“Review of *The Testament of Stone: Themes of Idealism and Indignation from the Writings of Louis Sullivan*, edited by Maurice English”

AboutA review of Maurice English's edited anthology of Sullivan's writings, several drawn from obscure journals or previously unpublished. Gebhard praises English's introductory essay as unusually objective among Sullivan literature, quoting English's own candid assessment that Sullivan's prose ranged from "sentimentally poetic" to badly overwrought, with his best writing concentrated in the 1890s and his later, more ambitious works (*Democracy: A Man-Search*, *Kindergarten Chats*) tending toward "crude, confused, and highfalutin" language. The review situates Sullivan's cultural status as less about documentary reassessment of his buildings and more about his function as a symbolic rallying point for early-20th-century American architectural progressives, positioned against academic contemporaries like Daniel Burnham and the firm of McKim, Mead & White. Gebhard mildly dissents from English's premise that Sullivan's nonarchitectural writing has independent literary importance, arguing his ideas were expressed better by Whitman, William James, and Nietzsche.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-9808%28196412%2923%3A4%3C215%3ATTOSTO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5