“Review of *Louis Sullivan: An Architect in American Thought*, by Sherman Paul”

AboutJ. Carson Webster reviews Sherman Paul's *Louis Sullivan: An Architect in American Thought* (Prentice-Hall, 1962), describing it as an intellectual-history study, comparable to Charles R. Metzger's work on Emerson and Greenough, that situates Sullivan's ideas in relation to Walt Whitman (the primary and lasting influence), Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Dewey, A. F. Chamberlain, G. Stanley Hall, William James, Thorstein Veblen, and Chicago figures Oscar L. Triggs and Henry D. Lloyd, drawing chiefly on Sullivan's *Autobiography of an Idea*. Webster finds Paul's summary of Sullivan's ideas accurate and convincing, particularly the parallel Paul draws between Sullivan's linked concepts of "natural thinking," education, and democracy and Dewey's own program relating scientific method, education, and democracy. Webster's main criticism is that Paul, while an excellent surveyor of Sullivan's thought, offers little critical assessment of Sullivan's actual architectural achievement, leaving the reader to assume a connection between the ideas and the buildings without demonstrating it — Webster himself suggests the ornament in some of Sullivan's banks and the Carson Pirie Scott Store looks "hung on" rather than integrated with structure.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0004-3249%28196421%2923%3A3%3C262%3ALSAAIA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-3