger ongoing struggle between Chicago's leading capitalists
and property owners and a local working-class political movement for socialistic anarchism.
As an ideologically calculated response to its historic moment, Chicago's Auditorium adapted traditions of theater
architecture and urban monumentality as these had developed in both Europe and the United States in the late nineteenth century. The building's planning and design answered
to its social purpose. Such analysis of this pivotal work provides
a different perspective on the phenomenon of the Chicago
School of architecture with which the Auditorium is linked in
the modern movement's historiography. The case of the Auditorium points up the need to examine not only the protomodern construction and expression of Chicago's commercial
buildings from 1880 to 1900 but also their patronage.2
NEW YORK CITY'S METROPOLITAN OPERA HOUSE
As its patron and architects later commented, Chicago's Auditorium Theater was designed partly in opposition to New
York's original Metropolitan Opera House of 1881-1883. Unlike the Auditorium, the Metropolitan was paid for by individual stockholders who purchased boxes in the projected
theater for their private use. As the Met's architect, Josiah
Cady, explained: "In this country, where the government is
not 'paternal,' aid has been found in another quarter: the
wealthy, fashionable classes, who, even if not caring especially
for, nor appreciating deeply the music, find [the opera house]
a peculiar and valuable social feature. Its boxes afford a rare
opportunity for the display of beauty and toilet[te]s. They also
give opportunity for the informal exchange of social courtesies, being opened to select callers through the evening; the
long waits between the acts especially favoring such interThis method of financing "in no small degree
change."'
determines the size and character of the house," where provision had to be made "for accommodating liberally and elegantly the boxholders who have built this house, guarantee it
against loss, and receive their special accommodations as a
return for the same."4
Appointed after a competition in 1880, Cady designed the
original Metropolitan Opera House for a site 200 feet wide
from Thirty-ninth to Fortieth Streets and 260 feet long from its
front on Broadway back to Seventh Avenue (Figure 2). For this
site, as Edith Wharton recalled, New Yorkers wanted "a new
Opera House which should compete in costliness and splendor with those of the great European capitals."'5The chairman
of the Metropolitan's building committee wrote that "there is
not a Theater or Opera House in the country that can be
taken as a model for what we intend to have.'"6 Before he
became the Metropolitan's architect, Cady,although an accomplished organist and musician, had never designed a theater
nor seen an opera and had never traveled to Europe. His
appointment prompted him to tour European opera houses
in 1881 prior to executing his final plans.7
In Cady's built plan for the Met, the auditorium housed a
ring of equally sized boxes in the tradition of La Scala in Milan
(1776-1778) and Edward M. Barry's Covent Garden in London (1856-1858). However, the Met's larger auditorium was a
slightly modified version of their horseshoe-shaped plans. To
ensure good sight lines from boxes near the stage, Cady
shaped the boxes as a lyre in a plan that flared outward where
it met the stage. Indeed he named his original competition
project "Lyre," alluding to the musical instrument of Apollo,
the god of music, whose image appeared in the mural over the
proscenium. The auditorium's large overall area and its distended curvature enabled Cady to include a total of 122 boxes
in three full tiers around the horseshoe and an additional half
128 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

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FIGUREI:Adler and Sullivan,AuditoriumBuilding,MichiganAvenue and Congress Street, Chicago, 1886- 890, from southwest, showing houses on Congress Street (lower right)
tier of boxes beneath the lowest full tier. This half tier of
baignoire (meaning bathtub-like) boxes was near the stage,
where the lowering of the parquet permitted its insertion
(Figure 3). As in La Scala, each box at the Met had an
anteroom or salon for receiving visitors. The box itself seated
at most six persons, yielding a total capacity of 732 persons in
boxes. Stockholders purchased outright only the boxes on the
two lower full tiers. Those on the lowest half tier and the upper
full tier were rented, at first for $12,000 a season. When the
Metropolitan opened, newspapers printed diagrams showing
who owned each of the boxes. To ensure adequate ticket
revenues, the entire auditorium was to seat 3,045, making it
larger than major European theaters such as the Paris Opera,
which had 2,156 permanent seats.8
To avoid competition among patrons, the Met omitted
visually prominent boxes close to the stage in the side walls of
the proscenium, which were characteristic of earlier opera
houses. To make all the boxes equally desirable, "sight lines
were drawn from every part of the house in each tier [of
boxes] to the sides and the rear of the stage, to ascertain how
much of the view of the stage would be lost from that point,
and the contour of the auditorium and the pitch of each tier
[of boxes] were modified in conformity with the results of
these studies to the arrangement actually adopted."9 In optimizing sight lines from boxes, the Metropolitan converted its
wealthiest patrons "into a republic of oligarchs with no precedence among themselves, nodding on equal terms all around
Olympus."10
In 1966, before its closing and demolition, accounts of the
old Metropolitan praised its acoustics, especially for the voice.
Yet in its first season (1883-1884), the theater was deemed too
large to be an acoustically optimal space because its huge
volume made it difficult to hear performers (especially those
with less strong voices) in the uppermost galleries." In addition, although Cady's office prepared 700 drawings to adjust
sight lines, such studies did not perfect the quality of views
from seats in the balcony and top gallery above the three tiers
of boxes. In the topmost gallery, only a fourth of the seats had
SIRY:CHICAGO'SAUDITORIUM BUILDING 129

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FIGURE
2: Cady,BergandSee, Metropolitan
Opera House,New YorkCity, 1881-1883,
of (right)firststoryand (left)sechalf-plans
ondstory.FromHarper's
67 (NovemMonthly
ber 1883)
HALF OF 22N STR-y
a view of the stage, while in the theater overall, 700 seats had
only partial views of the stage. At the close of the Met's first
season, one editor concluded that "the problem of providing
over three thousand good seats-that is to say, seats in which
all the occupants can hear well and see well-in a theater of
which three tiers are given up to less than seven hundred
people [in boxes] is an insoluble problem. The Metropolitan
Opera-house is probably the last attempt that will be made at
its solution."'12
The Met's concept of audience determined the volumetric
HA E. QE- iss
STORN
form of the auditorium. When viewed from the stage, the

house appeared as an encompassing wall of box tiers. On the
parquet, the seating rose in a shallow curve up from the stage.
The total volume of space was largely determined by the three
tiers of boxes. Above these, the old Met had a gallery and an
uppermost balcony around three sides. Above the upper
balcony, the ceiling had a height of 80 feet over the stage. The
high ceiling demanded a tall frontal opening or proscenium
consistent with the overall proportions of the room. Thus
Cady's proscenium was as tall as it was wide, or about 50 feet in
130 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

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3: Metropolitan
FIGURE
OperaHouse,original interiorshowingparquetrows, lowest
half-tier(baignoire)
boxes, three fulltiers of
boxes,andbalconybelowgallery.FromNew
YorkDailyGraphic(23 October 1883)
both directions, crowned by an attic, as shown in Figure 4. As

one contemporary wrote, the need for boxes in many tiers
increased the theater's height to create "an enormous unoccupied space within the auditorium." As a result, "the voice
lion, exclusive of the land. No opera house of its size, or

pretension, had previously been built in the United States. In
becomes diluted, its quality changes, and as the singer forces

his tones to make them reach his distant hearers, half the
pleasure is lost."'3 Demands of patronage had resulted in a
functionally compromised hall.
Cady's view, the interiors of such a building were so complex

and costly in construction, equipment, and ornament that
"there is little money left with which to make it a noble work of
art, or a monumental work."14Thus it would be best "if the
architect acknowledges the situation frankly, and meets it in a
simple manner.., .following some honored and appropriate
The style chosen for the Metropolitan's exterior conveyed

its institutional program. The building cost almost $1.8 mil-
style, especially adapted to the economy he must exercise."15

For the exterior, Cady chose a round-arched style centered on
SIRY:CHICAGO'S
AUDITORIUM
BUILDING 131

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FIGURE4: Metropolitan Opera House, view of
.
OP
Ro
central mural of Apollo flanked by individual

figural portraits of the muses and paintings of
"The Ballet"and "The Chorus" by FrancisMay-
'IN
Ilk
ol
nard to either side of the frieze above topmost

gallery.FromCenturyMoagazine28 (July1884)
Alt,
like
liAk
a portico of three bays as the main frontal entrance on

Broadway (Figure 5). To the sides were corner blocks that rose
to seven stories. Only the first two stories were internally part
of the opera house, articulated as such by larger windows. The
corner blocks' ground floors contained shops, with ballrooms
and restaurants above on the second floor. Their rents were to
supplement income from the theater, whose operations alone
tone as to border on the disreputable as a form of public

amusement. This view became dominant with changing repertoires of the 1860s, when plots of new operas gave greater
emphasis to personal mores.19 To certify the Met's social
were not expected to be profitable. Additional income was also

expected from the corner blocks' upper stories, which were
initially identified as apartments for bachelors.16The residential
corner blocks were crowned by a bracketed cornice and balustrade, so that the round-arched exterior style was distinctly
italianate, considered appropriate for a theater initiallyintended
for Italian opera. Since funds were insufficient to allow employment of costly stone and marble, Cady's walls were of a pale
yellow brickwith ornamental terra-cottatrim of the same color.'7
Cady's fronts for the Metropolitan signified the idea of
opera as a legitimate entertainment. In New York, opera was
Designed by Francis H. Kimball and Thomas Wisedell, the

Casino was Manhattan's main center for light opera and
burlesque. This theater's exterior was highly eclectic and
picturesque. Its round corner tower and bowed loggia curving
out above the arched entrance on Thirty-ninth Street combined with Islamic motifs to evoke exotic fantasy that bespoke
popular, with audiences acclaiming leading musical artists

imported from Europe to perform Italian works since the
1850s.18 Yet some regarded these operas as so emotional in
ate urban character was a central issue for the Chicago Auditorium's design, yet its founders had a different theater in mind,
one shaped by their city's social and cultural situation.
acceptability, its sober fronts were meant to contrast with those

of the Casino Theater of 1882 (Figure 6), standing opposite on
the southeast corner of Thirty-ninth Street and Broadway.
the productions within. The loggia signaled the presence of a

roof garden-the
first space of its kind in Manhattanintended for informal musical performances.20 By contrast,
the Metropolitan was deliberately restrained to convey its
purpose of housing grand opera. Communicating an appropri-
132 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

Si
i.iAD
------.....
FIGURE5: MetropolitanOpera House, on west side of Broadwaybetween Thirty-ninthand FortiethStreets, 1881- 1883;demolished 1966;from the southeast, showing New York
Times Building(1904) at right.Photograph (c. 1905) by Detroit PublishingCo.
CHICAGO'S GRAND OPERA FESTIVAL AND ANARCHIST

DEMONSTRATIONS
The old Met's completion quickly stirred Chicagoans to act.

Dankmar Adler recalled: "The wish of Chicago to possess an
Opera House larger and finer than the Metropolitan, a hall for
great choral and orchestral concerts, a mammoth ball-room, a
convention hall, an auditorium for mass meetings, etc., etc., all
under the same roof and within the same walls, gave birth to
the Auditorium proper."21As Adler implied, Chicago's building was to be broader in its program and range of purposes
than the Metropolitan's. It was also intended to be a theater
and a monument responding to local urban conditions as
these were interpreted by the project's chief patron, Ferdinand W. Peck (1848-1924). His vision was a frame of reference within which Adler and Sullivan created the Auditorium's interiors and monumental exterior.
Peck was the youngest son of Mary Kent Peck and Philip F.
W. Peck, who came to Chicago from Rhode Island in the 1830s
and gradually acquired a series of centrally located properties

whose values rose with the city's growth. When their father
died, Ferdinand and his brothers, who were also instrumental
in building the Auditorium, took over management of the
Peck properties. By 1890 these holdings constituted most of
the fourth largest private fortune in Chicago, with the Peck
wealth estimated at $10 million.22 Devoted to a series of civic
causes, Ferdinand Peck was a major supporter and president
of the first Chicago Athenaeum, an urban college and cultural
center for working people, which in 1890 moved into a building close to the Auditorium.23 By all accounts, Peck showed an
unusual degree of concern for workers' lives. His fortune was
based on the rental values of family-owned urban real estate, so
he was not a socialist. However, unlike many wealthier Chicagoans, he was neither an industrialist nor a merchant who dealt
directly with workers or their associations. This relative distance from confrontations between capital and labor may have
fostered his more charitable outlook. He had "always been

..
!i i i i
l'
predated Chicago's Auditorium. In France the revolution of

1789 had initiated a prolific development of popular theater
in Paris, where numerous new buildings for public commercial theater were built before the Restoration. By 1847 the
growth of Parisian popular theater had led to the creation of
i i i i i i i ii i
the Opiera National, whose repertoire, staging, seating, and

pricing were intended to attract workers. A democratic ideal
also informed Charles Garnier's building for the Paris Opera
of 1861-1875, wherein the architect carefully orchestrated the
spatial system of arrival and circulation to accommodate a
range of ticketholders.29 A comparable goal informed the
design of Parisian municipal theaters built under the Second
Empire for popular audiences, where auditoriums were encased by rented shops and apartments. These included Gabriel Davioud's Theitre du Chitelet and the Theitre Lyrique
(the latter built for a reincarnated Opera National) sited on
the Place du Chitelet, commissioned in 1859 and inaugurated
in 1862. Early in the Third Republic, Davioud designed the
large Trocad6ro Theater (1876-1878) as a popular concert
hall where opera could also be staged.30 Built for the Paris
International Exposition of 1878, the Trocadero recalled the
program and scale of the Royal Albert Hall (1867-1871) in
6: Kimball
andWisedell,CasinoTheater,southeastcomer,Broadwayand
FIGURE
Street,New YorkCity,1882;demolished
Thirty-ninth
outspoken in his defense of the rights of workingmen, and he

heartily despises all forms of snobbish aristocracy."24Another
observer wrote that Peck was "very sympathetic towards the
man who could not afford to indulge his propensities in the
direction of culture without pecuniary aid."25 This concern
shaped his vision of the Auditorium, which drew on a broadly
informed knowledge of theaters.
As the Auditorium was being completed inJune 1888, Peck
noted that "the thing had been in my mind a long time."26
How long is unknown, although Peck was said to have traveled
repeatedly to Europe, where he cultivated his lifelong enthusiasm for Italian grand opera.27 He was not the only wealthy
Chicagoan to acquire culture from European travel. For example, Philo T. Otis, one of the key supporters of the Chicago
Symphony Orchestra and author of its history, noted the
operas he had attended in an account of his Europeanjourney
of 1873-1874. For Otis, as for many of his American contemporaries, the productions of the Royal Italian Opera Company at
London's Covent Garden were a prime link to European
operatic culture. By the 1870s this was the home of the
premier vocalist of the period, Adelina Patti, who also sang in
NewYork and at the Auditorium's opening.28
Peck's emphasis on democratic access to high culture in
music and theater, especially opera, may have been based in
part on familiarity with comparable European efforts that
South Kensington, London. This hall had a vast metal dome

that recalled the scale of the Crystal Palace built for the Great
Exhibition of 1851. When rebuilt at Sydenham in 1854, the
Crystal Palace had also housed large-scale popular concerts.31
As Roula Geraniotis has shown, perhaps the most direct
architectural and ideological precedent for Chicago's Auditorium was one of the most innovative new European opera
houses, Richard Wagner's Festspielhaus in Bayreuth. Its architects, Otto Bruckwald and Carl Runkwitz, worked with the
theater's technical director, Carl Brandt, to design a setting
specifically for Wagner's musical dramas. The project grew
from the composer's earlier collaboration with architect
Gottfried Semper to design a comparable theater in Munich,
which was never built.32At Bayreuth, Wagner selected the site
and specified the Festspielhaus's plan. Built from 1872 to
1876, this famed hall featured an amphitheater-like sweep of
seating designed to give spectators a broad view of the stage
(Figure 7). The theater seated about 1,500, including the rear
boxes and a rear gallery above. Bayreuth had neither a main
foyer nor aisles running to the stage between seating groups.
Instead, the audience entered through five doors on the right
and five on the left. Each of these led to a certain number of
seating rows entered from the sides, leaving an unbroken
curvature of seating in front of the stage. As with Semper's
projects for Munich, the Festspielhaus at Bayreuth explicitly
recalled the amphitheater-like shape of ancient Greek theaters. On one level, the architecture's Classical allusion was
consistent with Wagner's ideal of musical drama rooted not in
Italian court opera but in ancient Greek theater. On another
134 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

level, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus's deemphasis of boxes in

loges or tiers fulfilled Wagner's aim to provide a more democratic and unified experience for the audience. In this goal, he
was carrying forward Semper's earlier intentions for his Court
Opera House at Dresden (1837-1841). Similar democratic
impulses had underlain the amphitheater-like main floor of
Karl Friedrich Schinkel's Royal Theater, or Schauspielhaus at
Berlin (1818-1824), although both there and at Dresden, loges
of boxes still predominated around the theater interior.33
The opening of Wagner's Festspielhaus in August 1876 was
an international event described in detail in New York newspapers. At least one project for the Metropolitan Opera House
incorporated ideas from Bayreuth's design, and, after its first
season in 1883-1884, the Met adopted a program of German
opera modeled closely on Bayreuth's, hiring Wagner's protege
to conduct performances in New York.34However, the Met's
directors did not choose to build a theater whose form imitated Wagner's at Bayreuth. Instead, by modeling the Met on
Covent Garden and La Scala, Manhattan patrons chose the
earlier tradition of court opera houses to which Bayreuth's
Festspielhaus had been opposed.
Peck was familiar with the major opera houses of Europe,
many of which he visited with Adler during the late summer of
1888. Their itinerary included Bayreuth, among other German theaters. Louis Sullivan greatly admired Wagner, and
many Americans traveled to see performances at Bayreuth. Yet
Sullivan also presumably knew the Paris Opera from his period
of study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1874-1875. Its exterior
had been visible from 1867, near the rue de la Paix, where he
recalled his pleasure in strolling and window shopping. The
Paris Opera's opening as a theater on 5 January 1875 was a
major national event, occurring before Sullivan sailed back to
the United States in May. He later acquired Charles Garnier's
folio monograph on the building and similar publications on
S?l
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7: Otto Bruckwald
with Carl Brandt,Festspielhaus,
FIGURE
and Carl Runkwitz,
at
Bayreuth,1872-1876, showingscene from RichardWagner,Das Rheingold,
theater'sopeningnight,13August1876.Drawingby L.Bechstein
the opera houses of Vienna and Frankfurt.35

As Peck statedin
1888, "We'vehad the plansof all the leading operahousesand
theatersof Europe in our architects'offices from the beginning of the [Auditorium]enterprise."36He was ideologically
opposed to the concept of an opera house primarilyfor the
privilegedclasses,with its space dominated by privateboxes.
On 7 December 1889, two daysbefore its theater opened, he
wrote to the Auditorium's180 stockholders,who constituted
the city'scapitalistelite, statingthat the great opera houses of
Europe, those of Paris,Vienna, Frankfurt,Dresden, Berlin,
and Milan,"areall smallerin capacity,exclusiveboxes occupying much of the space. They are built ratherfor the few than
for the masses-the titled and the wealthyratherthan for the
people--lacking the broad democraticpolicyof providingfor
all which prevailsin the arrangementof your Auditorium,
therebylesseningthe gulf between the classes."37
This last phrase was rooted in Chicago'sdeeply troubled
social history of the years 1883-1886. A recession startingin
1883, with its sudden layoffs and wage reductions in many
trades,had been the stimulusfor a seriesof local laboractions,
beginning with a city-widebricklayers'strikein the summerof
that year.The focus of the strikewas Chicago'snew Boardof
TradeBuildingthen under constructionat La SalleandJackson Streets,the cornerstoneof which had been laidin December 1882.Designed byWilliamBoyington,the Boardof Trade
Buildingwas then Chicago'smost massivecommercialmonument, with the city's tallest tower (Figure 8). The building
housed a legendarytradingfloorfor grainand other commodities,while the leadersof its boardcontrolledChicago'srailway
systemsand manufacturingplants. This structure"wasby all
odds the most important project then under way, and the
strikewas looked upon as a challenge to the industrialand
financialmight of the city."38
Although the bricklayers'strike was unsuccessful,it did
help to initiatea rapidlygrowinglabor movement in the city.
The most politicallyradicaland visiblearm of this movement
was the InternationalWorkingPeople's Association (IWPA),
whose leadersincludedAlbertParsons,publisherof Chicago's
main English-languagesocialistnewspaper,TheAlarm.Parsons
and his allies advanced a utopian ideal of anarchismas an
alternativepostcapitalistsociety based on freedom, brotherhood, and equality.As a part of the internationalanarchist
movement,the IWPAopposed not only oppressionof working
people by propertiedclassesbut also ideas of authority,privilege, and hierarchyin cultureas in politics.An importantpart
of the 1WPA'sprogram in Chicago was the nurturing of a
working-classcounterculturethat would providea prerevolutionary model of the future utopia they envisioned.Toward
this end, the IWPAorganizedorchestras,choral groups, theater clubs, concerts, dances, lectures, and plays as politically
motivated alternativesto their bourgeois counterparts.For

indoor events, workers rented local auditoriums, especially

Turner Hall on the North Side and Vorwiirts Turner Hall on
the West Side, both located outside the central city, where
middle-class theater buildings and music halls predominated.
In workers' halls, an ongoing series of musical and theatrical
fetes focused on revolutionary rhetoric and anarchistic
speeches. The events were consciously intended as socialistic
rituals, offering politicized working people a collective identity
not found in bourgeois theater and music.39
The IWPA'scultural program was not only an alternative to
capitalistic entertainment but also to the nonpolitical and
much decried amusements and leisure activities prevalent
among workers throughout Chicago. These were detailed in
the writings of religiously inspired middle- and upper-class
social reformers, such as George Wharton James's Chicago's
Dark Places (1891). There were politically conservative trade
unions with their own programs of socially conventional entertainment. Yet James and others described a widespread poverty and demoralization represented by saloons, brothels, and
general public immorality throughout the city's peripheral
districts where most workers lived. These areas housed many
smaller theaters and music halls that were closely tied to
alcohol and prostitution. James painted a bleak picture of the
lewd entertainments staged at these theaters as evidence of an
alarming degree of social degradation.40
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Capitalists like Peck and anarchists like Parsons both sought

to provide alternatives to cheap, nonpoliticized, and depraved
amusements for Chicago's workers. Both also valued the symbolic dimension of control over highly visible public space in
the city. Their alternative visions were apparent in two events
that took place in late April 1885. The first, organized by Peck,
was the Chicago Grand Opera Festival, inspired partly by the
new Metropolitan Opera Company's performances in Chicago in January 1884. The Met's manager, Henry Abbey, had
brought a large orchestra and chorus. To support his touring
productions, he had charged what were widely regarded as
"unreasonable and extortionate" prices "which in Europe no
one would have the temerity to demand," for "in older
countries the lover of music, however poor in this world's
goods, may hear great singers at a trifling expense."41 One
editor asked why Chicago should not "have constantly within
the easy reach of all classes of its citizens these ennobling
divertis [s]ements? Music halls and art galleries, accessible to
the poorest, promote peace and good order, elevate the general social tone and abound in all exalting influences."42
In this context, Peck was a leader in incorporating the
Chicago Grand Opera FestivalAssociation in April 1884. A key
ally was a local composer, Silas G. Pratt, editor of a booklet that
described the association's aims. Presumably alluding to the
Metropolitan's opening in October 1883, Pratt wrote: "Those
who have observed operatic events for the last decade in
America, have noted the gradual withdrawal of Grand Italian
Opera from the enjoyment and patronage of the masses, and
its limitation as a luxury to the favored few of wealth and
fashion."43 Peck's association was organized "primarily to
remedy this evil, and provide Grand Operafor the people at
popular prices, within the reach of all, and, at the same time,
to raise the performances to a higher standard of excellence."44
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The only building in Chicago able to provide seating for an

audience large enough to allow the festival to cover its costs
was the Inter-state Industrial Exposition Building in Lake Park,
on Michigan Avenue at Adams Street. Constructed in 1873,
this building had repeatedly been identified with the city's
capitalistic elite as a site for commercial expositions, music
festivals, and national political conventions.45 However, the
hall's enormous interior dissipated the sound of vocal artists.
Such poor acoustics inhibited its ability to fulfill the social
goals of music festivals, whose large choruses were intended to
FIGURE8: William Boyington, Chicago Board of Trade Building,1882-1885, with

jenney's Home InsuranceBuilding(I 883- I884), left foreground;Burnhamand Root's
Rookery (1885-1887),
left background, opposite Burnham and Root's Insurance
ExchangeBuilding(1884-1885), rightbackground
provide a spiritually uplifting experience for audiences.46

For the Opera Festival of 1885, Peck hired Adler and
Sullivan to refit the Exposition Building's north end. Adler
built new interior walls to lessen the room's volume, so that
"the entire opera hall will be inclosed, and also the stage."'47
He also built a massive sounding board extending upward
from the stage's arched proscenium and outward 80 feet into
136 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

AMORM
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FIGURE
9: Adler and Sullivan,ChicagoGrand
OperaFestivalHall,1885,in northend of Interstate IndustrialExpositionBuilding,1873, by
WilliamBoyington.From FirstChicagoGrand
OperaFestival
(Chicago,1885)
the auditorium (Figure 9). Fan-shaped seating focused on the

stage. Adler's sounding board ensured that the least strong
voices of singers would carry to the rear of the house, so that,
as Peck asserted, "the seats most remote from the stage are in
as good hearing as those near the stage."48 Sullivan designed
ornamental art for the sounding board in papier-mdachas
extensions of the elaborate theatrical scenes on the stage, thus
making "the auditorium itselfan attractivefeature
of thefestival."49
In this setting, two weeks of grand opera were staged,
including Italian, French, and German works. More than
8,000 people attended each performance, including Chicago's wealthy citizens as well as those with modest incomes.
Peck and the festival's guarantors were "prominent citizens
who are willing to assume any loss which may occur in order
that the people may have opera at reasonable prices." The
lowest-priced ticket for a reserved seat in the main balcony cost
one dollar for a single performance. During the Met's opera
tours before 1885, Chicagoans had "constantly complained
that they have been kept awayby the high prices, and that they
could not afford to pay all the way from $3 to $6 for a seat." For
the Grand Opera Festival, "the action of the association and
the public spirit of the guarantors have now made it possible
for them to attend fourteen performances for $12 by buying
season seats, and to obtain the best seats in the house for the
season for a little over $2 a performance. If they fail to avail
themselves of this extraordinary privilege they will have no
right to complain in the future."50With such low-priced tickets
for general admission, the festival attracted a total of 115,000
people, yielding receipts in excess of $170,000, which enabled
the association to cover costs of the productions and to refit
the hall.5' Local taste was educated, and the audience for
grand opera broadened. At the end of the last performance,
Peck, in response to repeated calls to the stage, came forward
and declared that the festival "had shown what Chicago would
and could do, and he hoped that people would look upon
this as a stepping stone to a great permanent hall where
similar enterprises would have a home. The continuation of
this annual festival, with magnificent music, at prices within
the reach of all, would have a tendency to diminish crime
and Socialism in our city by educating the masses to higher
things."52
Peck spoke those words on 18 April, just ten days before
Parsons and others led the most dramatic socialistic demonstration Chicago had yet seen. Since 1883, the IWPA had staged
massive urban workers' parades that wound their way through
the streets. Lines of 3,000 to 4,000 workers marched to music,
carrying and waving flags of socialistic groups. These events
reached a climax in response to the Board of Trade Building's
dedication on 28 April 1885, three days before the annual
workers' May Day parade. On the evening of 28 April, Parsons
led a protest march to the Board of Trade to disrupt the
inaugural banquet. Singing an anarchistic adaptation of the
"Marseillaise," the workers approached what they termed the
"Board of Thieves" who had erected a "Temple of Usury."
When police lines blocked their approach at every street, the
workers marched around the building, then rallied elsewhere,
where leaders decried poverty amidst wealth.53
Such demonstrations continued through the spring of
1886, when Parsons led a May Day parade down Michigan
Avenue, past the future site of the Auditorium. The year beSIRY:CHICAGO'SAUDITORIUM BUILDING 137

fore, he and others had led Sunday-afternoon labor meetings

on the lakefront at the foot of Van Buren Street, almost
directly east across Michigan Avenue from where the Audito-
course, great musical occasions in the nature of festivals,

operatic and otherwise, as well as other large gatherings, could
be held."59 No such facility then existed in the city, and public
rium was later built. In the spring of 1886 the workers' cause
focused on the eight-hour day, an idea supported by the
American Federation of Labor, which declared that it should
go into effect nationally on 1 May 1886. Strikes and other
funds would not be available. There was sufficient local private

capital to pay for construction, but to cover operating costs,
the building had to have "sufficient area to produce adequate
rentals out of improvements attached to and surrounding the
demonstrations followed in an effort to force employers to

yield. It was in this context that the labor rally at the Haymar-
auditorium."60 The Auditorium Theater would be encased by

a hotel, rentable shops, and offices.
Peck offered his vision not only within the context of
Chicago's response to Haymarket but also as part of an ongoing effort to improve the city's cultural life. In the spring of
1880 the Commercial Club had devoted a meeting to "the
fostering of art, literature and science" in Chicago. Another
session was devoted to "the cultivation of art, literature, sci-
ket, an urban square on Chicago's near West Side, took place

on the evening of Tuesday, 4 May 1886. As leaders addressed a
crowd, police arrived and ordered the group to disperse. A few
moments later, someone (never identified) hurled a bomb of
dynamite toward the police. After the explosion and ensuing
gunfire, seven officers and at least four civilians were fatally
wounded, with scores more seriously injured.54
The shock of the violence at Haymarket devastated civic
morale throughout Chicago, whose labor movement retreated
in the face of a wave of reactionary rhetoric and legal action.
Part of what made the anarchist movement so threatening to
propertied Chicagoans was its foreign element. For example,
the city's oldest extant socialist newspaper was the Germanlaunched in 1876 and edlanguage ChicagoerArbeiter-zeitung,
ited by two leading anarchists, August Spies and Michael
Schwab, who were tried for the Haymarket bombing. As many
of Chicago's workers were of German origin, their native
language was often used in the radical speeches and banners
prominent at anarchist gatherings.55 Thus Haymarket represented an urban society divided not only along class lines but
also between foreign and native-born. Newspapers other than
those with socialist leanings, and most clergy, condemned the
violence. More broadly they decried the depth of social division within the city. The Reverend David Swing, whose liberal
ministry Peck supported, earlier saw the need for a symbolic
counterweight to structures like the Board of Trade Building,
noting, "There is perhaps only one city in the world having a
population of half a million along whose streets no traveller or
citizen can find a single structure built by local benevolence.
Chicago has the honor of being that city."56
THE
ORIGINS
AND PLANNING
OF THE AUDITORIUM
Less than four weeks after Haymarket, Peck outlined his vision
of a permanent Auditorium Building at the Commercial Club's
first meeting after the tragedy, which addressed the topic "The
Late Civil Disorder: Its Causes and Lessons."'57As a leading
organization of businessmen, the Commercial Club had been
founded in the fall of 1877, shortly after the railroad strikes of
that summer.58 Peck detailed
siting, and financing of a new
auditorium where conventions
wise, mass-meetings, reunions
his proposal for the program,

civic structure, "a large public
of all kinds, political and otherof army organizations, and, of
ence, and comprehensive charities, and the establishment of

art museums, public libraries, industrial schools and free
hospitals" attendant to the commercial prosperity in great
cities.61 In the early 1880s one of the club members, Nathaniel
K. Fairbank, the primary supporter of the construction of the
Central Music Hall in 1879, had initiated the idea of an opera
house and public hall. Adler, who had designed the Central
Music Hall as his first independent theater building, worked
with Sullivan on studies for Fairbank's opera-house project. As
Sullivan later recalled, it did not progress to effective fundraising because of its perceived elitist appeal.62 In proposing
the Auditorium to the Commercial Club within weeks of
Haymarket, Peck was offering a version of his friend Fairbank's
earlier idea, but broadening its civic purposes in response to
the sense of urgency brought on by the recent violence. The
political situation in the city lent support to Peck's aim of
recasting the opera house, a type of building long associated
with urban elites, into a novel kind of structure aimed at the
cultural inclusion of workers.
By May 1886 one of Peck's allies had acquired an option on
a set of contiguous properties that would become the core of
the Auditorium Building's site at the northwest corner of
Michigan Avenue and Congress Street, then the southern
limit of Chicago's commercially developed center. In Peck's
view, this was "the only place available" for an auditorium
"which will fulfill all the requirements," meaning sufficient
area for revenue-producing appendages and a central location
providing access by streetcar from all parts of the city.63To have
sufficient funds for land rental and building construction, Peck
organized the Chicago Grand Auditorium Association in July
1886 to provide a corporate framework for the issuing of stock in
the enterprise. He led the effort by pledging $100,000, with
$30,000 more from the Peck family. The next largest stockholder was Marshall Field ($30,000). Adler and Sullivan, who
had been making studies for a permanent auditorium since
1882, also purchased shares in the amount of $25,000.64
138 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

-_iiiiii
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FIGURE 10: Auditorium, interior looking northwest from stage, showing risingfloor of parquet
with vomitorio-like
tunnels from west foyer, north
boxes, main balcony, lower and upper galleries.
Albert Fleury'smural of autumn on north wall is
faintlyvisible in bright daylightfrom skylightover
main balcony behind ceiling arches. Photograph
by J.W. Taylor
By January 1887, when construction began, the Auditorium Association had increased its capital stock to $1.5 million.
Peck sought to broaden the base of stockholders to include all
classes.65Citizens subscribed to the project without "any financial inducement being held oUt."66Peck wrote that the aim
was "the benefit and elevation of the public, and to add to the
glory of our city--the public spirit and liberality of citizens
being necessary here to produce what governments build and
support in other countries." His purpose was "not to createa
For Peck, the paradigm of a state effort
commercialenterprise."67
was the Paris Opera, which he disliked. He did not refer to
Parisian municipal theaters built, like the Auditorium, for
popular audiences and encased by rented shops and apartments.68 Instead, he compared the Auditorium to European
state opera houses. Even if the Auditorium were to be privately
and locally funded, Peck believed that it would attain the status
of a national monument like major European opera houses.69
Unlike the Metropolitan's stockholders, purchasers of shares
in the Auditorium did not acquire a box because, as Peck
originally envisioned the theater, it would contain no boxes.
The Met's boxholders were the guarantors against the annual
losses of the theater, which was never expected to be profitable. In the Auditorium, sizable hotel and office revenues were
to be the theater's guarantors against loss. Peck elected not to
follow the Met's operating plan for both financial and ideological reasons. In its first season of 1883-1884, the Met's boxholders had agreed to guaranty the theater's manager against a
possible loss of $60,000. After the season of sixty-one performances, the Met amassed a loss of at least $250,000, due in part
to initial high costs of scenery and costumes. Also, seats other
than boxes were priced too high to fill the house. As Adler
recalled, the Auditorium, with its larger theater and encasing
spaces, was to be "self-sustaining, and not like the Metropolitan Opera House, a perpetual financial burden to its owners."70
Peck had also consistently opposed boxes as a symbol of
those differences in social class that had been so sharply drawn
in Chicago, which the Auditorium was intended to lessen. Its
lack of boxes "was [Peck's] idea, for he has no belief in
privileged classes, and regards the Metropolitan Opera House
of New York, where the whole structure is sacrificed to the
boxes, with infinite scorn and patriotic dislike. This was a
repetition of effete European ideas, and if there was one thing
he impressed upon the architects, it was that he wanted the
Auditorium to represent the present and the future and not
the corrupted past."7' Although Peck initially preferred no
boxes, their conventional place in Chicago theaters presumably led to the inclusion of forty boxes in the Auditorium
Theater as finally built. However, these were set to the sides of
the theater in two tiers above the parquet, and even the most
frontal boxes were set well back from the proscenium. The
boxes were also open to one another, unlike the Met's, which
were separated by partitions. The Auditorium's lower boxes
formed an arcade, while upper boxes had only posts between
them (Figure 10).72 In all, the Auditorium's boxes, which
individual Chicagoans bid to possess for a season, accommodated about 200 people, or less than five percent of the
theater's total seating.73As Sullivan said: "We are democratic in
America and the masses demand the best seats. The boxes, you
see, are on the sides and do not furnish the best possible view.
In the imperial theaters the boxes are closed and take up all

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mainentry-level
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Magazine7 (August1894)
the best part of the house. Those occupying boxes in America

desire to be seen, probably, more than they desire to see."74
Sullivan's position corresponded closely to that of Adler,
whose views appeared in an essay on the theater probably
written shortly before his death in 1900. Adler argued for a
progressive view of architecture, meaning that older building
types like theaters should adapt to modern social changes by
avoiding nonfunctional historical conventions. He wrote that
in 1800 just one kind of theater had been "common to the
civilized world. The typical characteristics of its auditorium
were: level or nearly level pit; high surrounding walls masked
by many balconies and galleries; a ceiling raised high above
these high walls by the interposition of an entablature or cove,
or of both; within the ceiling a dome rising high enough to
allow the main central chandelier to be hung above the line of
vision of the greater part of the audience; and a proscenium
fashioned and decorated according to the rules conventionally accepted for the proportions of a doorway in a palace of
the period of the Renaissance. Almost the entire nineteenth
century has lapsed, and theater design is still dominated by
reverence for this historically transmitted type."75Adler advocated "non-historical theater design," for "neither historical
nor conventionally aesthetic considerations justify the use of
forms and typeswhich do not adapt to practical requirements.""76
In Chicago's Auditorium, Adler sought to provide views
and acoustics of similar quality for all patrons in a room whose
4,237 seats would make it among the world's largest spaces of
this type. Such a capacity, with a large number of inexpensive

seats, was meant to ensure financial viability and democratic
access. The theater was a rectangle, measuring 118 feet wide by
178 feet deep from the stage's front to the foyer's rear. The site
permitted a main entrance only on the south side (Figure 11).
The Auditorium's different concept of audience shaped its
interior appearance. The Metropolitan's interior read from
the stage as an encompassing wall of box tiers. The Auditorium's multiple aisles and tunnel-like passageways leading into
them from the rear foyers recalled vomitoria-a term Adler
used-like vaulted entrances to Roman amphitheaters (Figure
10).77 In theater planning, he advocated a maximum number
of narrow aisles (rather than fewer wide aisles) for facilitating
egress in case of fire. A maximum number of aisles also
resulted in a larger number of aisle seats, which were the most

desirable. On the main floor and balcony, no seat was more
than seven seats awayfrom an aisle.78
Horizontally, the Auditorium's deep rectangular plan enabled inclusion of a large number of seats in two sections of
seating on the main floor: the parquet near the stage and the
parquet circle farther back from the stage. The seating in both
directions was set in "generous sweeping curves."7"Adler did
not specify these curvatures, but Figure 12 shows that they are
segments of circles. He did not center seating rows at the
stage's front, and as a result, the rows did not reflect sound
back to its source on the stage front, thus avoiding echoes
there.80 In the theater, the central point of the circle from
140 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

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THE AUDITORIUM CHICAGO-PLAN
OF SECOND STORY.
FIGURE12: Auditorium,second-story plan showing (a) central point of circle defining curvatureof seating rows in lower parquet, (b) central point of circle definingcurvatureof
seating rows in upper parquet,and (c) seating rows at sides of upper parquet with rows of convex curvaturetoward stage. From EngineeringMagazine 7 (August 1894); graphic
additions by author
which the arcs of the parquetrowsare swungis at the stage's

rearcenter (Figure12, a), while the centralpoint of the circle
from which the arcs of the parquet circle rows are swung is
behind the first parquet row (Figure 12, b). At the parquet
circle'sfrontalsides,the curvatureof the seatingrowsreverses,
becoming convex ratherthan concaverelativeto the stage to
ensure optimal views of the stage from these lateral seats
(Figure 12, c). As Adler wrote, the main balcony (Figure13)
wasellipticalin plan. Rowshavea broad,shallowcurveyielding
superbviewsof the stagefrom the 1,429seatson thishigh level.
Vertically,as CharlesGregersenshowed,Adler adaptedthe
ideas ofJohn Scott Russellin order to calculatethe steep rise
in seating rowsof the main floor (17 feet from front to rear).
Adler had firstused this method in the CentralMusicHall of
1879, which was the auditoriumwhere FerdinandPeck regularlyworshipedas a supporterof the hall's main tenant, the
Reverend David Swing's Central Church.81 Ascending rows
enabled observersto see and hear above the heads of others
directlyin front, as shown in the section (Figure 14).82 The
resulting banked tiers of seating rise impressivelyfrom the
stage up through the main floor, continuing into the balcony
and galleries,the topmost of which has an extreme slope of
forty-onedegrees. From the uppermost row of this topmost
gallery,one clearlyhears an unamplifiedsinging voice from
the stage. As Adler said, "[T]he acoustic properties of the
house are such as to permit the easyand distincttransmission
AUDITORIUM THEATRE
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rows. From Diagramof the Seats and Boxes of the AuditoriumTheatre,Chicago (after
1910)

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of articulated sound to its remotest parts."83Tickets for this

uppermost gallery were initially priced at one dollar, the same
as the least expensive tickets for the Chicago Grand Opera
Festival, whose theater was also to enable acoustical access for
the least wealthy.84
The Auditorium's design contains a number of features
that indicate Adler's interest in ancient Roman and Greek
theaters as functionally viable models for modern theaters. In
referring to the Auditorium's tunnel-like passageways as vomitoria, Adler implicitly recalled the prototype of the Roman
Colosseum, the only ancient theater to which he referred in
his writings.85 Known for its efficiency of circulation, the
Colosseum was also elliptical in shape. Adler and Sullivan's use
of the ellipse in designing the balcony floor and ceiling arches
of the Auditorium recalled a preference for this form for
theaters by European architectural writers since the late eighteenth century. For example, Gottfried Semper, whose studies
of theater design with Richard Wagner provided one basis for
the latter's Festspielhaus at Bayreuth, had also believed in the
advantage of the ellipse for the projection of sound.86
Adler's essays on theater design echoed ideas propounded
by the Roman architect Vitruvius. His analysis of the acousti-
callyoptimaldesignof theatersremaineda standardreference

before the matterreceivedsustainedscientificinquirybeginning in the late eighteenth century.87Vitruviusendorsed the
idea of raisingtiers of seating to optimize acoustics.To avoid
the problem of spectatorsblocking sound from those behind
them, he advised that "it should be so contrivedthat a line
drawnfrom the lowest to the highest seat will touch the top
edges and angles of all the seats.Thus the voice willmeet with
no obstruction."88CitingVitruvius'swritingson acousticsin
his discussionsof the topic, Adler describedit as a phenomenon of concentric waves of sound that emanate from a
source,justas the Romanarchitecthad describedthe transmission of sound in ancient theaters,where seatingrowswere set
in concentric rings around a stage. Like Vitruvius,Adler
maintained that sound waves travel outwardfrom a source
until they are obstructedby an object.To enable sound to flow
unobstructed,"ancientarchitects,followingin the footstepsof
nature,perfected the ascendingrowsof seatsin theatresfrom
their investigationsof the ascendingvoice," endeavoring"to
make every voice uttered on the stage come with greater
clearnessand sweetnessto the ears of the audience."89 Thus,
in adaptingScott Russell'sisacousticcurve,Adler reworkeda
142 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

circle, the centre for the radius of which shall be behind the
proscenium, instead of in front of it as in the Greek form."Just
as Adler did, Fox argued for multiplying the points of egress to
subdivide the audience for rapid exit in case of fire. During
performances, the Greek idea of rising tiers of seats gave the

opportunity "for every one in the hall to see almost everybody
else.... There is no more valuable adjunct to noble architecture than this sea of interested and sympathetic faces, supplemented by the bloom of color in varied costumes."91 This
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social effect anticipated descriptions of the Auditorium's opening, when the full house became a metaphor for civic unity.92
Such an American adaptation of Greek theaters both resembles and differs in key ways from the adaptation of the
ancient model at Bayreuth's Festspielhaus, which was an extension of Semper's ideas. Both buildings abandoned the primacy
of the loges or tiers of boxes in favor of seating that was more
equal, democratic, and unified. The dramatic upward rise of
the seating at Bayreuth was also modeled on Scott Russell's
idea of ensuring acoustical and visual access to the stage.93But,
unlike Adler's theaters, Bayreuth's Festspielhaus had no main
public foyer and no aisles running to the stage between seating
groups, leaving an unbroken curvature of seating as a more
direct evocation of an ancient Greek theater. Also, vertically,
the Festspielhaus gallery was relatively small, whereas in Adler
and Sullivan's Auditorium Theater the main balcony and two
galleries above accounted for well over half the seating.
Bayreuth's Festspielhaus featured a triple proscenium, providing multiple rectangular frames for the stage.94 The Chi-
MloldernADtation
of thle Greek Form -Pitln
nd Section.
FIGURE15:Planof an ancient Greek theater, from James Stuartand Nicholas Revett,

TheAntiquitiesofAthens (London, 1762- 1830), and modem adaptationof the Greek
form, with longitudinalsection at right, from John A. Fox, "American Dramatic
Theatres. III,"
AmericanArchitectand BuildingNews 6 (2 August 1879): 36
cago Auditorium's arched proscenium expanded out into a

multi-arched ceiling that had no precedent in European or
American opera houses. The Met's acoustical difficulties were
caused by its high proscenium and ceiling needed to accommodate tiered boxes. Adler believed that a proscenium higher
than necessary for sight lines hampered an auditorium's acous-
principle of design that he knew from Vitruvius's description

of Classical theaters.
Adler's contemporary, architect John A. Fox of Boston,
had articulated the rationale for modern American adaptation of ancient Classical theater design. In a lecture of 1879
Fox noted that the term "theatre" was derived from the Greek
word signifying "to see." He cited James Fergusson, then
perhaps the most widely read English architectural historian,
who wrote that the Greeks "hit on the very best form in plan
for the transmission of the greatest quantity of sound, with the
greatest clearness, to the greatest possible number."90 Fox
proposed a modern adaptation of a Greek theater plan (Figure 15) that anticipates Adler's Auditorium plan. In a modern
theater, the need to see into the stage's depth to a distance
beyond the proscenium called for abandoning the extreme
side seats in a Greek semicircular plan. The result was "the
fan-shape; or more accurately, a portion of the sector of a
tics since the amount of unwanted reverberation is directly

proportional to a room's volume. He lowered the proscenium
to reduce the room's volume, thus conserving sound produced on stage and directing it outward to the audience,
analogous to retaining density of sound projected through a
trumpet or a speaking tube. This principle implied fan-shaped
seating on raised levels, "but the effort to conserve the sound
waves influences to a still greater extent the vertical dimensions of the auditorium. The proscenium must be low, not a
foot higher than is necessary to permit full view of any possible
grouping at the back of the stage from the last and highest seat
in the house."95
Adler complemented the low proscenium with "a gradual
increase in height of ceiling from the proscenium outward."
He modulated the rising ceiling planes "into a profile which
deflects the sound waves downward toward the rear of the
lower portion of the house."96 The Auditorium's ceiling was
SIRY: CHICAGO'S AUDITORIUM

BUILDING
143
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FIGURE16:Auditorium,interiorshowing ellipticalceilingarches, main organ screen to left of stage (with portraitsof Wagner and Haydn in arch spandrels),and iron-and-plaster
reducingcurtainframingstage. Photographby J.W. Taylor
thus designed as four elliptically arched segments with a

common center. These repeat the proscenium arch at progressively larger scales overhead (Figure 16). The four arches
concerts. The chorus seems thus to blend with the audience,

and the house is so open that one can see at a glance almost
the entire audience and the whole chorus.""98This effect was
contain the sound emanating from the stage and reflect it

back down into the theater quickly enough to prevent a
discernible echo of direct sound from the stage.97
apparent on the Auditorium's opening night, when the reducing curtain was raised to bring the whole stage into view from
the house, including a chorus in banked seating on the stage
To further control the size of the opening around the stage,

the Auditorium had an iron reducing curtain, covered with
ornamental plaster, which could be raised or lowered. This
reducing curtain framed the central heavy silk curtain. When
lowered, the reducing curtain framed an opening 47 feet wide
(Figure 18).
Combined lectures and choral performances were a part of
Peck's social vision of the Auditorium. He proposed a series of
and 35 feet high for opera, drama, lectures, and concerts with
no chorus (Figures 16, 17). Alternatively, to accommodate
large choral performances, the reducing curtain was raised
and the stage's entire width of 75 feet was made spatially
continuous with the rest of the auditorium. Adler wrote: "The
success of the room is greatest when used as a hall for mass
Sunday-night lectures by eminent orators of the Englishspeaking world. These were "not to be the star performances
of mere oratory, but real speeches upon important questions
of the day-philanthropic, economic, educational, artistic,
social."99The lectures were to be accompanied by great choral
performances of 500 voices drawn from the Chicago public,
with choral responses from the audience filling the house.
Wealthy guarantors such as Peck would underwrite the cost of
144 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

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for like purpose in seating capacity and utility."102 Sullivan's

design was keyed to the theater's electric lighting. The Met still
had gaslights, whereas by 1889 almost all of Chicago's theaters
were lit electrically. The Auditorium Building had the world's
largest lighting plant, with 3,500 incandescent bulbs running
along the ceiling arches and lines of bulbs along the fronts of
the balcony and galleries. The lighting scheme eliminated the
conventional chandelier in the center of a domed ceiling. The
Met's boxholders had asked that the gaslights remain raised
during shows so that patrons in boxes would be visible, whereas
the Auditorium's arcs of electric lights enveloped the audience
as a whole. In this period before urban power systems, only the
17:Auditorium,
FIGURE
showingpanoramic
stageset forscenefromLohengrin,
skyin
framed
and
Charles
mural
curtain,
background,
stage
by reducing
Holloway's
along
most up-to-date commercial buildings had electricity,generated

from their own power plants. Electric lighting was then a privi-
arch
proscenium
lege associated with high capital, still rare in individual homes.

The Auditorium brought this new utility to a mass audience.103
As Sullivan had done in his earlier remodeling of McVicker's Theater in 1885, in the Auditorium Theater he created a
scheme of color and ornament that was meant to complement
the novel electric lighting. Under the flicker and glare of
gaslights, the Met's original interior had been yellow-white
with gold relief.104The Auditorium's softer, more even electric
light came from clear-glass, carbon-filament bulbs each radiating 25 watts. When dimmed to pinpoints of light, these resembled jewels. This new way of lighting would enable "the
..........................
FIGURE
18:Auditorium,
openingnight,9 December1889,showingreducingcurtain
raisedand seatingadded to stage flankingchorus.FromFrankLeslie'sIllustrated
New York(21 December1889).
Newspaper,
such events to ensure that seats could be sold at nominal prices

to intelligent workers "upon whom the existing inequalities of
social conditions weigh most heavily." Men would be "brought
into a higher range of ideas and more stimulating and selfrewarding thought than that possible for them to pick up in
assembly-rooms or in the little reading their daily fatigue
permits them."100In 1889-1890 the Auditorium's Recital Hall
housed meetings of workers and capitalists aimed at resolving
differences.101
SULLIVAN'S DESIGN FOR THE AUDITORIUM'S INTERIOR
As Peck and Adler saw the Auditorium Theater's planning to

be different from European state opera houses, so Sullivan
viewed its interior as departing from such precedents. As one
observer wrote, "Compared with the greatest European auditoriums [Chicago's] will fall below many of them in costly
ornamental display, but will excel any edifice in the world used
fullest appreciation of the most delicate tints and the most

subtile [sic] gradations."'15 The bulbs formed a part of the
decoration, their light springing from surrounding ornament.
As in McVicker's, Sullivan selected a dominant color of old
ivory for the Auditorium. Subtly graded tones of this one color
were applied in oil to unify the interior. No surface was
red-the conventional color for theaters-so that the Auditorium looked "sumptuous and chaste," its color conveying the
ideal of a temple for high culture.106
Over the ivory-toned surfaces were areas of pure 23-carat
gold leaf, which Peck valued for its permanence. Flat stenciled
ornament of gold leaf (not extant) ran along the ceiling arch
soffits. Along the vertical faces of these ceiling arches, Sullivan
also designed scores of foliate motifs in cast plaster relief as
settings for the projecting bulbs. As Adler wrote, "The use of
richly-modulated plastic surface ornament is an important aid
to successful color decoration. It gives a rare interest to even
the simplest scheme of color distribution by the introduction
of modulations of light and shade, by the constant variation of
perspective effects, and by the brilliancy of the protuberant
points and edges as they catch and reflect the light."'07
Although richly inventive in its motifs, the ornamental
interior of Chicago's Auditorium was simple and reserved in
contrast with European houses, the archetype of which, from
Chicago's viewpoint,was Charles Garnier'sParis Opera. As

one French visitor to the city wrote, Chicagoans considered
SIRY:CHICAGO'S
AUDITORIUM
BUILDING 145

the Auditorium Building to be their rival to Paris's Opera,

even though on the Auditorium's exterior "the decorative
element, painting, and sculpture, so abundant, too abundant
even in our [Opera], is here totally lacking."108 Peck contrasted the Auditorium with European opera houses, most of
which had "grand approaches and splendid vestibules, embellished with costly frescoes and statuary which governments
have paid for."109He reminded his stockholders that the Paris
Opera cost more than twice the amount for the Auditorium
and took thirteen years to build, yet it contained a hall whose
capacity was only half that of the Auditorium Theater.
The Auditorium Theater eschewed the elaborate Classical
and political iconography of the Paris Opera as a key monument of the French Second Empire. Rather, Sullivan, with
Peck's approval, created a distinct symbolic program for the
room that was to embody Sullivan's ideal of architecture as
nature. This program appears in Sullivan's many ornamental
motifs. One of these was the plasterwork relief framing the
light bulbs on the ceiling arches. One observer likened these
to sunflowers, signifying the theater's locale as a prairie metropolis.110On the main balcony, Sullivan also repeated interpretations of the milkweed pod, a plant native to the Chicago
region, thereby creating a botanically specific reference to
place rather than a variation on a historical style of ornament.111 As one contemporary wrote, "It is indubitable that
there is within these walls an architecture and a decorative art
that are truly American, and that owe nothing to any other
country or any other time.""112
Allusions to nature recur throughout the Auditorium Theater. As initially completed, the room had stained glass skylights over the balcony for daytime illumination, unlike the
Metropolitan and its main European models. One observer
wrote that the light along the arches was "so even, so white and
free from shadows, that it resembles a mild sunlight.""113
Evocation of nature became more literal in Sullivan's scheme
of ornament for the reducing curtain. These reliefs appear to
have been inspired by representations of nature found in
operatic stage sets of the period, as shown in a scene from
Wagner's Lohengrinon the Auditorium's stage (Figure 17).114
In this view, dating from 1890, the canopy of trees forms a
naturalistic arched frame that reiterates the proscenium's
elliptical arch above. At the rear is a distant expanse of
landscape receding in perspective toward a painted backdrop
showing horizon and sky. The foliage on stage continues the
foliate plaster ornament in the reducing curtain framing the
stage, linking representation of nature in operatic scenery to
the theater's permanent architecture."5
This theme continues in the mural paintings that frame the
Auditorium's interior, all of whose imagery was modeled from
life by the artists. Having selected the themes for these murals
to create a unified program, Sullivan wrote that they expressed
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19:CharlesHolloway,drawing
FromChicago
DailyInterOcean(I I December1889)
growth and decadence as the two great rhythms of nature.116

Above the proscenium arch is a continuous processional mural of life-size figures on a gold background (Figure 19). They
are not muses, symbolic of the inspiration for creating musical
art, to be found over the prosceniums of the Met and other
opera houses. Rather, they are groups of monks, young women,
and others who express "the manifold influence of music on
the human mind-the dance, the serenade, the dirge."117
For Sullivan, these effects took their inspiration from the
deeper rhythms of life and death that are cyclical in nature.
This theme appeared in his prose poem "Inspiration," which
he first read to the Western Association of Architects in Chicago in November 1886, just before Adler and Sullivan were
confirmed as the Auditorium's architects.11sThe idea is represented by the winged figure before a bright fire, at the mural's
south end (to the right as one faces the stage). This image,
typifying youth and inspiration, signified the dawn of life or
springtime, like an allegro tempo in music. The winged figure
at the north end (at left), representing twilight and memory,
reaches down to a low fire flickering to its end, like autumn,
analogous to an adagio effect."19
At the proscenium mural's central crown are three figures
representing the past (south) and future (north). The central
figure is not an ancient deity like the Apollo who presided over
the Met's proscenium but rather a personification of the
present, enthroned below a phrase based on Sullivan's poem
"Inspiration": "The utterance of life is a song, the symphony
of nature." As he declared in the poem, Sullivan's ideal for the
present was a spontaneous and vital art coming fresh from
nature rather than from inherited styles. In this spirit, all
forty-five figures were painted by a young American artist,
Charles Holloway (1859-1941), "who made the sketches from
living models posing for each separate figure" so that "everything is true to nature."120As one observer wrote, "Thousands
of the spectators who enter the Auditorium will look admir-
146 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

ingly on that work of art, but few will stop to reason out the
subjecttreatedthere."'121
The two muralstowardthe rear sides of the house continued the theme used over the proscenium.They were painted
by the French-trainedartistAlbertFleury (1848-1924). Originally educated as an architect,Fleury entered the Ecole des
Beaux-Artsafter the Franco-PrussianWar to study painting.
His time there overlappedwith that of Sullivan,and also of
George L. Healy and LouisJ. Millet, under whose guidance
Fleury worked at the Auditorium.Fleury had come to the
United States in 1888 to assist his former teacher, Emile
Renouf, in making a large commissioned painting of the
BrooklynBridge. At this time, both Renouf and Fleury received offersto assistin the ChicagoAuditorium'sdecoration,
and Fleury accepted. Like Holloway'smural, Fleury'swere
subject to the approvalof the Chicago AuditoriumAssociation's ExecutiveCommittee, headed by Peck.122As an architect, Fleurynot only specializedin muralsbut also enhanced
the relationof such paintingsto built interiors.His side murals
for the Auditoriumare large in scale and have the perspectival
depth of landscape,giving the illusion of extending the interior space of the adjacentbalconies.They recallthe illusionistic naturalexpanse createdby scenic backdropsfor opera on
the frontal stage. Fleury'simages of nature were originally
illuminatedby naturaldaylightfrom the art-glassskylightsover
the balcony.As in the proscenium'smural, the south mural
depictsspring (Figure20), while the north showsan autumnal
scene (Figure21). From his youth, Fleury"wasalwaysa lover
and a close student of nature,and besides he alwaysfollowed
the practice of painting his figures in the open air."123He
sketched the north mural's scene "from a Wisconsin dell,"
like the woodedWisconsinlandscapeswherePeckspent much
time. The south muraldepicts "a scene near HighlandPark,"
a suburbon Chicago'sNorth Shore, furtheremphasizingthe
Auditorium'sregionalcharacter.124
Each side muralshowsa single creativefigure or poet who
is communing with the season as a source of inspiration.As
Sullivanwrote, "[B]y their symbolismdo these mural poems
suggestthe compensatingphases of natureand of human life
in all their variedmanifestations.Naturallyare suggested the
light and the grave in music, the joyous and the tragic in
Through these muralsand their inscriptions,Sullidrama."125
van linked his personal belief in nature's emotive effects on
the artistwith the Auditoriumas a theater wherein musical
drama moved audiences. In "Inspiration,"Sullivanreferred
repeatedly to the sun's daily course across the sky and its
repetition through the seasonsas a measureof nature'scyclical rhythm of growth and decay. In his travelsby railroad
around the United States,he recalledhaving "visualized[the
country's] main rhythms as south to north, and north to
south."'26 Fleury's murals suggested such a meaning for the
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FIGURE20: Albert Fleury,south mural(SpringSong),Auditorium, I889
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FIGURE21: Fleury,north mural(AutumnReverie),Auditorium, 1889. From Garczynski,Auditorium
arches spanning the Auditorium's ceiling between south

(spring) and north (autumn), as if these elliptical forms
representedthe solar cycle of seasonsand yearsin expanded
repetition.Thus out of the ceiling'sarchedfunctionalform as
a solution to optimal acousticsfor a mass audience, Sullivan
developed a programof ornament and images that gave the
ceiling a cosmic symbolism different from the conventional shallowdome at the Metropolitanor many European
theaters.
THE AUDITORIUM BUILDING'S EXTERIOR
Adler and Sullivandeveloped the exteriorfrom their earliestknowndesign of September1886 to aftertheir workingdrawings of April 1887.127From their firststudies,they treatedthe
building as a major civic monument in keeping with Peck's

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additionsbyauthor
aims. If the AuditoriumTheater'sinterior space conveyedits

social ideals, then the exteriorcommunicatedsymbolicintentions through its architecturalstyle.Adler and Sullivan'scontemporariesstill thought in terms of a building's style and
historicalassociationsas principal carriersof meaning. The
Auditorium'sexteriorstyleevolvedin the course of its design
and constructionpartlyin responseto socialconditionsand to
Peck'saims.
Viewed from a distance, with its cubic mass and tower
(Figure 1), the Auditoriumannounced Chicago to travelers
from the eastern United Statescoming to the city along the
railroad lines running north into town at the lakefront.128
Earlydesigns had featured wallsof pressed brick and ornate
terra-cottaabovea granitebase.In May1887,in the courseof a
bricklayers'strike,the Auditorium'sdirectorsresolvedthatthe
upper walls above the three-storygranite base be clad in an
Indianalimestone.129
As the architectof four buildingsunder
construction and of nine more for which plans were ready,
Adlerhad much at stakein thisstrike.At thattime, and in later
essays,he describedhis professionalrole as the representative
of his clients,the building owners.Like Peck,Adler politically
wasnot a socialist,though he did sympathizewith the plight of
workingmen,writing that "there is much that is great and
noble even in the tradesunionism of our day."'30But, during
the protractedstrikeof 1887,Adlersawthe bricklayers'actions
as causingworkersto lose income. He noted that his clients
waitingto build were "all agreed not to have a strokeof work
done until thisstrikeis ended by the givingin of the workmen.
The [bricklayers'] union is what stands in the way of the

erection of these buildings."131Because of its size, the Auditorium offered steady work for many over a long period, and
progress on its construction continued, partly with workers
who had left their union to return to work, and who were
sometimes subjected to intimidation. Adler stated that some
had returned to work because they had "become so destitute
during the strike that they have sold their tools, and we have
had to supply them."'32
The strike of 1887 brought the issues of Haymarket into the
building trades and into the history of the Auditorium, a
structure that was intended to alleviate social tensions. Adler
later did not recall that the change in the Auditorium's design
from brick to stone had been the result of the strike. Rather, he
attributed the decision to "the deep impression made by
Richardson's 'Marshall Field Building' upon the Directory of
the Auditorium Association," combined with a "reaction from
a course of indulgence in the creation of highly decorative
effects on the part of its architects."133Why did Peck and his
colleagues look to Henry Hobson Richardson's monument as
a model?
One answer is that it was then one of only two recently built
local structures covering a comparable half-block site. Field's
store (Figure 22) and the Auditorium block showed the same
ratio of frontal width to height of about 2.5 to 1.134In symbolic
terms, Sullivan and others saw Richardson's building as largely
a monument to its patron, Marshall Field. His conservative
views were well known, and the completion of his building was
148 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

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Auditorium Theater's interior spatial form. Garczynski's perception of the building's allusions to Rome aligned with Peck's
choice of the name "Auditorium" rather than the term "Grand
Opera House." In its ancient Latin usage, auditorium (as
distinct from a ruler's private palace, or palatium) referred to
the space of the audience in a theater as a public hall for
cultural and political gatherings, just as Chicago's Auditorium
would hold both opera and conventions.140 Within its walls,
music and drama would be interpreted "not, as in the capitals
of modern empires, to a favored few, but, as in the ancient
republics, to the people of the city and Nation."141 The
nearRome(A.D.38-52).
FIGURE
23:AquaClaudia,
Auditorium's exterior form thus conjoined Roman monumentality with modern democratic ideology. So did the buildings
of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, for which Peck
chaired the local finance committee, and whose classical archi-
delayed by labor agitation until June 1887. Field had insisted

that Richardson change his initial design for the upper walls
from brick to a red sandstone, which was quarried near Field's
birthplace. After Peck, Marshall Field was the Auditorium's
largest stockholder. Although he declined to serve as a director, his brother and partner, Henry Field, also a major stock-
tecture he subsequently
praised.,42
As an architectural response to Chicago's urban class strife
in the era of Haymarket, the Auditorium's exterior may be
compared to other buildings that represented different institutional responses to labor unrest. One of the most prominent
of these was a new armory for the First Regiment of the Illinois
National Guard, a project first proposed in 1885. Organized in
holder, took his place on the board, and the latter's response
to Richardson's building was thus predictable."35
Adler admired this structure, noting, "How American is
Richardson's reproduction of the sombreness and dignity of
the Palazzo Strozzi in the Marshall Field Building."136 Scholars
of Richardson's work have also pointed out that his building
for Field recalled the monumental form of ancient Roman
aqueducts that Richardson had seen on his trip to Europe in
1882, photographs of which he acquired."37One contemporary wrote: "It may be truthfully said in general of the styles
used in Chicago ... that the principal complex features came
from the Romans.""138 For Edward Garczynski, author of the
commemorative book on the Auditorium of 1890, its exterior
recalled the forms of Roman construction. The tall arched
bays compare to those of the Aqua Claudia (A.D. 38-52) near
Rome (Figure 23). Such a style contrasted with the ornate
Second Empire hotels of post-fire Chicago. As Garczynski
wrote, between such structures and the Auditorium, "the
progress has been a mighty leap forward . .. making this building the commencement of a new era. Here all is simplicity,
stateliness, strength. There is in its granite pile a quality that
strongly reminds the traveled spectator of those grand engineering constructions which the Romans raised in every part of
their vast empire." Peck presumably saw such monuments
during his travels to Europe. Their influence on the Auditorium "was an inspiration" from Peck, to whom "it is most
probable we must look for its Roman character.""13
The exterior style's association with antiquity paralleled
Adler's interest in ancient theaters as one source for the
1874, the First Regiment came to enroll about 600 local men
who represented Chicago's middle and upper classes. Among
its members was one of Adler and Sullivan's draftsmen. Having
twice dispersed crowds without firing during the railroad
strikes of 1877, the unit also confronted labor protests at
several points around the city in November 1886. To radical
leaders of Chicago's workers, the First Regiment epitomized
armed force in the service of capital.143When the First Regiment sought to build anew, Marshall Field offered to lease it a
site he owned on the northwest corner of Michigan Avenue
and Sixteenth Street, not far from his own home. Field, who
was closely identified with this regiment, agreed to lease the
site to the unit for $4,000 per year (then only half its value)
with no annual rent increase. Daniel Burnham and John
Wellborn Root designed the First Regiment Armory in March
1889, and it opened in September 1891 (Figure 24).144
Burnham and Root's First Regiment Armory was described
as "perhaps the most massive structure in Chicago," with its
heavy stonework rising unbroken to a height of 35 feet on all
four sides.145 The front had a wide sally port for troops
marching abreast. Above the rusticated granite base were
brick walls with arched openings and round corner bartizans.
Atop all four walls ran a projecting machicolated cornice
crowned with gun slits. The exterior left no doubt as to its
purpose in the charged atmosphere of the time. Within there
was a large drill hall that Adler and Sullivan redesigned in 1893
as a temporary theater known as the Trocadero Music Hall,
named after the Parisian theater designed by Gabriel Davioud
in 1876. Adler and Sullivan's client was Dr. Florence Ziegfeld,
BUILDING 149
AUDITORIUM
SIRY:CHICAGO'S

i:i"
i
:i
iiiii_:
Citizens' Assocation, founded in 1874 to fight corruption in

municipal government, yet which supported the militia against
labor agitation in 1877 and 1885. They also led the Chicago
Citizens' Law and Order League founded in 1877just after the
city's railroad strikes in order to prevent the sale of alcohol to
minors, as it was believed the strikers included a large number
of half-drunken boys. In this context, both the First Regiment
Armory and the Auditorium were facets of a broad range of
elite responses to threats of social unrest.148
The Auditorium was neither an armory nor a fortress, but it
did have as its social aim the pacification of urban workers, not
FIGURE24: Burnhamand Root, First Regiment Armory, northwest comer, South

MichiganAvenue and Sixteenth Street, Chicago, 1889- 189 1 (largelyrebuiltafter fire,
1894; demolished 1929). FromGilbertand Bryson,Chicagoand ItsMakers
by means of armed control but rather by cultural suasion. As a

capitalist monument, the Auditorium did present an image of
indestructibility, as exemplified by its granite base near the
citizen's eye. Moreover, the tower, in addition to the slotlike
windows within its stylized machicolated cornice, had windows
within its arches below that Garczynski described as "square
and deeply recessed, like embrasures in a fortification."149In
its style, the Auditorium provided a model for Ferdinand
Peck's own house, which he commissioned William Le Baron
Jenney and William A. Otis to design in 1887 (Figure 25).
Educated at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Otis translated chapters
from Edouard Corroyer's L'Architecture
Romane (Romanesque
Architecture) immediately after its publication in 1888. This
book traced the continuous development of medieval Romanesque from ancient Roman architecture, a link consistent
with contemporaneous perception of the Auditorium.l50 Located at 1826 South Michigan Avenue, within three blocks of
the First Regiment Armory, the Peck house exhibited a roughhewn stonework similar to that forming the Auditorium's
base. Its tower above a heavy lintel spanning the porch in-
_.,1
JL r -
cluded a shadowed loggia below a foursquare crown, so that

the house read in part as a miniature version of the Auditorium. When President Benjamin Harrison was entertained by
Peck at this residence on the day of the Auditorium Theater's
ItsMakers
opening, he remarked that the house was "the Auditorium,

Jr." Peck responded that "the same spirit prevailed in both
buildings."'151The house reminded all that the Auditorium
founding president of the Chicago Musical College, which had

its quarters in Adler's Central Music Hall. The armory theater's performances were to raise funds for the regiment,
which received little state aid. In April 1893 fire destroyed this
last theater designed by Adler and Sullivan five days before it
was Peck's project. Two buildings, by different architects,

imaged one patron.
Interpretation of the Auditorium as a heavy lithic mass
contrasts with its place in the conventional historiography of
the Chicago School of architecture, which stressed local efforts
to lighten or open up walls of the city's commercial buildings
FIGURE25: William Le Baron Jenney and William A. Otis, FerdinandPeck House,

1826 South MichiganAvenue, Chicago, 1887. From Gilbert and Bryson,Chicagoand
was to open.146
Peck was not a benefactor of this regiment. Its treasurer was
Charles Hutchinson, who was also treasurer of the Chicago
Auditorium Association. In 1885 the committee in charge of
the regiment's new armory had proposed to Peck that the
armory and the Auditorium project be combined in the same
structure.147Auditorium directors were leaders of Chicago's
from about 1880 to 1900. From this viewpoint, the Auditorium's exterior was valued not for its solid piers of walling but
rather its arched voids of windows. In this light, the Auditorium compares not with Burnham and Root's Armory but with
the building closest to Peck's own attitude toward urban
workers: the new quarters for Chicago's Athenaeum (Figure
26), opened in May 1891. It stood on the same block as the
150 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

ing urban institution, including the Reverend David Swing on

its faculty. In December 1889 the Athenaeum's head, the
Reverend Edward I. Galvin, a Unitarian minister, congratulated Peck on creating in the new Auditorium "such a building
for the public good in culture and wholesome recreation [as]
must find universal endorsement." He wrote: "[T]he next
crowning glory of your life will be the completion and opening
of the Athenaeum Building."154
As the Athenaeum's president during the same years he was
"c~"l
directing the Auditorium project's realization, Peck had bought

the Van Buren Street site for the Athenaeum and had overseen
the expansion of its building from four to seven stories. As
designed by Thomas Wing, the new structure had classrooms,
a large lecture hall, recreational rooms, a library, and a gymnasium, all accessible to members for a nominal annual fee.
Facing north, the Athenaeum's street front had an abundance
of windows with minimal piers and columns between, creating
the image of a typical Chicago loft building of the period. The
Athenaeum's appearance was determined almost wholly not
by stylistic considerations but by utilitarian needs to light
interior spaces and limit costs of construction. The Roman
associations of the nearby Auditorium's exterior were lacking
in this building also meant for the cultural uplift of workers,
but one that did not have the Auditorium's monumental scale,
lakefront site, and representational purpose.
CONCLUSION
The Chicago Auditorium, whose design Adler and others

ascribed to the wishes of its patrons, conveyed many messages
simultaneously. On one level, it was a civic and cultural monument; on another, it projected the city's power and enterprise;
on yet a third, it stood for an elite's will to direct Chicago's
26:ThomasWing,ChicagoAthenaeum,southsideof VanBurenStreetwest
FIGURE
of MichiganAvenue, as expanded and remodeledinto a seven-storybuilding,
demolished.FromChicago
Tribune
1890- 189I1;
(10 May1891):I
Auditorium on the south side of Van Buren Street, adjacent to

the original Art Institute of Chicago, built on the southwest
corner of Van Buren and Michigan Avenue in 1887. Peck and
other Auditorium patrons had also been founding supporters
of the Art Institute.152
Styling itself as "The People's College," the Athenaeum
was open to men and women regardless of "nationality or
religious belief."'53 Its instructional program was partly intended to provide skills that would qualify students for employment with local businessmen whose philanthropy supported
the college by heavily subsidizing costs of instruction. Thus
both the Athenaeum and the Auditorium were cultural resources that provided workers with capitalist-structured alternatives to leftist political culture. It was to be a unifying, upbuild-
social, economic, and political future. The outer architecture

figuratively stood against socialism and anarchism, while the
theater inside offered alternatives to politicized and nonpoliticized workers' amusements. As Adler concluded more than
two years after the building had opened, without doubt "Chicago has an Auditorium far better as an opera house or a
concert hall or a ballroom than either the Metropolitan Opera
House or the Music Hall [the Academy of Music] in New
York."'155Adler, like Peck and Sullivan, knew these theaters
from eastern trips. Adler's claim rested on his building's
innovative plan for audiences in terms of circulation, seating,
sight lines, and lighting, as well as acoustics. Sullivan's ornamental and symbolic program for the theater's interior was comparably original, meant to contrast with the Met and European
state opera houses, which he, Adler, and Peck had studied. They
all rejected the predominance of boxes in these theaters. From
the Auditorium's stage, "the performers can neither sing to the
boxes nor play to them, but must address themselves to the
public" as "an immense mass of spectators without a break."'156

Study of the Auditorium's origins, planning, interiors, and

exterior suggests how to continue to move beyond earlier
modernist views of the Chicago School of architecture. The
influential historians Sigfried Giedion and Carl Condit used
the term to refer to the city's commercial buildings of the
1880s and 1890s. They valued these structures for their technical innovations and their external expression of new metalframe construction. The Auditorium's story underscores the
value of a historiographic approach that considers the ideology of patrons in the context of Chicago's dynamic and
difficult social history of the period.'57 Such an analysis of the
Auditorium's development also shows that patrons were aware
of competing works in Europe and in New York City, adapting
some models, like the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, and rejecting
others, like the Paris Opera and the Metropolitan. As did
architects elsewhere through the nineteenth century, Adler
and Sullivan thought in terms of building types and their
possible variations, in addition to pursuing a general ideal of
appropriately functional modern form. This latter side of their
thinking had attracted Giedion and Condit. Yet, as we have
seen, Adler and Sullivan were not fully removed from historicism and the symbolic associations of older styles, for the
Auditorium was not only part of the continuing development
of an American Romanesque style but also a monument that
conveyed allusions to ancient Rome.
Giedion and Condit were correct, however, in stressing the
regionally distinct identity of Chicago's architecture in the
1880s, as Sullivan's interior for the theater showed. For Peck,
however, this regional identity had not so much a stylistic
impetus as an ideological origin, rooted in his and others'
concepts of democracy. Critics Montgomery Schuyler of New
York and Paul Bourget of Paris both explored this ideal as
peculiarly characteristic of Chicago architecture, which Bourget described as "a new kind of art, an art of democracy, made
by the crowd and for the crowd."'58 At the Auditorium, Peck
developed this ideal in terms of working people's access to
cultural events usually limited to those with higher incomes.
Adler and Sullivan's technical and ornamental inventiveness,
both in interior space and exterior form, served to embody
Peck's aims. Together patron and architects forged a link
between ideology and style arising from conditions of the
Auditorium's historical moment, which their building, in turn,
did much to define.
Notes
I am most grateful for advice and assistance from Charles Laurier, Roosevelt
University Library; Robert Bruegmann, University of Illinois at Chicago; and
Miles Berger, Chicago.
IAdler's published writings related to the Auditorium include "The Paramount Requirements of a Large Opera House," Inland Architectand NewsRecord
10 (October 1887): 45-46, also published as "Theatres," AmericanArchitectand
BuildingNews 22 (29 October 1887): 206-208; "Foundations of the Auditorium
Building, Chicago," InlandArchitectandNews Record11 (March 1888): 31-32 and

plates; "Stage Mechanisms," ibid. 13 (March 1889): 42-43, also published in
BuildingBudget 15 (February 1889): 21-22; "The Auditorium Tower," American
Architectand Building News 32 (4 April 1891): 15-16; "The Chicago Auditorium," ArchitecturalRecord 1 (April-June 1892): 415-434; "Theater-Building
for American Cities; First Paper," Engineering Magazine 7 (August 1894):
717-730; "Second Paper," ibid. (September 1894): 815-829; "Convention
Halls," Inland Architectand News Record26 (September 1895): 13-14; ibid.
(October 1895): 22-23; and "The Theater (c. 1900)," ed. Rachel Baron, Prairie
SchoolReview2 (Second Quarter 1965): 21-27.
Sullivan's writings related to the Auditorium include: "Plastic and Color
Decoration of the Auditorium," originally published as "Harmony in Decoration," ChicagoTribune(16 November 1889): 12, reprinted in Industrial Chicago
(Chicago, 1891), 2: The Building Interests,490-491; in Sherman Paul, Louis
Sullivan:An Architectin AmericanThought(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1962), 143-146,
and in Robert Twombly, ed., Louis Sullivan: The Public Papers (Chicago, 1988),
74-76; "Development of Construction, I," Economist55 (24June 1916): 1252,
reprinted in Twombly, ed., Sullivan: PublicPapers,214-222; and TheAutobiography of an Idea (1924; New York, 1971), 292-294, 303, 309. See also Sullivan's
remarks quoted in "Church Spires Must Go," Chicago Tribune(30 November
1890): 36, partly reprinted in Twombly, ed., Sullivan: PublicPapers,72-73.
Other accounts of the original building include Edward R. Garczynski, The
Auditorium (Chicago, 1890); Industrial Chicago,1: TheBuildingInterests,194-196;
Montgomery Schuyler, "Glimpses of Western Architecture: Chicago," Harper's
Magazine 83 (August 1891): 395-406, and A Critiqueof the Worksof Adler and
Sullivan, D. H. Burnham & Co., Henry Ives Cobb,Great American Architects
Series, no. 2: Architecture in Chicago (New York, 1896), 2-27; Paul F. P.
Mueller, Testimony, in Chicago Auditorium Association vs. Mark Skinner
Willing and the Northern Trust Co. as Trustees, etc., et al., in the United States
Circuit Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, October Term, A.D. 1925, no.
3733, 440-470, reprinted in Edgar J. Kaufmann, Jr., "Frank Lloyd Wright's
'Lieber Meister,' " in Nine Commentarieson Frank Lloyd Wright(New York and
Cambridge, Mass., 1989): 42-62; Paul Sabine, "The Acoustics of the Chicago
Civic Opera House," ArchitecturalForum52 (April 1930): 599-604; Frank Lloyd
Wright, An Autobiography(New York, 1932), 105-106; Hugh Morrison, Louis
Sullivan: Prophet of Modern Architecture(New York, 1935), 80-110; Wright,
quoted in "Chicago's Auditorium Is Fifty Years Old," ArchitecturalForum 73
(September 1940): 11-12; Frank A. Randall, Historyof theDevelopmentofBuilding
Constructionin Chicago(Urbana, Ill., 1949), 117; Wright, Geniusand theMobocracy
(New York, 1949), 42-53; Carl W. Condit, "Sullivan's Skyscrapers as the
Expression of Nineteenth Century Technology," Technologyand Culture1 (winter 1959): 78-93; Historic American Buildings Survey, IL-1007: Auditorium
Building (1960; Addendum, 1980); Albert Bush-Brown, Louis Sullivan (New
York, 1960), 15-16; Willard Connely, Louis Sullivan As He Lived (New York,
A Historyof Commercial
1960), 101-122; Condit, The ChicagoSchoolofArchitecture:
and Public Building in the ChicagoArea 1875-1925 (Chicago, 1964), 69-79; Paul
E. Sprague, "The Architectural Ornament of Louis Sullivan and His Chief
Draftsmen," Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1968, 396-398; William H.Jordy,
AmericanBuildings and TheirArchitects,vol. 4: Progressiveand AcademicIdeals at the
Turn of the TwentiethCentury(1972; repr., New York, 1986), 101-104, 118-119,
161-162; Wilbur T Denson, "A History of the Chicago Auditorium," Ph.D.
diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1974; Daniel H. Perlman, The Auditorium Building: Its History and ArchitecturalSignificance (Chicago, 1976); George
C. Izenour, TheaterDesign (New York, 1977), 82-86; Sprague, The Drawings of
Louis Henry Sullivan (Princeton, 1979), 6-7, 334-337; Charles E. Gregersen,
"The Chicago Auditorium: A History and Description," Addendum, HABS
as Nature:The TranscendenSurvey, IL-1007 (1980); Narciso Menocal, Architecture
talist Idea of Louis Sullivan (Madison, Wis., 1981), 18, 45-46; John A. Burns,
"Structure and Mechanics Viewed as Sculpture," AIAJournal 72 (April 1983):
44-49; Charles E. Grimsley, "A Study of the Contributions of Dankmar Adler to
the Theatre Building Practice of the Late Nineteenth Century," Ph.D. diss.,
Northwestern University, 1984, 215-304; David S. Andrew, Louis Sullivan and
the Polemicsof ModernArchitecture(Urbana, Ill., 1985), 82-92; Michael Forsyth,
Buildingsfor Music: TheArchitect,theMusician, and the Listenerfrom the Seventeenth
Centuryto the Present (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 236-243; Lauren S. Weingarden, "The Colors of Nature: Louis Sullivan's Architectural Polychromy and
Nineteenth Century Color Theory," WinterthurPortfolio20 (1985): 250-252;
David Van Zanten, "Sullivan to 1890," in Wim de Wit, ed., Louis Sullivan: The
152 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

Function of Ornament (New York, 1986), 36-51; Jordy, "The Tall Buildings,"
ibid., 65-71; Twombly, Louis Sullivan: His Life and Work (New York, 1986),
161-195; Joseph Rykwert, "Louis Sullivan and the Gospel of Height," Art in
America 75 (November 1987): 162-165; David G. Lowe, "Monument of an
Age," American Craft48 (June/July 1988): 40-47, 104; Weingarden, "Naturalized Nationalism: A Ruskinian Discourse on the Search for an American Style
of Architecture," WinterthurPortfolio 24 (spring 1989): 63-67; Gregersen,
Dankmar Adler:His Theatersand Auditoriums (Athens, Ohio, 1990), 4-6, 9-23,
65-70; Ross Miller, American Apocalypse:Chicago and the Myth of the GreatFire
(Chicago 1990), 111-121; Roula M. Geraniotis, "German Design Influences in
the Auditorium Theater," in John S. Garner, ed., The Midwest in American
Architecture(Urbana, Ill., 1991), 42-75; Miles L. Berger, They Built Chicago:
EntrepreneursWho Shaped a Great City's Architecture(Chicago, 1992), 93-103;
Hans Frei, Louis Henry Sullivan (Zurich, 1992), 68-75; Donald L. Miller, Cityof
the Century: The Epic of Chicago and the Making of America (New York, 1996),
354-366; and Mario Manieri Elia, Louis Henry Sullivan (New York, 1996),
38-59.
2 Influential characterizations of the Chicago School include Sigfried Giedion,
Space, Time and Architecture,5th ed., revised and enlarged (Cambridge, Mass.,
1982), 368-393; Condit, "The Chicago School and the Modern Movement in
Architecture," Art in America36 (January 1948): 19-36; TheRise of theSkyscraper
(Chicago, 1952); and The Chicago School of Architecture.See H. Allen Brooks,
"The Chicago School: Metamorphosis of a Term," JSAH 25 (May 1966):
115-118, and Robert Bruegmann, "The Marquette Building and the Myth of
the Chicago School," Threshold (fall 1991): 6-23. Important revisions of
Giedion's and Condit's ideas appear in The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago
and New York:ArchitecturalInteractions (Chicago, 1984); John Zukowsky, ed.,
ChicagoArchitecture,1872-1922: Birth of a Metropolis(Munich, 1987); Daniel M.
Bluestone, ConstructingChicago (New Haven, 1991); Berger, TheyBuilt Chicago;,
and Robert Bruegmann, TheArchitectsand the City:Holabirdand Rocheof Chicago,
1880-1918 (Chicago, 1997).
3Josiah Cleaveland Cady, "The Essential Features of a Large Opera House,"
Inland Architectand News Record5 (October 1887): 46-47, reprinted in American
Architectand Building News 22 (29 October 1887): 208. Before 1883, the prime
venue for opera in Manhattan had been the New York Academy of Music
(1853-1854) on the northeast corner of Fourteenth Street and Irving Place.
Although it seated over 3,000, the Academy had only eighteen proscenium
boxes owned by the city's oldest wealthy families. It was New York's recently
monied elite, led by the Vanderbilts, who financed the Metropolitan with its
many boxes. See "The Metropolitan Opera House," TheNation 37 (25 October
1883): 348-349; [Montgomery Schuyler], "The Metropolitan Opera-House,"
Harper's New Monthly Magazine 67 (November 1883): 877-889; Marianna G.
Van Rensselaer, "The Metropolitan Opera-House, New York," AmericanArchitect and Building News 15 (16 and 23 January 1884): 76-77, 86-89;
Henry E.
Krehbiel, Chaptersof Opera(New York, 1911), 86-88; Frank Merkling et al., The
GoldenHorseshoe:The Life and Times of the MetropolitanOperaHouse (New York,
1965), 13-21; Quaintance Eaton, TheMiracleof theMet:An InformalHistoryof the
MetropolitanOpera 1883-1967 (New York, 1968), 43-53; Irving Kolodin, The
MetropolitanOpera1883-1966 (New York, 1968), 3-6; John Briggs, Requiemfora
YellowBrickBrewery(Boston, 1969), 6-17; Martin Mayer, The Met: One Hundred
Yearsof Grand Opera (New York, 1983), 15-23; Paul E. Eisler, The
Metropolitan
Opera: The First Twenty-FiveYears, 1883-1908 (New York, 1984), 9-19; John
Dizikes, Operain America:A Cultural History (New Haven, 1993), 214-221; and
Kathleen A. Curran, A ForgottenArchitectof the GildedAge:JosiahCleavelandCady's
Legacy(Hartford, 1993), 16-20.
4 Cady, "Essential Features of a Large Opera House," 47.
5Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence (1920), in R. W. B. Lewis, ed., Edith
Wharton:Novels (NewYork, 1985), 1017.
6 Egisto P. Fabbri, Chairman, Committee on Building, Metropolitan
Opera
House Company, quoted in Mayer, Met, 15.
7 Mayer, Met, 19, noted Cady's tour of Europe following the Metropolitan
Board's decision to build on 4 March 1881.
8
Schuyler, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 884, noted that boxes in the lower
two full tiers were sold to stockholders, while the manager rented those in the
half tier below and the topmost full tier above. Briggs, YellowBrick Brewery,
22-23, recalled newspaper diagrams of the Metropolitan's boxes. On the shape
of Cady's plan, see van Rensselaer, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 86-87. On its
name, see Mayer, Met, 16. On La Scala, see Simon Tidworth, Theatres;An
Architecturaland Cultural History (New York, 1973), 43-44; and Nikolaus Pevsner, A History of Building Types (Princeton, 1976), 74. On Barry's Covent
Garden, see Richard Leacroft, The Developmentof the English Playhouse (New
York, 1973), 221-230.
One description of Cady's building concluded: "In the arrangement of the
stairways and passages, the Metropolitan Opera-house bears considerable
resemblance to Covent Garden" ("In the New Opera-House," New YorkTimes
[22 July 1883]: 9). Briggs, YellowBrickBrewery,9, noted that Covent Garden's
impresario, Ernest Gye, hoping to be named the Met's manager, made plans of
Covent Garden available to Cady. Cady also relied on a German-trained
associate, Louis de Coppet Bergh (1856-1913), whose sister had studied music
in Italy and provided pictures and details of European opera houses such as La
Scala. See Milton Stansbury, "Romance in the Opera House," OperaNews5 (10
March 1941): 4-9.
9 Schuyler, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 883. On the form of the Metropolitan's proscenium, see also van Rensselaer, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 76,
who noted that the Met was "a building in which each and every stockholder
should have an equal chance of seeing-and being seen. No variations of plan
were to be allowed the architect in favor of architectural effect which would be
at the expense of this perfect equality. All the boxes were to be of the same
character and the same size, and, in so far as it was possible to human skill, all
were to be equally advantageous as regards seeing the stage, and being seen by
the rest of the audience."
10Schuyler, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 883.
11At the Metropolitan's opening, "much disappointment was caused by the
comparative failure of the acoustic properties of the auditorium.... In the
upper rows of the boxes and in the balcony only the high voices were distinctly
heard. Nor were the facilities for seeing much better in some portions of the
auditorium than the facilities for hearing" ("The New Opera House," New York
Times [23 October 1883]: 1). See also "Metropolitan Opera-House," TheNation
37 (25 October 1883): 848-849. After a first season, it was noted: "The
Metropolitan Opera-house season has been financially a disastrous failure."
Only consistently sold-out performances would have enabled a profit, but "the
house is never full, and never can be, because there is such a large part of it in
which no one can see or hear" ("Patti Will Go To London," New YorkTimes[16
February 1884]: 5). Later praise for the Met's acoustics was noted in Briggs,
YellowBrickBrewery,15, and Eisler, MetropolitanOpera,x.
2 Editorial, "Mr. Abbey's Retirement," New YorkTimes (14 February 1884):
4. Cady's care for sight lines was noted in "A Grand Temple of Music," New York
Times(14 October 1883): 5. Briggs, YellowBrickBrewery,15-16, and Mayer, Met,
40-41, reported unresolved difficulties with sight lines up to the time of the old
Metropolitan's demolition in 1966.
13Letter, "Its Boast and Its Snare," New YorkTimes(4 May 1884): 4.
'4 Cady, "Essential Features of a Large Opera House," 47.
15Ibid.
16James Roosevelt, first president of the Metropolitan Opera House Company, acknowledged: "We never expected that it would pay. None of us went
into it with the idea that we would ever get our money back, but simply for the
enjoyment to be derived from having a first-class opera-house. No opera-house
in the world has ever paid as an investment, and none will ever pay" ("The
Opera House Scheme," New YorkTimes [14 March 1882]: 1). Van Rensselaer,
"Metropolitan Opera-House," 76, noted that the corner masses on Broadway,
being built inJanuary 1884 after the theater opened in October 1883, were "to
contain shops below, above large ball-rooms and restaurants, and above these
again bachelors' apartments." A special committee of the Metropolitan's
Board of Directors reported that "the advantage in finishing would be that the
plans of the corners included the building of reception and supper rooms,
which would enable the Directors to rent the house for balls" ("The Opera's
New Home," New YorkTimes[24 May 1883]: 1).
17Van Rensselaer, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 76.
18 On operatic culture in New York City before the Met's construction, see
Richard Grant White, "Opera in New York," Century Magazine 23 (March
1882): 686-703; (April 1882): 865-882; 24 (May 1882): 31-43; (June 1882):
193-210; George C. D. Odell, Annals of the New YorkStage 1815-1925, 15 vols.
(New York, 1927-1949); and Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow:The
Emergenceof CulturalHierarchyin America(Cambridge, Mass., 1988), 85-104.
19On moral concerns in New York City about operas of Verdi and Offenbach in the 1850s and 1860s, see Dizikes, Operain America,171-173, 193-194.

BUILDING
153
Schuyler, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 880, wrote that earlier local buildings

made for opera, such as the New York Academy of Music (1852-1854),
designed by Alexander Saeltzer on the northeast corner of Fourteenth Street
and Irving Place, one block east of Union Square, and the Brooklyn Academy
of Music's first building of 1859-1861, designed by Leopold Eidlitz, on Montague Street, were similarly conservative in style: "It is quite certain that when
these edifices were built, it would have been as difficult to obtain the money for
an undissembled opera-house as twenty-five years later it has proved easy to
obtain ten times as much." On New York's Academy of Music, see James V.
Kavenaugh, "Three American Opera Houses: The Boston Theatre, The New
York Academy of Music, The Philadelphia American Academy of Music," Ph.D.
diss., University of Delaware, 1967, 28-51, and Dizikes, Opera in America,
166-167.
20 On the Casino Theater, see American Architectand Building News 18 (27
August 1885): 102; James Taylor, "The History of Terra Cotta in New York
City," ArchitecturalRecord2 (October-December 1892): 136-148; Montgomery
Schuyler, "The Works of Francis H. Kimball and Kimball and Thompson,"
ArchitecturalRecord7 (April-June 1898): 494, 496, 497; Lloyd Morris, Incredible
New York:High Life and Low Life of the Last Hundred Years(New York, 1951 ), 189,
267; Young, FamousAmericanPlayhouses,223-225; Robert A. M. Stern, Gregory
Gilmartin, andJohn M. Massengale, New York1900: MetropolitanArchitectureand
Urbanism 1890-1915 (New York, 1983), 206-207, 220-221. On the Casino's
roof garden, see Robert H. Montgomery, "The Roof Gardens of New York,"
Indoorsand Out 2 (August 1906): 214-219.
21Adler, "Chicago Auditorium," 415.
22 "The Men of Millions," Chicago Tribune (6 April 1890): 25. Chicago's
larger private fortunes were there listed as Marshall Field ($25 million), Philip
D. Armour ($25 million), and George M. Pullman ($15 million). Potter Palmer
and Mrs. Cyrus McCormick were also then reported to have fortunes of $10
million. Many Chicago properties of the Peck estate and their assessed values
were listed in the Illinois Bureau of Labor Statistics,Ninth Biennial Report;Subject:
Franchisesand Taxation 1896 (Springfield, 1897). Biographical sources on Peck
include C. Dean, The World'sFair Cityand HerEnterprisingSons (Chicago, 1892),
36-74; The BiographicalDictionary and Portrait Gallery of RepresentativeMen of
Chicago... (Chicago and NewYork, 1892), 106-109;JohnJ. Flinn, Hand-bookof
Chicago Biography (Chicago, 1893), 283-284; Arba N. Waterman, Historical
Review of Chicagoand CookCountyand SelectedBiography,3 vols. (Chicago, 1908),
3, 926-930; "Ferdinand Peck, Widely Known Chicagoan, Dies," ChicagoTribune
(5 November 1924): 19; Paul T. Gilbert and Charles L. Bryson, Chicagoand Its
Makers (Chicago, 1929), 625; and Berger, TheyBuilt Chicago,93-104. In 1857
Philip Peck moved with his family to a new home at Michigan Terrace, the most
elite rowhouse block in the city. It stood on Michigan Avenue's west side, from
Van Buren to Congress Streets, where the Auditorium and its neighboring
structures to the north rose in the 1880s. On Michigan Terrace, see Bluestone,
ConstructingChicago,75-78.
23 On Chicago's Athenaeum, see Alfred T. Andreas, History of Chicago,3 vols.
(Chicago, 1884-1886), 3, 416-417; and Kathleen D. McCarthy, NoblesseOblige:
Charityand CulturalPhilanthropyin Chicago,1849-1929 (Chicago, 1982), 82-84.
Peck supported the Athenaeum from its origins after 1871 and served as its
president for four years (1887-1891). He also secured the Athenaeum's
building at 56 East Van Buren Street in 1890, on the Auditorium's block. See
NineteenthAnnual Reportof the ChicagoAthenaeum 1889-'90 (Chicago Historical
Society), and Rand, McNally & Co., Bird's-Eye Views and Guide to Chicago
(Chicago, 1898), 31, in Randall, Building Constructionin Chicago, 160. Peck
served for five years (1886-1890) on Chicago's Board of Education and as its
vice president. See Proceedingsof the Board of Education of the City of Chicago,
1886-1890. He was also a trustee of the old and the new University of Chicago.
In 1870 he had helped to found the Illinois Humane Society, and in 1880 he
was a founder of Chicago's Union League Club, which sought reform of city
government. He also supported the Art Institute of Chicago and the Reverend
David Swing's Central Church of Chicago, which was the main tenant of
Dankmar Adler's Central Music Hall (1879). See Bluestone, ConstructingChicago, 99-101.
24Waterman, Chicagoand CookCounty,3, 930.
25 Gilbert and Bryson, Chicagoand Its Makers,625. See Dean, World'sFair City,
71; and Sullivan, Autobiographyof an Idea, 292, 293.
26 "The Great Auditorium," ChicagoTribune(18June 1888): 7.
27Bruce Grant, Fightfor a City:TheStoryof the Union League Clubof Chicagoand
Its Times 1880-1955 (Chicago, 1955), 119, and Berger, TheyBuilt Chicago,94.
The operas for the Auditorium Theater's first season in 1888-1889 were
predominantly in the Italian tradition. See "The Auditorium and the Italian
Opera Revival," ChicagoTribune(17 November 1889): 5, and "The Dedication
of the Auditorium," ibid. (8 December 1889): 12. In the Auditorium Theater's
later years, Peck "attended every opening night. He loved Faust, [II] Trovatore
and Bohemian Girt' ("Ferdinand Peck, Widely Known Chicagoan, Dies," 19).
28Philo T. Otis, Impressions of Europe 1873-1874: Music, Art and History
(Boston, 1922). See also Otis, The ChicagoSymphonyOrchestra:Its Organization,
Growthand Development1891-1924 (1924; reprint, New York, 1972). On Patti,
see H. Sutherland Edwards, ThePrima Donna: Her History and Surroundingsfrom
the Seventeenthto the Nineteenth Century, 2 vols. (London, 1888), 2, 64-124;
Herman Klein, TheReign ofPatti (London, 1920); and Dizikes, Operain America,
223-230. Bluestone, ConstructingChicago,22, noted traveled Chicagoans' awareness of cultural amenities in European cities as inspiration for Chicago's
improvement.
29 On the development of commercial theaters in Paris after the revolution
of 1789, see G. Radicchio and M. Sajous D'Oris, Les thiatresde Paris pendant la
Rivolution (Bari, 1990), and Anthony Sutcliffe, Paris: An ArchitecturalHistory
(New Haven, 1993), 67-68. On the Op6ra National, see Jane Fulcher, The
Nation's Image:FrenchGrand Operaas Politicsand PoliticizedArt (Princeton, 1987),
113-121, 171. On Garnier's design for the arrival and circulation of different
classes of operagoers, see most recently Christopher C. Mead, CharlesGamrnier's
Paris Opera:ArchitecturalEmpathy and the Renaissance of French Classicism (New
York and Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 113-127.
30C6sar Daly and Gabriel Davioud, Les Thudtresde la Place du Chdtelet(Paris,
1874), and Mead, Garnier'sParis Opera, 128-129. See also T. J. Walsh, Second
Empire Opera: The TheatreLyrique,Paris 1851-1870 (London, 1981). On these
theaters, the Trocad6ro, and Davioud's unbuilt project for a new Orph6on
Municipal (1864-1867), see also Daniel Rabreau et al., GabrielDavioud: Architecte, 1824-1881 (Paris, 1981), 54-75, 76-83, 89-102. On Davioud's and
Bourdais's related project of 1875 for a "People's Opera House" in Paris, see
Izenour, TheaterDesign,93.
31Michael Musgrave, TheMusical Life of the CrystalPalace (Cambridge, 1995).
On the Royal Albert Hall, see Hitchcock, ArchitectureNineteenth and Twentieth
Centuries,4th ed. (New York, 1977), 236; and Izenour, TheaterDesign, 168-169,
252-254.
32Geraniotis, "German Design Influence in the Auditorium Theater,"
47-54. Descriptions of Bayreuth's Festspielhaus include Edwin O. Sachs and
Ernest A. Woodrow, Modern Opera Houses and Theatres, 3 vols. (London,
1897-1898), 1, 19-31; Albert Lavignac, TheMusic Dramas of Richard Wagnerand
His Festival Theatres in Bayreuth, trans. Esther Singleton (New York, 1904),
54-67; Pevsner, History of Building Types,86-87; Izenour, TheaterDesign, 75-82;
Forsyth, Buildingsfor Music, 179-182; Heinrich Habel, Festspielhausund Wahnfriied Geplante und ausgefiihrte Bauten Richard Wagners (Munich, 1985); and
Frederic Spotts, Bayreuth:A History of the WagnerFestival (New Haven, 1994),
38-54. Peck included the Bayreuth Festspielhaus among those theaters that
Adler was to examine during his trip of 1888 (see n. 36 below). Adler
presumably knew of the building earlier. In his paper "Stage Mechanisms," 42,
he referred to Carl Brandt's work as a theatrical engineer in connection with
stage equipment for the Opera House in Frankfurt-am-Main, built 1873-1880.
33 On Semper's first Hoftheater at Dresden, see Mallgrave, GottfiiedSemper,
117-129. On the seating arrangement in Schinkel's Schauspielhaus at Berlin,
see Barry Bergdoll, Karl FriedrichSchinkel:An Architecture
for Prussia (New York,
1994), 60. On these buildings, and on August Sturmhoefel's unbuilt project of
1888 for a Volkstheater,
or People's Theater, see Geraniotis, "German Design
Influence on the Auditorium Theater," 54-55, 58-62.
On Semper's unbuilt designs for Munich's Festspielhaus and their relation
to Wagner's dramatic theory, see Harry F. Mallgrave, GottfriedSemper:Architectof
the Nineteenth Century (New Haven, 1996), 251-267. On Wagner's interest in
ancient Greek drama as a model for his art, see Brian Magee, Aspectsof Wagner
(New York, 1988), 5-9, and Dieter Borchmeyer, Richard Wagner:Theoryand
Theatre,trans. Stuart Spencer (1982; Oxford, 1991), esp. 59-86.
34On American reports of Bayreuth's opening, see Dizikes, Operain America,
238-239. Among these reports were those by Leopold Damrosch, the Metropolitan Opera's future conductor of German opera, who wrote: "To Day's Musical
Wonder," New YorkSun (13 August 1876): 2, and "The Twilight of the Gods,"
ibid. (23 August 1876:2). See also the editorial "Wagner, the Art Revolutionist,"
154 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

ibid. (19 August 1876): 2. Architects Potter and Robertson's nonwinning

design for the Metropolitan Opera House included a lowered orchestra pit,
adapted from the one at Bayreuth ("Competitive Designs Prepared for the
Metropolitan Opera House, New York, N.Y. Messrs. Potter and Robertson,
Architects, New York, N.Y.," AmericanArchitectand Building News 8 [13 November 1880]: 234-235). In 1890 McKim, Mead and White's theater at New York's
Madison Square Garden was "to be built upon the plan of that at Bayreuth
which Wagner caused to be built according to the most approved plans" ("New
York's Auditorium," ChicagoTribune[25 January 1889]: 2). On the Metropolitan's German seasons, see Krehbiel, Chaptersof Opera, 109-138, 155-212;
Kolodin, MetropolitanOpera,87-105; Eaton, Miracle of the Met, 66-74; Briggs,
YellowBrickBrewery,30-38; Mayer, Met, 48-64; Eisler, MetropolitanOpera,55-171;
and Dizikes, Operain America,239-246.
35On Sullivan's window shopping in the vicinity of the Paris Op6ra, see
Autobiographyof an Idea, 227. On the facade's unveiling and the theater's
inauguration, see Mead, Garnier'sParis Opera,184-185, 193-195. On Sullivan's
trip back to the United States, see Twombly, Louis Sullivan, 73. By 1909 Sullivan
did own Charles Garnier, Le Nouvel Operade Paris, 2 vols. (Paris, 1880); Richard
Lucae et al., Das Opernhauszu Frankfurtam Main (Berlin, 1883); and Hans Auer,
Das K. K. Hof-Opernhausin Wien von van der Null und von Siccardsburg(Vienna,
1885). See Andrew, Louis Sullivan, Appendix 2: Inventory of Sullivan's Library,
from Williams, Barker & Severn Co., Auction Catalogue no. 5533, "Household
Effects, Library, Oriental Rugs, Paintings, Etc., of Mr. Louis Sullivan," Chicago,
29 November 1909 (Burnham Library, Art Institute of Chicago). On Sullivan
and Wagner, see Sullivan, Autobiographyof an Idea, 208-209; Wright, Genius and
the Mobocracy,49, 54-56; and Jordy, American Buildings and TheirArchitects,4,
161, 165. On Americans at Bayreuth, see Presto Music Times 6 (31 August
1889): 6.
36Peck, quoted in "One of Our Wonders," ChicagoHerald (16 September
1888): 17. He stated: "We intend to have the most complete stage in the world,
with the best appliances. During my recent visit to Europe, I examined a
number of stages with this end in view, and Mr. Adler, one of our architects, is
there now.., for the purposes of examining and getting detailed plans of the
finest stages in Europe, especially those of Buda-pesth, Frankfurt, Vienna,
Dresden, Baireuth [sic], and La Scala, at Milan." Adler's account of his trip
appeared in his talk "Stage Mechanisms," in Inland Architectand News Record13
(March 1889): 42-43. See also Joan W. Saltzstein, "The Autobiography and
Letters of Dankmar Adler," Inland Architect27 (September/October 1983):
20-24, and Geraniotis, "German Design Influence on the Auditorium Theater," 44-47.
37Peck, Annual Report of the President to the Stockholders of the Chicago
Auditorium Association, 7 December 1889 (Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt
University Archives).
38Henry
Ericsson, Sixty Yearsa Builder (1942; repr., NewYork, 1972), 68. On
the strike, seeJoseph Siry, "Adler and Sullivan's Guaranty
Building in Buffalo,"
JSAH55 (March 1996): 21, 34 (nn. 48, 49). On the Board of Trade Building,
see "The Board of Trade," Chicago Tribune(28 April 1885): 9; ibid. (29
April
1885): 3; Thomas Tallmadge, Architecturein Old Chicago(Chicago, 1941), 165;
and Randall, Building Constructionin Chicago,108.
39Paul Avrich, The Haymarket Tragedy (Princeton, 1983), 136-140. One
major study is Kenneth L. Kann, "Working Class Culture and the Labor
Movement in Nineteenth-Century Chicago," Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1977. Others include Hartmut Keil and John B. Jentz, eds.,
German Workersin Industrial Chicago, 1850-1910: A ComparativePerspective(De
Kalb, Ill., 1983). These studies refer to Michael J. Schaack, Anarchy and
Anarchists(Chicago, 1889), who described varied workers' meeting halls around
the city. The North Side's Turner Hall was at Clark Street and Chicago Avenue,
while
VorwfirtsTurner Hall was on West Twelfth Street.
40George Wharton James, Chicago'sDark Places (Chicago, 1891). See also
William Stead, If ChristCameto Chicago:A Pleafor the Union of All WhoLove in the
ServiceofAll WhoSuffer(London, 1894). On the city's range of amusements, see
Harold R. Vynne, ChicagobyDay and Night: ThePleasureSeeker'sGuideto theParis of
America (Chicago, 1892). On entertainments of nonradical trade unions, see,
for example, "Among the Turners," Chicago Herald (2 May 1886): 16; and
"Theatrical Folks' Hop" and "The Stone-Cutters' Ball," Chicago Tribune (8
December 1887): 2.
41Editorial, Indicator4 (9 February 1884): 96. See also "The Abbey Opera
Company," Indicator 4 (19 January 1884): 62. On the Metropolitan Opera
Company's Chicago tour of 1884, see Quaintance Eaton, Opera Caravan:

Adventuresof the Metropolitanon Tour (New York, 1957), 8-13, and Ronald L.
Davis, Operain Chicago(New York, 1966), 35-36.
42Editorial, Indicator4 (9 February 1884): 96.
43Silas G. Pratt, ed., First ChicagoGrand OperaFestival (Chicago, 1885).
44Ibid.
45 On the Exposition Building, see Industrial Chicago,1: The Building
Interests,
157-158; Andreas, Historyof Chicago,2, 655-657; "The Interstate Exposition at
Chicago," Inland Architectand News Record16 (September 1890): 22; Bessie L.
Pierce, History of Chicago, 3 vols. (Chicago, 1957), 3, 18-19, 475; Helen L.
Horowitz, Cultureand the City:CulturalPhilanthropyin Chicagofrom the 1880s to
1917 (1976; Chicago, 1989), 36-39; and Ross Miller, AmericanApocalypse,23,
91-92.
46On the 1884 May Music Festival, see Andreas, History of Chicago, 3,
650-651; "The May Music Festival," Chicago Tribune (31 May 1884): 3, and
"Amusements," ibid. (1June 1884): 6.
47 "The Opera Festival," ChicagoTribune(1 March 1885): 7.
48"The Opera Festival," ChicagoTribune(30 March 1885): 9.
49Pratt, ed., First ChicagoGrand OperaFestival.Adler and Sullivan's remodeling of the Exposition Building's north end for the Opera Festival was discussed
in "A Mammoth Opera House," Inland Architectand News Record5 (March
1885): 25; "The Operatic Festival," ibid. (29 March 1885): 12; "The Grand
Opera Festival," Real Estate and Building Journal 27 (4 April 1885): 160-161;
Editorial, "The Opera Festival," Chicago Tribune (5 April 1885): 4; ibid. (12
April 1885): 27; Sullivan, Autobiographyof an Idea, 292-293; Morrison, Louis
Sullivan, 67-71; Denson, "Chicago Auditorium," 30-34; Yvonne Shafer, "The
First Chicago Grand Opera Festival: Adler and Sullivan Before the Auditorium," TheaterDesign and Technology13 (March 1977): 9-13, 38; Grimsley,
"Dankmar Adler," 184-189; Twombly, Louis Sullivan, 147-149; Gregersen,
DankmarAdler,15-16, 55, 60-61; and Frei, Louis Sullivan, 64-65.
50 "The Grand Opera Festival," Real Estate and Building Journal 27 (4 April
1885): 161.
51 On the festival's financial and cultural results, see "Music for the People,"
Chicago Inter Ocean (3 May 1885): 6. See also Andreas, History of Chicago, 3,
652-653.
52 Peck, quoted in "The Opera Is Over," Chicago Tribune (19 April
1885): 12.
53 "Our Vampires," The Alarm (2 May 1885): 1, and "They Want Blood,"
Chicago Tribune (29 April 1885): 2. See also Schaack, Anarchy and Anarchists,
80-81, and Avrich, HaymarketTragedy,146-149.
54Recent accounts of the riot and its aftermath include Avrich, Haymarket
Tragedy,181-239, and Carl Smith, UrbanDisorderand theShapeofBelief(Chicago,
1996), 101-176. Accounts from the period include "A Hellish Dead," Chicago
Tribune(5 May 1886): 1-2. On workers' lakefront meetings held from May to
November 1885, see Avrich, HaymarketTragedy,109-110.
55Schaack, Anarchy and Anarchists, 44-73, and Avrich, Haymarket Tragedy,
84-85, 218-219. See also Carol Poore, "German-American Socialist Culture,"
Cultural Correspondence
(Spring 1978): 13-20, and Eric L. Hirsch, UrbanRevolt:
Ethnic Politics in theNineteenth-CenturyChicagoLaborMovement(Berkeley, 1990),
esp. 144-170.
56 The Reverend David Swing, quoted in Ericsson, Sixty Yearsa Builder, 235.
For Swing's and other clerical first reactions to Haymarket, see "Denounced
from Pulpit," ChicagoTribune(10 May 1886): 1-2. See also Lewis F. Wheelock,
"Urban Protestant Reactions to the Chicago Haymarket Affair 1886-1893,"
Ph.D. diss., University of Iowa, 1956.
57Peck, address to Chicago Commercial Club, 29 May 1886, published in
"New Grand Opera-House," ChicagoTribune(12June 1886): 9.
58 SeeJohnJ. Glessner, The CommercialClubof Chicago(Chicago, 1910), and
Andreas, HistoryofChicago,3, 404-405. On Chicago's first major railroad strike,
see Robert V. Bruce, 1877: The Yearof Violence(NewYork, 1959), 233-253, and
Philip Foner, The GreatLaborUprisingof 1877 (NewYork, 1977), 138-156.
59Peck, in "New Grand Opera House," ChicagoTribune(12June 1886): 9.
60 Ibid. As successful local examples of this building type, Peck cited Adler's
Central Music Hall (1879), and the Chicago Opera House (1885), on the
southwest corner of Clark and Washington Streets, designed by Cobb and
Frost. Adler and Sullivan remodeled its theater in 1886. On this building, see
Andreas, History of Chicago, 3, 668-669, and Rand, McNally & Co., Bird's-Eye
Viewsand Guide to Chicago,141, repr. in Randall, Building Constructionin Chicago,

BUILDING
155
206. Peck's family owned the building's site. See "A Question of Dollars,"
ChicagoTribune(20June 1889): 10. On the Central Music Hall, see n. 81 below.
61 Glessner, CommercialClub,20.
62Garczynski, Auditorium,20, recalled how,
prior to the Peck proposal, "one
of Chicago's most noble and most honored citizens, who, realizing this want of
the city, had from 1882 to 1885, with the prompting and assistance of Theodore
Thomas, made many brave but ineffectual efforts to convince a number of her
wealthy citizens and her supposed leaders in culture and refinement to join
him in giving Chicago a great Public Hall and Opera House." He added: "The
comprehensive studies of [Adler and Sullivan] made from 1882 to 1885 in
connection with certain efforts in a similar direction under the auspices of Mr.
Fairbank and Mr. [Theodore] Thomas, had enabled them to show that
adaptation to a multiplicity of uses could be attained in the construction and
equipment of an Auditorium without imperiling its utility or its beauty."
Theodore Thomas was the nationally known orchestra leader who played at
Chicago's May Music Festivals of 1882 and 1884.
Sullivan, "Development of Construction," repr. in Twombly, ed., Sullivan:
Public Papers,215, recalled that in about 1885, "there was a movement started
by N. K. Fairbank for the building of a great opera house in this city, and we
[Adler and Sullivan] made some sketches, but somehow the thing did not pull
through. It lagged along. No one took a special interest in it, that is, interest
enough to put up the money." In Autobiographyof an Idea (p. 292), Sullivan later
wrote that prior to 1885: "For several years there had been talk to the effect that
Chicago needed a grand opera house; but the several schemes advanced were
too aristocratic and exclusive to meet with general approval." Variations on
Sullivan's account appear in local reports of the early 1880s, such as
"Wanted-An Opera House," ChicagoTribune(21January 1883): 4.
63Peck, in "New Grand Opera House," ChicagoTribune(12June 1886): 9.
64Original stockholders and their amounts were listed in Records of the
ChicagoAuditorium Association, Originally Chicago Grand Auditorium Association,
December11, 1886 to November 7, 1906, 2 (Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt
University Archives). This was a limited liability corporation created for publicly beneficial purposes under the laws of the State of Illinois. While not legally
a nonprofit corporation, the Auditorium Association paid its stockholders a
dividend only once, in 1893, the year of the Columbian Exposition, as noted in
Records,228.
65Waterman, Chicago and Cook County, 3, 924. As the Auditorium neared
completion, Peck wrote to its stockholders that "it is desired and expected that
other citizens not now identified with the project will unite with us, thus
continuing the policy originally adopted of distributing the ownership widely
among our people" (Peck, Annual Report of the President to the Stockholders
of the Chicago Auditorium Association, 1 December 1888. Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt University Archives).
66 "The Grand Auditorium," Chicago Tribune (10 December 1886): 1. On
Peck's fundraising, see "Subscribers to the Grand Opera Hall," ibid. (26
September 1886): 7; "The 'Grand Auditorium,' " ibid. (28 November 1886): 7;
and "A Magnificent Enterprise," ibid. (5 December 1886): 15. See also
Morrison, Louis Sullivan, 86, and Twombly, Louis Sullivan, 164-165.
Auditorium Association, 12 December 1891. Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt
University Archives.
68On these buildings, see n. 30.
69Peck stated that "it is the wish of the projectors that the Auditorium shall
eventually come to be the great art center of America" ("The Pride of
Chicago," ChicagoDaily News [Morning Edition, 9 December 1889]). Similar
themes recurred in speeches at the theater's opening. See "Dedicated to Music
and the People," ChicagoTribune(10 December 1889): 1-2. The Auditorium's
national significance stemmed partly from its intended use for national political conventions, which began with the Republican Convention there in June
1888. Later President Benjamin Harrison and Vice President Levi P. Morton,
nominated at that convention, joined several state governors and Canadian
officials at the theater's dedication. Peck wrote that the "Auditorium will be in a
sense nationalized by the presence of distinguished men of the country" (Peck,
Annual Report of the President to the Stockholders of the Chicago Auditorium
Association, 7 December 1889. Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt University
Archives).
70Adler, "Chicago Auditorium," 415. Krehbiel, Chaptersof Opera,91, cited a
claim by John B. Schoeffel, a partner of Henry Abbey, the impresario who
managed the Metropolitan in its first season (1883-1884), that Abbey had lost
$600,000. See Briggs, YellowBrick Brewery,22, 28-29; Mayer, Met, 43-47; and
Eisler, Metropolitan Opera, 50-53. Garczynski, Auditorium, 20, noted that, in
contrast to Cincinnati, whose capacious Music Hall had succeeded from its
opening in 1878, "New York, with a far greater population, and with infinitely
superior wealth, had built the Academy of Music, and still more recently the
Metropolitan Opera House, with no better financial result than the obligation
of the owners of these temples of the Muses to pay annual assessments for the
maintenance of these structures."
71 Garczynski, Auditorium,122.
72Adler, "Chicago Auditorium," 423, wrote: "The boxes,
forty in number,
are arranged in two tiers upon each side of the parquette. The lower tier forms
an arcade of semi-circular arches with rather light treatment and but little effect
of inclosure, while the upper boxes are entirely open. In fact, there is nothing
at all of the boxlike and stuffy effect produced by the conventional treatment of
the open box." The lower boxes' arches framed their occupants on view, yet
interfered with views outward.
73The Auditorium's boxes were sold for a season. See "An Opera Box for
$2,100," Chicago Tribune(23 November 1889): 1. The Met's first patrons paid
$17,000 to own a box permanently.
74Sullivan, quoted in "The Pride of Chicago," ChicagoDaily News (Morning
Edition, 9 December 1889).
75Adler, "The Theater," 22-23.
76Ibid., 23.
77Adler, "Chicago Auditorium," 423, wrote: "This unusually great rise of
the main floor has also made practicable the arrangement of six entrances,
similar to the 'vomitoria' of the Roman amphitheatre, by which the lower half
of the parquette seats are reached without rendering it necessary to climb to
the upper level of the main floor." Schuyler, "Glimpses of Western Architecture: Chicago (1891)," in AmericanArchitectureand OtherWritings,ed. William
Jordy and Ralph Coe, 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1961), 1, 260, saw the
Auditorium's entrances as vomitoria. He wrote (p. 258): "A place of popular
entertainment, constructed upon a scale and with a massiveness to which we
can scarcely find a parallel since Roman days, would present one of the
worthiest and most interesting problems a modern architect could have if he
were left to solve it unhampered."
78Adler advocated a larger number of narrower aisles in "Paramount
Requirements for a Large Opera House," 46, and "Theater Building for
American Cities; Second Paper," 815.
80
Gregersen, Dankmar Adler, 10, notes that the idea of seating rows not
having curvatures centered on the source of sound followed from the theaters
of Adler's early employer, the architect Ozia S. Kinney, who died in 1869.
81 Adler worked on the plans of the Central Music Hall for perhaps three
years, adapting suggestions of its patron, theatrical manager George B. Carpenter (1835-1881), who had visited theaters throughout the United States for
ideas on the design ("Real Estate," ChicagoTribune[2 March 1879]: 6). See also
"The New Central Music Hall," American Architect and Building News 6 (8
November 1879): 8, and "The Music Hall," ibid. (5 December 1879): 6. Views
and seating plans appeared in a pamphlet, CentralMusic Hall (Chicago Historical Society). Later accounts are in Joseph Fort Newton, David Swing: Poet
Preacher(Chicago, 1909), 34-35; Morrison, Louis Sullivan, 66, 286-289; Condit,
Chicago School, 31-32; Twombly, Louis Sullivan, 98-99, 139-141; Grimsley,
"Dankmar Adler," 80-130; Gregersen, Dankmar Adler,47-49; Bluestone, Constructing Chicago,101; and Frei, Louis Sullivan, 50, 63.
Dean, World'sFair City, 71, wrote of Peck: "Although holding no decided
views regarding religious belief, he may be seen with his family at Central Music
Hall nearly every Sunday, listening to the logical and symmetrical discourses of
Prof. David Swing." Among the many publications of this minister's words, a
comprehensive collection from the period of the Auditorium is David Swing,
Sermons(Chicago, 1884).
82Gregersen, DankmarAdler,11-19. OnJohn Scott Russell's methods for the
banking of auditorium seating, see Izenour, TheaterDesign,71, and Appendix 3
(597-599), which is a republication of Scott Russell, "Elementary Considerations of some Principles in the Construction of Buildings Designed to Accommodate Spectators and Auditors," from EdinburghNew PhilosophicalJournal 27
(1838). See also Forsyth, Buildingsfor Music, 235-243.
83Adler, "Paramount Requirements of a Large Opera House," 46.
156 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

" Ticket prices for the Auditorium's inaugural season of 1889 were noted in
Minutes of ExecutiveCommitteeof the ChicagoAuditoriumAssociation,3 May 1887 to
11 December1907, 146 (Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt University Archives).
On prices for the festival, see n. 50 above.
85Adler, "The Theater," 22.
86Mallgrave, Gotifried
Semper, 123-124. At the end of his discussion on
different types of theater plans, Pierre Patte, Essai sur l'ArchitectureThidtrale
(Paris, 1782), favored the ellipse for acoustic reasons. On Patte's treatise, see
Izenour, TheaterDesign,57-59, and Tidworth, Theatres,102.
87 In addition to Patte, European treatises on architectural acoustics predating Scott Russell's studies included George Saunders, A Treatiseon Theatres
(London, 1790);J. G. Rhode, Thiorie der Verbreitungdes Schallesfiir Baukiinstler
(Berlin, 1800); Ernst F. Chladni, Traiti d'Acoustique(Paris, 1809); and Carl F
iiberKatacoustics(Berlin, 1810). See also
Langhans, UberTheateroderBemerkungen
On the Principles of Sound and their Applications to the New Houses of Parliament
(London, 1840). Scott Russell read two papers on acoustics of theaters before
the Royal Institute of British Architects in February and March 1847, summarized in Builder (1847), 82 and 118, and in Building News (26 November, 3 and
10 December 1858). American variations on such studies predating Adler's
mature career included Jabez B. Upham, Acoustic Architecture(New Haven,
1853), and Alexander Saeltzer, A Treatiseon Acoustics(New York, 1872).
88Vitruvius, Ten Books on Architecture,trans. Morris Hicky Morgan (Cambridge, Mass., 1926), book 5, chap. 3, 138.
89 Ibid., 139. Matthew Hurff, "The Context of Tradition in the Chicago
Auditorium," seminar paper, Wesleyan University, May 1992, noted that Vitruvius (Ten Books on Architecture,book 5, chap. 3, 138-139) wrote that sound
"moves in an endless number of circular rounds, like the innumerably increasing circular waves which appear when a stone is thrown into smooth water,"
and that Adler ("Theater Building for American Cities: First Paper," 722)
wrote: "The sound waves, produced in the open air, travel very much as do the
ripples in a pool when a stone is thrown into it."
"James Fergusson, quoted in John A. Fox, "American Dramatic Theatres.
III," AmericanArchitectand Building News 6 (2 August 1879): 35.
91Fox, "American Dramatic Theatres.
III," 36.
92 One observer of the Auditorium Theater's opening wrote: "You could not
feel the sense of immensity till you turned from the footlights and looked back
under the white and gold-ribbed vault of the body of the Auditorium to the
balconies, which flattered the eye and then bewildered it; for, first, there sloped
back from the parquet a stretch like a flower garden; then came the curving
balcony, black with thousands, as if more people were there than anywhere else;
above it the straight line of the second balcony, with banks of sightseers; and last
and highest of all the gallery, whose occupants looked like dots. Now came the
triumph of architecture-for, while you felt the largeness, you also felt the
compactness of the whole. Despite the distance, you knew that these dots in the
gallery were near you, and could hear every word or note uttered on the stage"
("Dedicated to Music and the People," Chicago Tribune [10 December
1889]: 1).
93 Izenour, TheaterDesign,568-569.
94 Mallgrave, GottfriedSemper,260-262, noted Semper's innovation of the
double proscenium in his unbuilt project for Munich's Festival Theater as the
source for the triple proscenium enframing the stage at Bayreuth. It accommodated the orchestra's placement in a deep pit, or "mystical abyss" between the
audience and stage-an idea important to Wagner.
95Adler, "Theater-Building for American Cities: First Paper," 724.
96
Ibid.
97At first there was to be a fifth arched segment in the ceiling nearest the
stage, but this was omitted to place the organ there. See Gregersen, "Chicago
Auditorium: A History," 23.
99 "The Great Auditorium," ChicagoTribune(17June 1888): 5.
'0 Ibid.
101 Jane Addams, TwentyYearsat Hull-House
(Chicago, 1909), 177-178.
102"The New Auditorium Building," ChicagoTribune(16 April 1887): 5.
o03See Harold L. Platt, The ElectricCity:Energy and the Growthof the Chicago
Area, 1880-1930 (Chicago, 1991), 22-39. See also "Electric Lights in Chicago
Theaters," WesternElectrician 5 (3 August 1889): 55-56. Dizikes, Opera in
America, 243, noted boxholders' requests for raised houselights during the
Met's first seasons of German opera (1884-1891). Geraniotis, "German De-
sign Influence in the Auditorium Theater," 45, noted that Adler in 1888 had
visited several German theaters with advanced electric lighting systems.
104Van Rensselaer, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 87, noted the configuration of its houselights. Their technology was described in "Gas-Fitting, and Gas
Lighting by Electricity of the Metropolitan Opera House, New York," Sanitary
Engineer9 (27 December 1883): 89-90. Other accounts of the old Met's first
interior include "A Grand Temple of Music," New YorkTimes (14 October
1883): 5; Schuyler, "Metropolitan Opera-House," 886-887; and Krehbiel,
86-88. Soon after the theater opened, plans for its remodelChaptersof
Opera,
ing were noted in "Improving the New Opera-House," New YorkTimes (30
October 1883): 8. The main purpose of this remodeling was to improve the
boxes' decor. The scheme, devised by Francis Lathrop (a painter who contributed murals to the original interior) was described in "The German Opera
Season," New YorkTimes (2 October 1884): 4. After a fire had gutted the
Metropolitan in August 1892, architect John B. McElfatrick replanned the
interior, eliminating the half tier of baignoire boxes and transforming the
uppermost full tier of boxes into row seating to accommodate a larger general
audience. See William H. Birkmire, "The Planning and Construction of
American Theaters: Part I," Architectureand Building 21 (13 October 1894):
175-179. The old Met's auditorium was remodeled again in 1903. See Curtis C.
Blake, "The Architecture of Carrare and Hastings," Ph.D. diss., Columbia
University, 1976, 301-302.
105 "Opera and Drama," Indicator6 (4July 1885): 553. Sullivan,
"Development of Construction, I," in Twombly, ed., Sullivan: Public Papers, 214-215,
recalled that in the 1885 renovation of McVicker's Theater, he had invented
"the first decorative use of the electric lamp ... placing the lamps in a decoration instead of clustering them in fixtures." He thus departed from gas
chandeliers and wall-hung gas lights. See "Amusements; McVicker's Renovated
Theatre," ChicagoTribune(19June 1885): 5; "Amusements" and "McVicker's
Theatre," ibid. (2 July 1885): 5, 7; "McVicker's Theatre: A Thespian Temple
Worthy of Chicago," Real Estate and Building Journal 27 (18 July 1885): 783;
Clarence H. Blackhall, "Notes of Travel: Chicago," American Architect and
Building News 22 (24 December 1887): 299-300; and Adler and Sullivan, letter,
"The Decoration of McVicker's Theater, ibid., 23 (11 February 1888): 70-71,
in Twombly, ed., Sullivan: PublicPapers,41-45. There (p. 43) Adler and Sullivan
noted that the ornamental carver was James Legge, whose firm also did the
ornamental plaster relief in the Auditorium Building.
106 "Dedicated to Music and the
People," Chicago Tribune (10 December
1889): 1.
107 Adler,
"Theater-Building for American Cities; Second Paper," 817. Peck
wrote: "The plan of decoration is consistent and elegant throughout the
building, the Auditorium and main rooms of the hotel being finished mostly in
gold and ivory tone of color. This has been costly, the quality of the gold leaf
being exceptionally fine (23 carats), but it is permanent and grows more
beautiful with age, and therefore is wise economy as well as effective in beauty"
(Peck, Annual Report of the President to the Stockholders of the Chicago
University Archives). Sullivan wrote: "A single idea or principle is taken as a
basis of the color scheme, that is to say, use is made of but one color in each
instance, and that color is associated with gold" ("Plastic and Color Decoration
of the Auditorium," in Twombly, ed., Sullivan: PublicPapers,74).
108Mme. Lion Grandin, Impressionsd'une paisienne d Chicago (Paris, 1894),
117: "En outre, l'il1ment dicoratif, peinture et sculpture, si abondant, trop
abondant mime en n6tre Acadimie de musique, fait ici complktement d&faut."

University Archives. Peck noted that the French government had paid the
equivalent of over $7 million for the Paris Opera House, plus $2 million for the
ground, while Chicago's Auditorium cost $3.1 million to build, plus a ground
rent of$1 million for the lease period.
110Garczynski, Auditorium,128.
1 Bart Swindall, Auditorium Theater Council, noted this motif in the
course of a theater tour on 13July 1997. The same milkweed pod recurs as the
motif on the newel posts at the bottom of the Auditorium Hotel's main
stairway. On the relation of botanical and historical sources for Sullivan's
ornament, see Siry, CarsonPirie Scott:Louis Sullivan and the ChicagoDepartment
Store(Chicago, 1988), 153-157.

112Garczynski, Auditorium, 114. In a later interview, Sullivan said of Adler's

and his design for the synagogue for Kehilath Anshe Ma'ariv, Chicago
(1889-1890): "It is the nineteenth century school. ... That is all I can say for it.
It has no historical style. It is the present. We have got to get away from schools
in architecture. As long as we adhere to schools of anything there is no
progress; nothing gained, no advancement. Look at the Auditorium. What
school does that represent? None" ("Church Spires Must Go," ChicagoTribune
[30 November 1890]: 36).
113Garczynski, Auditorium,128.
114Sullivan,
Autobiographyof an Idea, 208-209, recalled that Lohengrinhad an
impact on his appreciation of Wagner, whose portrait, along with Haydn's,
appears in gold relief in the arch spandrels of the organ screen to the stage's
left. See "Auditorium Supplement," ChicagoInter Ocean (11 December 1889).
Johannes Gelert (1852-1923) sculpted these reliefs and those of Shakespeare
and Demosthenes to the stage's right.
115The illusionistic backdrop for the Auditorium's stage consisted of a
continuous canvas roll on which were painted panoramas of the sky in different
seasons and weathers. The backdrop, 300 feet long and 75 feet high, was
painted by the Kautsky Brothers of Vienna, whose system of hydraulic lifts was
adapted for the Auditorium's stage. See Adler, "Chicago Auditorium," 428-429,
and Garczynski, Auditorium, 133-135. Sullivan's designs of foliate ornament to
frame naturalistic stage imagery recurred in his studies for the proscenium and
curtain of the Pueblo Opera House (1888-1890). See Lloyd C. Engelbrecht,
"Adler & Sullivan's Pueblo Opera House: City Status for a New Town in the
Rockies," Art Bulletin 67 (June 1985): 287, 290.
116 Sullivan, "Plastic and Color Decoration of the Auditorium," in Twombly,
ed., Sullivan: PublicPapers,75.
"117Ibid., 76.
118 The title that Sullivan originally selected for the poem "Inspiration" was
"Growth and Decadence." See Twombly, Louis Sullivan, 224-225. On Sullivan's
presentation of "Inspiration," see "Western Association of Architects," Chicago
Tribune(18 November 1886): 6, and AmericanArchitectand Building News 20 (27
November 1886): 254. Analyses of the poem include Paul, Louis Sullivan,
36-40, and Weingarden, "Louis H. Sullivan: Investigation of a Second French
Connection,"JSAH39 (December 1980): 297-303.
"11Sullivan, "Plastic and Color Decoration of the Auditorium," in Twombly,
ed., Sullivan: PublicPapers,75.
120 "Pride of
Chicago," ChicagoDaily News (Morning Edition, 9 December
1889).
121 Ibid.
122 At their meeting of 28 August 1889, Peck and his
colleagues resolved
"that the architects and the decorative contractor [Healy and Millet] proceed
with landscape paintings for the side arches in the Auditorium-the
cost
thereof not to exceed two thousand dollars ($2,000). It being fully understood
that if not satisfactory they are to be taken down at the expense of Healy and
Millet... the landscapes to be subject to modification in the original designs
and subject to the approval of the Executive Committee" (Minutes of Executive Committee of Chicago Auditorium Association, 141. Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt University Archives). On 5 June, the Executive Committee had
"voted to authorize Architect Sullivan to have figures placed over the proscenium arch of the Auditorium, the cost thereof not to exceed $2,000, and the
design subject to the approval of this committee" (Ibid., 111). On Fleury, see
Francis E. Towne, "Albert Fleury, Painter," Brush and Pencil 12 (April-September 1903): 201-208. On Healy and Millet, see David Hanks, "Louis J. Millet
and the Art Institute of Chicago," Bulletin of theArtInstitute of Chicago67 (1973):
13-19. On Sullivan's friendship with Millet and Fleury in Chicago, see Connely,
Louis Sullivan, 206. On Fleury's murals, see Garczynski, Auditorium, 130-132.
Fleury also painted the twelve murals in oil, each showing a different American
regional scene, in the Auditorium Hotel's Banqueting Room. He soon became
an instructor in mural painting at the Art Institute and completed a number of
later such commissions. Fleury wrote of his approach to painting open-air
scenes in "Picturesque Chicago," Brush andPencil6 (September 1900): 273-281.
'23Towne, "Albert Fleury," 204.
124 "Pride of Chicago," ChicagoDaily News (Morning Edition, 9 December
1889). On Peck's affinity for spending time in Wisconsin's woodlands, see
Dean, World'sFair City,69-70.
125Sullivan, "Plastic and Color Decoration of the Auditorium," in Twombly,
ed., Sullivan: PublicPapers,75-76.
126Sullivan, Autobiographyof an Idea, 300.

127 On the
chronology of the Auditorium's exterior design, see Gregersen,
"Chicago Auditorium: A History," 18-24. See also Morrison, Louis Sullivan,
86-89, and Twombly, Louis Sullivan, 164-170.
128 On the Auditorium's siting and urban
visibility, see Garczynski, Auditorium, 41-49.
129 At their meeting of 7 May 1887, the Auditorium's directors, headed by
Peck, voted to change the upper walls to limestone (Records,71. Auditorium
Collection, Roosevelt University Archives). Paul Mueller, "Testimony," in Kaufmann, ed., "Wright's 'Lieber Meister,' " Nine Commentaries,49, and Wright,
Genius and theMobocracy,48, both recalled that Sullivan's initial designs for the
upper walls were in brick and an ornate terra-cotta, cladding structural iron
columns.
130 Adler, "Architects and Trade Unions," Inland Architectand News Record27
(May 1886): 32. Adler's ideas on labor and politics also appeared in "Deliberations of the Architects," Economist6 (21 November 1891): 857-858; "Municipal
Building Laws," Inland Architectand News Record25 (May 1895): 36-37; "Open
Letter to Chicago Mason Builders," ibid. 29 (February 1897): 2-3; "The
General Contractor from the Standpoint of the Architect," ibid. 33 (June
1899): 38-39. On the building trades strike of 1887, see Industrial Chicago,1:
TheBuilding Interests,556-581.
131Adler, quoted in "Why the Strike Must Fail," Chicago Tribune (17 June
1887): 1.
132
Ibid.
33 Adler, "Chicago Auditorium," 417.

134Field's Wholesale Store was 325 feet long east-west on Adams Street and
its seven stories stood 130 feet high. The Auditorium's front on Congress Street
is 362 feet long east-west, while its ten-story block is about 144 feet high. Both
thus had a ratio of frontal width to height of 2.5:1. John Van Osdel's Farwell
Wholesale Block (1886), on the west side of South Market Street from Monroe
to Adams, was the other recent building of comparable size in central Chicago.
See Rand, McNally & Co., Bird's-EyeViewsand Guide to Chicago, 105-106, and
Randall, Building Constructionin Chicago,112, 123.
135 "Death of Henry Field," Chicago Tribune (23 December 1890): 1; and
Robert W. Twyman, History of Marshall Field & Co., 1852-1906 (Philadelphia,
1954), 62. Henry Field was a director of the Auditorium from December 1886
to his death (Records, 8, 175. Auditorium Collection, Roosevelt University
Archives). Field's Wholesale Store's sandstone was quarried near Springfield,
Massachusetts, less than thirty miles from Marshall Field's birthplace near
Conway. On the building, see James E O'Gorman, "The Marshall Field
Wholesale Store: Materials Toward a Monograph," JSAH 37 (October 1978):
175-194. Sullivan, Kindergarten Chat VI: "An Oasis," KindergartenChats and
Other Writings,ed. Isabella Athey (New York, 1947), 30, described the Field
Store as a monument to Field, "to the strength and resource of individuality
and force of character." Field's associate, Harry G. Selfridge, noted that the
firm's architecture "met the moral requirements of Mr. Field himself" as "a
lasting monument to his character" (Harold I. Cleveland, "Fifty-FiveYears in
Business: The Life of Marshall Field-Chapter XI," System11 [May 1907]: 459).
136Adler, paraphrased in "The Western Association of Architects," American
Architectand Building News 20 (27 November 1886): 253.
137O'Gorman, "Marshall Field Wholesale Store," 190. See alsoJordy, American Buildings and TheirArchitects,4, 34-37.
138Industrial Chicago,1: TheBuildinglnterests, 25.
13"Garczynski, Auditorium,54.
140 On the ancient Latin usages of the word "auditorium," see Birgitta
Tamm, Auditorium and Palatium: A Study on Assembly-Roomsin Roman Palaces
during the Ist CenturyB.C. and the Ist CenturyA.D., Stockholm Studies in Classical
Archaeology 2 (Stockholm, 1963), 7-24.
141Editorial, "The Auditorium Opening," ChicagoInter Ocean (9 December
1889): 4.
1'42On Peck's involvement with the World's Columbian Exposition, see
Flinn, Hand-bookof ChicagoBiography,283, and Gilbert and Bryson, Chicagoand
Its Makers,625. Peck's enthusiasm for its architecture appeared in his Reportof
the Commissioner-General
for the UnitedStatesto theInternational UniversalExposition,
Paris, 1900, 6 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1901), 1, 60.
143On the unit's local history and reputation, see Souvenir Album and
Sketchbook
of Chicago'sFirstRegiment(Chicago, 1890); Andreas, Historyof Chicago,
3, 586-587; and John J. Flinn, Chicago: The Marvelous City of the West,2nd ed.
158 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

(Chicago, 1892), 387-389. Workers earlier referred to this regiment's men as

"Marshall Field's boys" ("Our Vampires," TheAlarm [2 May 1885]: 1). Wright,
Autobiography(1932), 96, identified Adler and Sullivan's draftsman, William
(Billy) Gaylord, as "a candidate for pugilistic honors in the First Regiment at
'the Armory,' " presumably meaning the regiment's earlier armory building at
24Jackson Street, opened in 1878. On this structure, see Industrial Chicago,1:
TheBuildingInterests,185.
44 On the First Regiment's Armory, see Inland Architectand News Record13
"Was Laid with Pomp," Chicago Tribune(13 July 1890): 1-2;
(une 1889): 90;
Julian Ralph, "The First Regiment Armory in Chicago," Harper's Weekly(3
December 1892): 1163; Donald Hoffmann, TheArchitectureofJohn WellbornRoot
(New York, 1973), 139-144; and Robert Fogelson, America'sArmories (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 81, 146-147, 151, 158-159, 160-162.
45 Flinn, Chicago:Marvelous City,389.
146 On Adler and Sullivan's "Trocadero Theater" inside the First
Regiment's
Armory, see Gregersen, Dankmar Adler, 86-87. On Ziegfeld, the father of the
famous twentieth-century showman, see Flinn, Hand-bookof ChicagoBiography,
395. On the Parisian Trocadero Palace and Theater, see Rabreau et al., Gabriel
Davioud, 89-102.
147 "Music for the People," ChicagoInter Ocean (3 May 1885): 6.
148 On the Chicago Citizens' Association, see Frederic C. Jaher, The Urban
Establishment:UpperStrata in Boston,New York,Charleston,Chicago,and LosAngeles
(Urbana, 1982), 505. On the Chicago Citizens' Law and Order League, see
Andreas, History of Chicago,3, 288-290.
150 See Corroyer, "Romanesque Architecture," Inland Architect and News
Record13 (March 1889): 39-40; (April 1889): 51-53; (May 1889): 65-68;
(une
1889): 83-86; (uly 1889): 95-96; 14 (August 1889): 3-6; (September 1889):
18-19; (November 1889): 48-50; (December 1889): 73-76; (anuary 1890):
90-92; 15 (February 1890): 3-5; (March 1890): 31; (April 1890): 43-45; (May
1890): 55-57. Another contemporary view of the relation of Roman to Romanesque appeared in Montgomery Schuyler, "The Romanesque Revival in
New York (1891)," in American Architecture,1, 191-195. On Romanesque in
Chicago's architecture, see Industrial Chicago, 1: The Building Interests,67-68,
and Henry Van Brunt, "John Wellborn Root," Inland Architectand News Record
16 (anuary 1891): 85-88. On Otis, see Henry E and Elsie R. Withey,
Biographical Dictionary of American Architects(1956; Los Angeles, 1970), 450, and Art
Institute of Chicago, ChicagoArchitectsDesign (New York, 1982), 44.
151 "The President's Party," ChicagoEveningJournal (9 December 1889): 2. A
rendering of Peck's house was published in Inland Architectand News Record10
(October 1887). Peck and Jenney were both members of the Union League
Club, whose building of 1886Jenney designed. See Charles B.Jenkins, "W.L. B.
Jenney and W. B. Mundie," ArchitecturalReviewer1 (February 1897): 2-9, and
Grant, Fightfora City,81-95.
152 On the Athenaeum's headquarters from 1890, see Industrial Chicago, 1:

The Building Interests,275; Flinn, Chicago:Marvelous City of the West,265; Rand,
McNally & Co., Bird's-EyeViewsand Guide to Chicago,31-32, repr. in Randall,
Developmentof Building Constructionin Chicago,253. See also NineteenthAnnual
Report of the Chicago Athenaeum 1889-'90 (Chicago Historical Society). The

Athenaeum's earlier building stood on the west side of Dearborn Street, just
north of Adler and Sullivan's Borden Block on the northwest corner of
Randolph. On the Art Institute's original patronage from its organization in
1879, see Andreas, History of Chicago,3, 421, and Helen L. Horowitz, "The Art
Institute of Chicago: The First Forty Years," ChicagoHistory 8 (Spring 1979):
2-19.
153 "Warming Its New Home," ChicagoTribune(10 May 1891): 1.
154The Reverend Edward I. Galvin to Ferdinand W. Peck, 13 December
1889, in Auditorium, Dedication Volume (Newberry Library). On Galvin and
the Chicago Athenaeum, see Andreas, History of Chicago,3, 417.
1'5 Adler, "Chicago Auditorium," 433.
157Studies that revise views of the Chicago School by examining its architec-
tural patronage include Bluestone, ConstructingChicago,and Berger, TheyBuilt

Chicago.
158 Paul Bourget, Outre Mer (Paris, 1895), 1, 161-162, trans. in Schuyler,
Critiqueof the WorksofAdler & Sullivan, in AmericanArchitecture,2, 380. Bourget in
this context was discussing the exteriors of Chicago's tall commercial buildings.
SeeJordy, AmericanBuildings and TheirArchitects,4, 52-53. Schuyler wrote: "The
type of an opera-house, which the [Chicago] auditorium essentially is, is so well
settled and so universally accepted that the variations ordinarily attempted
upon it, even by architects of original force, are comparatively slight. While the
component parts of the accepted type are retained in this interior, they are
transmuted into an entirely new result." The theater, in "extending and
proclaiming a hospitality as nearly as may be equal and undistinguishing,
illustrates, as plainly as the exterior of many-storied buildings, and in contrast
with the 'royal' and 'imperial' opera houses, M. Bourget's conception of 'a new
kind of art, an art of democracy' " (Schuyler, Critiqueof the Worksof Adler &
Sullivan, in AmericanArchitecture,
2, 384-385).
IllustrationCredits
Figures 1, 10, 13, 16, 17, 20. Courtesy of The Art Institute of Chicago
Figures 5, 14. Library of Congress
Figure 6. Museum of the City of New York
Figure 7. Deutsches Theatermuseum, Munich
Figures 8, 9, 18, 22. Courtesy of the Chicago Historical Society
Figure 23. Courtesy of Alinari-Scala/Art Resources International, New York
City


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Chicago's Auditorium Building: Opera or Anarchism

Author(s): Joseph M. Siry

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128 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

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HALF OF 22N STR-y

form of the auditorium. When viewed from the stage, the

130 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

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both directions, crowned by an attic, as shown in Figure 4. As

lion, exclusive of the land. No opera house of its size, or

becomes diluted, its quality changes, and as the singer forces

Cady's view, the interiors of such a building were so complex

The style chosen for the Metropolitan's exterior conveyed

style, especially adapted to the economy he must exercise."15

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originalstage and proscenium,showing frieze with

central mural of Apollo flanked by individual

nard to either side of the frieze above topmost

a portico of three bays as the main frontal entrance on

tone as to border on the disreputable as a form of public

were not expected to be profitable. Additional income was also

Designed by Francis H. Kimball and Thomas Wisedell, the

popular, with audiences acclaiming leading musical artists

acceptability, its sober fronts were meant to contrast with those

the productions within. The loggia signaled the presence of a

132 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

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CHICAGO'S GRAND OPERA FESTIVAL AND ANARCHIST

The old Met's completion quickly stirred Chicagoans to act.

and gradually acquired a series of centrally located properties

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predated Chicago's Auditorium. In France the revolution of

the Opiera National, whose repertoire, staging, seating, and

outspoken in his defense of the rights of workingmen, and he

South Kensington, London. This hall had a vast metal dome

134 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

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level, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus's deemphasis of boxes in

the opera houses of Vienna and Frankfurt.35

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indoor events, workers rented local auditoriums, especially

Capitalists like Peck and anarchists like Parsons both sought

The only building in Chicago able to provide seating for an

FIGURE8: William Boyington, Chicago Board of Trade Building,1882-1885, with

left background, opposite Burnham and Root's Insurance

provide a spiritually uplifting experience for audiences.46

136 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

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the auditorium (Figure 9). Fan-shaped seating focused on the

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fore, he and others had led Sunday-afternoon labor meetings

course, great musical occasions in the nature of festivals,

funds would not be available. There was sufficient local private

demonstrations followed in an effort to force employers to

auditorium."60 The Auditorium Theater would be encased by

ket, an urban square on Chicago's near West Side, took place

his proposal for the program,

ence, and comprehensive charities, and the establishment of

138 JSAH / 57:2, JUNE 1998

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the best part of the house. Those occupying boxes in America