The Wainwright Building in St. Louis, MO was the “very first human expression of a tall steel office building...” The eleven-story high rise was designed by Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler. Sullivan believed that a building should reveal a “single, germinal impulse or idea, which shall permeate the mass and its every detail,” so that, “there shall effuse from the completed structure a single sentiment.” He is also responsible for dividing the building up into three main parts (called tripartite), similar to how a column is comprised.
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- ARCHITECTURAL ATTIC (private) stores mechanical equipment suggests a richly decorated way of terminating the facade
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- SHAFT (private) repetitious, identically articulated, similar to program of interior (office work)
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- BASE (public) one or two stories easily identifiable entrance flanked by broad display windows
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The Wainwright Building By Louis Sullivan 1891