Friday, December 29, 2006

Louis Sullivan from Glass to Gingerbread.

With three of his Chicago buildings destroyed by fire, the 150th birthday year of architect Louis Sullivan has not not been an altogether happy own, but December has a been a bit kinder.

Our correspondant Justin Luety had a Christmas eve post on his Urbs in Horto blog with several photos of the windows just installed in the richly ornamented and recently renovated Louis Sullivan designed facade for the former Krause Music Store on north Lincoln, the architect's last commission. While not actual replicas of the originals, they fill out the facade, an official Chicago landmark, handsomely.

Not so lucky was K.A.M./Pilgrim Baptist Church in Bronzeville, another Adler & Sullivan masterwork that burned to the bare walls just one year ago. The indefatigable Joan Pomaranc tips us off to a unique, seasonal tribute to the lost building by Sullivan enthusiast Shannon Saar, who devoted 30 hours to creating a gingerbread version of Pilgrim Baptist. Read about it on the Chicagoist blog, and view a photoset of the project being made at Flickr.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The plain double-hungs he links to were not original, either. I think this could well have been the original design, since this is the same window design used by the museum of decorative arts.