“Roosevelt University: In the Chicago Auditorium Building”

AboutIllustrated account of Roosevelt University's occupancy, since 1947, of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan's Auditorium Building (completed 1890), covering the university's conversion of hotel and office spaces into classrooms and its restoration program under consulting architect Crombie Taylor. Details the restoration of the former Banquet Hall (renamed the Rudolph Ganz Recital Hall) and the former Ladies' Parlor (renamed the Louis Sullivan Room, dedicated 1959 with funding from Morris Hirsch), including recovery of stenciled ornament hidden under paint, Frank Lloyd Wright's on-site recollection of his and Sullivan's respective roles in designing the Banquet Hall's capitals, and the unrestored Auditorium Theater, for which the article recounts the 1959–60 fundraising campaign led by the Auditorium Theater Council under Mrs. John V. Spachner amid a wider Chicago debate (prompted by the Civic Opera House's threatened conversion to a movie theater) over the city's need for large-theater space.

PURL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1543-6322%28196022%2919%3A4%3C363%3ARUITCA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-W