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MANILA, Philippines - Who is the 20th century American architect who is known as the “Father of Skyscrapers and Modernism?”
He was born to an Irish father and a Swiss-born mother on Sept. 3, 1856. After graduating from high school, he studied architecture briefly at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After one year of study, he moved to Philadelphia and took a job with architect Frank Furness.
After the Depression of 1873 dried up most of the work of Furness, he moved to Chicago in the same year to take part in the building boom following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
He worked for William LeBaron Jenney, the architect often credited with erecting the first steel frame building. He then moved to Paris, studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts for a year, and worked in Joseph S. Johnston & John Edelman as a draftsman until 1879 when he was hired by Dankmar Adler.
A year later, he became a partner in the firm, and this was the start of his most productive years. Together, he and Adler designed nearly 200 residential, commercial, religious, mixed use buildings primarily in the Midwest.
They were highly-regarded not only for their robustly modern and iconoclastic architecture, but for his complex and organic ornament.
Their best-known buildings include the Auditorium Building in Chicago, the Wainwright Building in St. Louis Missouri, the Schiller Building and the Stock Exchange in Chicago, the Guaranty Building in Buffalo, New York, and eight small Jewel Box banks that are among the most treasured pieces of historic architecture in the US.
It was also during this time that he became a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, who worked in the firm from 1888 to 1893 as well as an inspiration to the Chicago Group of Architects who have become known as the Prairie School
He was committed to establishing an authentic, American style of architecture, free of historic limitations like the Beaux Arts style that fellow Chicagoan Daniel Burnham helped make wildly popular as a result of the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893.
Toward the end of his life, he was commissioned by the Burnham Library of the Art Institute of Chicago to produce a large portfolio of his intricate and delicate drawings, which was published as A System of Architectural Ornament, According with a Philosophy of Man’s Powers in 1924. He died in Chicago on April 14, 1924.
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Last week’s question: Who is the American chef whose daily changing menus at her Michelin Star restaurant Frances reflects modern California sensibilities and focuses on ingredients from local farms and producers in a casual, neighborhood setting?
Answer: Melissa Perello
Winner: Mark Dennis Figueroa of Binangonan, Rizal
