Wainwright Building, (St Louis, Missouri); 1891; Classical School

The Wainwright Building (also known as the Wainwright State Office Building) is a building that was designed by architectural firm Adler and Sullivan. It is a ten story office building, made of red bricks and is located in downtown St. Louis, Missouri. The name of the building was named after Ellis Wainwright, who was a local brewer, building contractor, and financier. Wainwright needed an office space for his brewer company called St. Louis Brewers Association. The Wainwright Building is currently owned by the state of Missouri. It is also considered to be one of the first early skyscrapers in the world. The style of architecture of the Wainwright Building is Classical School.

In 2013, it was named as one of the ten buildings that changed the worlds because it was “the first skyscraper that truly looked the part” and Louis Sullivan was named the “father of skyscrapers”. (“Mapping PBS’s 10 Buildings That Changed America”) Although skyscrapers had already been built in New York and Chicago at the time, Louis Sullivan’s design for the Wainwright Building was the first that embraced how tall it was. Other skyscrapers seemed as if it was just one floor after another, stacked on top of each other. Frank Lloyd Wright, another famous architect, called the building “the very first human expression of a tall steel office-building as Architecture”.

In the Wainwright Building, Louis Sullivan made sure that the design had a simple yet elegant design. It had “a strong base, a soaring vertical shaft, and a decorative (and functional) capital”. (“Wainwright Building”) Sullivan wanted the building to not only be just tall, but “the force and power of altitude must be in it”. (“AD Classics: Wainwright Building / Adler & Sullivan”) The first floor of the building was for street level shops while the second floor of the building was for public offices. The higher floors of the building were also for office spaces and the uppermost floor contained the water tanks and machinery. Storefronts had large openings which looked elegant and delicate. Because Sullivan had a vertical aesthetic, he included windows that were slightly inserted behind the columns. There are also carvings of terra-cotta, which was a type of material that was becoming popular during their time.

The architectural firm behind the Wainwright Building was called Adler & Sullivan. The two architects that were part of this firm were Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan. Dankmar Adler was a German born American architect and civil engineer who lived from 1844 to 1900. After working as an architect in Chicago alongside Augustus Bauer and Ozias S. Kinney and working in partnership with Edward Burling, Adler decided to start his own firm. Louis Henry Sullivan was an architect who was dubbed the “father of skyscrapers” and the “father of modernism”. He was also a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright. Together, Adler and Sullivan worked to design many influential skyscrapers such as the Guaranty Building in Buffalo, New York, and the Chicago Stock Exchange Building. The Wainwright Building was the second largest commission for a tall building that Adler & Sullivan had won.

Works Cited

Bear, Rob. “Mapping PBS's 10 Buildings That Changed America.” Curbed, 10 May 2013, www.curbed.com/maps/mapping-pbss-10-buildings-that-changed-america.

“Wainwright Building.” WTTW Chicago Public Media - Television and Interactive, 29 Mar. 2018, interactive.wttw.com/tenbuildings/wainwright-building.  

“AD Classics: Wainwright Building / Adler & Sullivan.” ArchDaily, 13 Apr. 2011, www.archdaily.com/127393/ad-classics-wainwright-building-louis-sullivan.