Organic buildings go beyond satisfying the practical needs of people; they serve their emotional needs as well. The Auditorium Theater's massive exterior and incredible interior add great character and impressive amounts of detail to the city of Chicago. The innovation of a dual-purpose building, incredible interior design, Richardsonian Romanesque styling of the exterior, along with great emotional effect combine to form a truly historic and relevant piece amongst Chicago's great library of architecture, the Auditorium Theatre.
With the growing trend of great halls in great cities around the world, Chicago needed to get its own if it wished to remain a dominant city in the US. In 1885, Adler and Sullivan teamed up to build the theaters for Chicago's Grand Opera Festival. Ferdinand Peck, organizer of the festival, first worked with Sullivan and Adler at this time. After the festival ended, he concluded that Chicago needed its own main large theater. Having much owned real estate in the city, Ferdinand Peck knew that what was good for Chicago, was good for his pockets.
One large problem that Peck came upon when trying to organize the initial design and idea behind Auditorium Theatre was money. Peck knew that theaters never did well supporting themselves financially and he was worried that his great gift to the city would not be around for too long. To solve this problem, the idea of a multi-purpose building was created. To have not only an incredible theater, but also a section of offices, and a hotel all in the same building was a brilliant solution. This way, the hotel and office sections would be able to support and make up for the theater's lack of profit. The Auditorium Theatre became one of the first buildings to innovate this multi-purpose design that is so common in today's world.
Ferdinand Peck knew that he wanted Adler and Sullivan to be the designers of Auditorium Theatre. Adler's amazing ability in the design of acoustics and engineering combined with Sullivan's eye for intricate and organic design would be the perfect combination for Peck's vision. Chicago would not only have a great theater that supports itself, it would also have an incredible landmark that can't help to affect everyone around it, let alone those lucky enough to gain tickets to an event.
From the exterior, the Auditorium Theatre has a massive feel unlike any other building at its time. The overall shape of the building's original designs does not differ from what we view currently. However, the façade is another story. Sullivan originally included many ornamental features such as ornate decorations, pinnacles, dormers, turrets, and a brick pyramid to top off the tower. Frank Lloyd Wright referred to them as efflorescent terra cotta, a process of unfolding upward towards a pinnacle or culmination. When H.H. Richardson built the Marshall Field Warehouse in Chicago in 1885, Sullivan was inspired by its simple modern façade. He presumed to strip down all the ornamental features, combine the 8th and 9th floor windows to appear as an arcade, similar to the windows of the 4th, 5th, 6th, and 7th floors together. Instead of the rough red granite and brownstone of the Marshall Field Warehouse, Adler and Sullivan chose the first two stories to be rough-hewn grey granite, the next story to be a rough limestone, and the main block (and tower) of the building to be smooth limestone. This Richardsonian Romanesque style continued throughout the exterior to become a defining characteristic of the Auditorium Theater. Without the fancy decorations in the original building's exterior design, it is impossible to estimate how grand the interior really is.
When walking through the building, one can't help but be astonished by the intricacy and incredible attention to detail. Combining repetition, pattern, line, volume, mass, and movement, Sullivan was able to give the interior of the building a lavishly intricate feel. Upon entering the building, guests ascend a Grand Staircase and entered the reception room with a panoramic opening view of Michigan Avenue, Grant Park, and Lake Michigan. This lobby was decorated with green and gold accenting scagliola, intricate columns, complex patterned carpeting, and red-wine colored drapes. The main focus of the room was the grand view of Michigan Avenue and the lakefront. Originally, the lakeside view was an open loggia balcony. However, windows were put in shortly after opening to prevent soot from coal burning trains from coming into the room. Sullivan included so much detail to the interior décor that it seemed impossible for guests to notice every aspect in a single visit. This way, even regulars to the theater were not desensitized to its interior brilliance.
On the way to the theater itself, the hallways narrowed. The actual entrances to the theater, the vomitoria, were much smaller than an average hallway. The guests were then introduced to the incredible size of the theater. This compression and expansion caused an illusion that made the theater seem even grander than it is.
Increasingly large arches surrounded the stage. This, combined with the expanding wall shape, gives the guest a feel of exploding sound and emotion out from the stage up into and over the audience. The theater's interior also lent itself to incredible acoustic quality. The materials chosen for the interior theater were specifically manufactured for acoustic perfection. Designed for everyone to have a clear view of the stage and solid sound volume without voice amplifiers, the Auditorium Theater has been proclaimed by Frank Lloyd Wright as ““The greatest room for music and opera in the world - bar none.”
Not unlike its surrounding interior rooms, the theater itself was decorated head to toe in incredible detail and quality. The decor is expressed in many different sizes and forms. From murals to organic stencils, iron detail on the seats to the names of composers formed along the sides of the stage, guests in the theater were surrounded with unprecedented aesthetic excellence. The organic qualities of these decorations added to the comfort of the seating, and to the quality of the performance.
An amazing theater only holds amazing performances. This connection between aesthetic quality of the theater and the assumed quality of events, concerts, and shows cannot help but be made by ticket holders. When a guest plans to attend an event at Auditorium Theater, they expect the performance to have the same grand appreciation for detail, structure, integrity, and mass as the building it his held in. The combination or organic detail and massive modern structuring of the Auditorium Theater give off an emotional confidence and resilience for nothing below exceptional. It is these underlying tones in the building that make a performance held at Auditorium Theater beyond what it could be at another location.
Becoming more than just a theater, the Auditorium Theater encompasses everything it means to be organic. Adler and Sullivan teamed up to design one of the most breath taking theaters in the world, let alone this country. The Auditorium Theater combines the innovation of a dual-purpose building, incredible interior décor, the Richardsonian Romanesque style of the exterior, and with amazing emotional effect to create a building and theater that guests will never forget.
