Wainwright Building
The building where the skyscraper found its look: tall, vertical, and proud to be so.
At a glance
The Wainwright Building in St. Louis, completed in 1891, is among the first true skyscrapers, designed by Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan. Ten storeys of steel frame are organised by strong vertical piers and crowned by a deep ornamented frieze and cornice. Sullivan used it to argue that a tall building should celebrate its height, not hide it.
Key facts
- Location: 709 Chestnut Street, St. Louis, Missouri
- Architects: Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan
- Completed: 1891
- Structure: early steel skyscraper with terracotta ornament
- Style: Sullivanesque
History
The brewer Ellis Wainwright commissioned an office tower, and Adler and Sullivan answered with a design that made the new steel frame legible. Sullivan set out the thinking in a famous essay on the tall office building.
He gave the base shops, the middle a grid of offices behind unbroken piers, and the top a rich band of ornament under a jutting cornice, a beginning, a body and an end. It set a pattern for the American skyscraper.
What you see
The tower reads in three clear parts, with the eye carried upward by piers that run without a break to the ornamented top. The red brick and terracotta are worked, near the cornice, into Sullivan’s leafy patterns. Plain where it counts, rich where it crowns: the skyscraper given a face.
Practical information
- Open: a state office building; exterior viewable any time
- Cost: free to view from the street
- Best for: the vertical piers and the ornamented cornice
- Time needed: 15–20 minutes
Getting there
The building is in downtown St. Louis near the courthouse, a short walk from the Gateway Arch and the MetroLink at 8th & Pine.
Nearby
- Gateway Arch — Saarinen’s great arch by the river
- Old Courthouse — the historic courthouse nearby
Sources
- Encyclopædia Britannica / Wikipedia — Wainwright Building
- National Park Service — National Historic Landmark record
- Wikimedia Commons — image source and licence
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