Looking Up: The Art Institute.

The ancient Greeks called architecture the “mother of all arts”. Architecture is the way we tell our stories, the way we rebel against the status quo, the way we bring beauty to the earth in the most visible way possible. But in “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”, Victor Hugo wrote that “the book will destroy the building” insinuating that we will tell our stories on paper, instead of stone.

I don’t believe it.

So with this column I will attempt to reveal to you the history and the story behind the buildings that you see around you every day.

The first building on our mother-of-arts tour holds art itself, the aptly named Art Institute.



The Art Institute was designed by Sheply, Rutan and Coolidge and finished in 1893, the same year as the Columbian Exposition, the first of two World’s Fairs held in Chicago. The building is done in the “Beaux Arts” style, as most buildings of that time were. If you were an architect in the 1890’s, you had one school to go to, the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, and they would teach you to design a building exactly like the Art Institute: three arched doorways, Corinthian columns, the names of artists that run across the top of the building under the cornice line, a grand entryway and the use of animals are all features of a Beaux Arts building.

Take a close look at the lions. They’re different! The northern one is called “On The Prowl” and the southern one is called “In The Attitude Of Defiance”. They were designed by Edward Kemeys for the Worlds Fair and moved from Jackson Park to their current locations.

The real story of the Institute is what it represents. Daniel Burnham, designer of the Worlds Fair, decided to go with a classic Beaux Arts design in the Court of Honor for the Exposition. Some, like Chicago’s own Louis Sullivan, were horrified by his decision, believing that Burnham was taking the safe route. At the time, Chicago architects were building a new kind of building that didn’t rely on the outdated architecture of the Greeks and the Romans, and Sullivan believed that the Worlds Fair would set architecture back 50 years.

Burnham and Sullivan, oil and vinegar.

Here’s the best quote ever, Charles Hutchinson, the president of the Art Institute in 1893 said “We have made our money in pigs, but is that any reason why we should not spend it on paintings?”

Right on Mr. Hutchinson, right on.