FREE ESSAY ON MARSHALL FIELD WHOLE SALE STORE

MARSHALL FIELD WHOLE SALE STORE

The Chicago School marks the beginning of a new development in architecture. Based on the
earlier Victorian models, from about 1885 great commercial structures are built with new
designs and new construction techniques. During these later years Richardson produced the
buildings upon which his reputation principally rests. He designed houses, community
libraries, suburban railroad stations, educational buildings, and commercial and civic
structures. Instead of the splintered massing, narrow vertical proportions, and disparate
Gothic features used by his contemporaries, he favoured horizontal lines, simple
silhouettes, and uniform, large-scale details of Romanesque or Byzantine inspiration .
Since his best commercial structure, the Marshall Field Wholesale Store in Chicago
(1885-87), were demolished long ago (1930).
Constructed between 1885 and 1887, seven storeys high, covering an entire city block, the
Marshall Field Wholesale Store, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, is just that. The
store was not the tallest masonry structure in Chicago. Moreover, the design featured
many soon-to-be anachronistic elements common to the design philosophy taught at Ecole
des Beaux Arts in Paris , the premier architectural school of the day. Indeed, Richardson
had trained in Paris. 
The building's importance was not Richardson's adherence to convention; rather it was his
departure from convention. Grandeur, strength, and distinction, he demonstrated, could be
achieved without ornamentation. The versatility of concrete, steel and glass had not yet
developed. Richardson's work did, however, maximize the utility of masonry while
demonstrating the reduction of design to function rather than have it merely anchor an
elaboration of form. This approach was a precursor to the techniques, which would find
fullest expression with the new building materials. 
Moreover, Richardson demonstrated that a structure worked best if it reflected the
environment in which it was situated. The Chicago of the day was raw, vigorous, and
forceful; the Chicago of the poet Carl Sandberg was symbolically manifest in Richardson's
design of the Marshall Field store .
Richardson's work was a powerful influence. This is notably so in the work of Stanford
White and C.F. McKim, two of the designers responsible for the Great Hall of Penn
Station, one of the last hurrahs of the old Beaux Arts style. Also certainly influenced
by Richardson was Louis H. Sullivan, a giant of American architecture and a key link in
the chain, which brought architecture forward to set the stage for the work of Frank
Lloyd Wright. Richardson's thematic elimination of ornament in the Marshall Field store
design inspired Sullivan to expand the principle in his design of the Auditorium Building
in Chicago in 1888, one of the last grand masonry buildings in America . Still in use
today, the structure provides a large auditorium, offices and a hotel. It features a
two-storey plinth in front with an office tower in back. 
Great-grandson of Joseph Priestley, who discovered oxygen, Richardson was born at
Priestley Plantation , Louisiana in 1838; his distinguished background continued from
birth through Harvard University and study abroad. Plagued by nephritis throughout his
career, however, he died in 1886 at the untimely age of forty-eight; yet by this time,
his contributions had already secured him an important place among America's foremost
architectural designers. The Marshall Field Wholesale Store is a major landmark in this
movement. Here a rhythmic pattern of masonry arches envelops a powerful steel skeleton.
The overall design is sombre and dignified.