“Review of *Louis Sullivan and the Polemics of Modern Architecture: The Present against the Past*, by David S. Andrew; *Louis Sullivan: His Life and Work*, by Robert Twombly; *Louis Sullivan: The Function of Ornament*, edited by Wim de Wit; and *The Curve of the Arch: The Story of Louis Sullivan's Owatonna Bank*, by Larry Millett”

AboutPaul E. Sprague reviews four books marking the mid-1980s Sullivan revival. He is sharply critical of David S. Andrew's socially deterministic "debunking" thesis and of factual errors in his account of the Wainwright Building's client and the prairie banks; he is also critical of Robert Twombly's claim (following Narciso Menocal) that Sullivan's office role was limited to ornament and facades while Dankmar Adler designed the buildings, and of Twombly's speculative reading of Sullivan's sexuality. Sprague praises the essays in Wim de Wit's exhibition catalogue (by David Van Zanten, William Jordy, de Wit, and Rochelle Berger Elstein) and singles out Larry Millett's Owatonna bank study — based on the Purcell and Elmslie correspondence at the Northwest Architectural Archives — as the most engaging and best written of the four.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0037-9808%28198712%2946%3A4%3C423%3ALSATPO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8