(mellow music)
- [Presenter] We're at the intersection
of Bleecker and Crosby in Manhattan,
looking at one of Louis Sullivan's early skyscrapers,
the Bayer Building,
sometimes known as the Bayard-Condit Building.
It's a little surprising to think
about a 12-story building as a skyscraper
but at the end of the 19th century it was.
- [Man] A 12-story building might be small today
but in the 1890's, the issue of how to decorate the facade
of a building of this size was a great challenge.
- [Presenter] So before the passenger elevator,
buildings were limited to about six stories.
- [Man] As high as you could walk comfortably.
- [Presenter] But there was an imperative
to begin to build higher as real estate prices began
to increase especially in places like lower Manhattan.
And it's no surprise that early tall buildings
tend to be commercial structures.
- [Man] In fact, I think the definition of a skyscraper
for most of its first century
is that of a commercial building, typically offices
but also light industry.
- [Presenter] When we think about the early history
of the skyscraper, this is an interesting competition
between New York and Chicago.
And it's important that Louis Sullivan,
the architect responsible for this building
was from Chicago.
- [Man] Historians who were based in Chicago,
thought it was born there but in recent years,
people have begun to position New York as the place
that the skyscraper was born.
- [Presenter] So Sullivan is this Chicago-based artist
and this is his first independent building
and his only building in New York City.
- [Man] This is the first building that he designed
after parting with Dankmar Adler.
- [Presenter] And it's usually considered part
of a group of three buildings.
The other two being the Guaranty Building in Buffalo
and the Wainwright in St. Louis.
- [Man] There are textbook illustrations of his design
of what a skyscraper should be.
And the much quoted phrase is that a skyscraper
should be a proud and soaring thing.
- [Presenter] So the idea is that a skyscraper
is not something that grows out of economic necessity
but it is something that can be designed thoughtfully
and Sullivan is probably the great exponents
of thinking through the possibilities
of the early skyscraper.
- [Man] And he's particularly interested in visual coherence
that you shouldn't just add floors and at the top
and the bottom and the middle
should all fuse together into one beautiful facade.
- [Presenter] Look at this building, it's gorgeous.
This facade is terracotta.
- [Man] Terracotta baked clay.
- [Presenter] And so what Sullivan did is he
had molds carved
and then poured liquid terracotta into them.
Although it looks hand carved, it is actually mass produced.
It's an incredibly durable material.
- [Presenter] Often when we think about terracotta,
we think of a glazed surface,
we think of something that might be brightly colored.
- [Man] Or we might think of reddish brown clay.
- [Presenter] But here, this building
is a kind of ivory color,
it's creamy white.
- [Man] But the key issue about the ornament
on this building, it is not derived from the past,
it is not ornament that is classical or medieval,
it is Louis Sullivan's ornament.
We often think about ornament and modernism as oppositional.
And in fact, so much of the ethos
of early 20th century modernism
was to strip away the non-essential.
But here we see a kind of indulging
in what is possible with ornament.
But for all of the beauty of the decorative surfaces.
In so many different places,
we see it in these wonderful bulbous capital.
It's in the panels just above those capitals
and the reliefs around the windows
and the double-wide spandrel panels below the windows.
It keeps changing as you move up the facade
until you get to the cornice where you see this explosion
of the decorative and these monumental-angelic figures
with wings outstretched that seem almost
to be supporting the cornice itself,
almost like ancient Greek caryatids.
- [Man] It is a motif that I don't believe appears
on any other work by Sullivan.
- [Presenter] They're so elegant.
- [Man] But some people feel
that they're inappropriate to the building.
- [Presenter] And that's because
they are the only figure to form.
- [Presenter] Absolutely, he moved away
from figurative forms as a form of decoration
and here they are.
And because of that, some people have suggested
that it was the client who insisted
that they be the grand termination of the facade,
we'll never really know.
- [Presenter] There is this way that Sullivan
is bringing our eye slowly but forcefully upward,
emphasizing the vertical with those delicate colonettes
and then the wider appears between the window-based.
All of it is emphasizing the horizontal
but there's so much to look at as we move upward,
that my eye is slowed as I enjoy what's being offered.
- [Man] Your eye is meant to rise
and these vertical piers that alternate
with the colonette only have one destination.
And that is those angelic figures at the top
or the cornice that stops your eye
so that you are forced to look down
and examine the incredible concentration
of ornament that surrounds the angelic figure.
- [Presenter] So unlike earlier, skyscrapers that were
in some ways trying to hide their height.
This is a building that seems to be comfortable
with its height that seems to be celebrating its height.
But all of the decoration that we've been talking about
is to please the eye.
None of it is structural,
none of it is doing any of the work
of holding up the building.
- [Man] It's a curtain wall.
The steel frame is inside, it's not meant to be seen.
And the curtain wall is simply to give us pleasure.
- [Presenter] Now, the curtain wall
was relatively recent invention
and this called for a steel or iron frame
upon which the building would be set.
- [Man] Traditionally, a structure was held up
by its walls in a curtain wall building a structure
is held up by its metal frame that is not visible
from the street.
But we can see where that frame is
if we peer into the lower story of the building
and we look at some of the large columns within.
- [Man] That's right, it's like a parade of columns,
marching deep into the building.
- [Presenter] And we can imagine within those columns,
steel that rise up the full height of the building.
- [Man] And those gutters are echoed on the facade
by the thick peers that mark the five base.
- [Presenter] Sullivan would have an enormous impact
on early 20th century modern architecture
especially on the work of Frank Lloyd Wright for example.
- [Man] It's interesting how despite all of the ornament,
there's a certain simplicity and clarity to the facade.
Many people consider Louis Sullivan to be the father
of the skyscraper and the techniques that are critical
to its development were developed by others
but he gave it great thought
and he was one of the few architects
during this period to write about
how he felt it should go forward.
(mellow music)