“Review of *Sullivanesque: Urban Architecture and Ornamentation*, by Ronald E. Schmitt”

AboutDavid Van Zanten reviews Ronald E. Schmitt's *Sullivanesque: Urban Architecture and Ornamentation* (University of Illinois Press, 2002), which documents a vernacular genre of terra-cotta-clad Midwestern shopping-street facades of the 1910s–20s derived from, and mass-produced in imitation of, Louis Sullivan's ornamental designs. Van Zanten credits Schmitt with identifying the fabricators, developers, and local designers behind this widespread building type, and with a detailed history of the Midland Terra Cotta Company, while praising the book's potential to spur preservation of threatened Midwestern shopping streets. However, he argues Schmitt's definition of "the Sullivanesque" — buildings whose ornament simply resembles Sullivan's — is too narrow and treats Sullivan's ornamental system as a fixed style rather than the generative geometric practice Sullivan himself described in his lectures, *Kindergarten Chats*, and *A System of Architectural Ornament*. Van Zanten contends a fuller account would need to address Sullivan's early collaborators John Edelmann and Louis J. Millet, his rivalry with John Wellborn Root, and admirers such as Frank Lloyd Wright, situating vernacular ornament within the same geometric practice underlying the Chicago School and Prairie School alike. He concludes the book does important documentary work but shortchanges both its stated goals — analyzing Sullivan's technique and chronicling the terra-cotta streetscape — by focusing narrowly on individual facades rather than the urban fabric they compose.

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