The first time I was in Buffalo, decades ago, I made a point of going to look at the Prudential Building. It’s a legitimate masterpiece – not that you can tell by my picture above – and it’s worth a trip. Here’s a far better overall picture from the HABS survey:
Note that in the forty years since the HABS survey, the storefronts have been restored to their original condition. The entire lobby has been restored and the facade looks great. It’s nice to see a building like this being taken care of properly.
Prudential was completed in 1895 by Adler and Sullivan, with Louis Sullivan as the driving force behind it, but the really obvious fact when you look at it in context is that it was Sullivan getting a do-over. Here’s his (and his firm’s) 1891 Wainwright Building in St. Louis:
There are so many similarities that it takes a moment to see the real differences. Some are subtle – Prudential’s second floor windows are a full bay wide rather than two per bay, Wainwright has an angular cornice while Prudential’s is curved – but there’s one big one and that’s height. Wainwright is nearly a cube in massing, while Prudential is a tall rectangular prism. Given Sullivan’s rhetoric about height – a tall office building “must be every inch a proud and soaring thing” – it’s not surprising that the facade of Wainwright emphasizes height. It’s a testament to Sullivan’s skill that he could make such a stocky building seem to soar. Prudential, where the client wanted more floor area, works better.
One last comment: from a distance, you see blocky office buildings with nicely planned facades, but up close you see the incredibly intricate designs that Sullivan loved and that terra cotta made possible for him. The door jamb at the main entrance to Wainwright:
The main entrance to Prudential, before the restoration:
There are some buildings that I just stare at when I’m near them. Every Sullivan building I’ve seen in person has had that effect on me.
You must be logged in to post a comment.