Eloquence

Content Objectives

History

We begin with the history of Chicago's Auditorium Building. Why was this structure's conception so vital? At the time, Chicago was in desperate need of a cultural and political common ground that welcomed the elite and working classes. The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 had just obliterated over a thousand buildings, killing at least three hundred people, and costing the city millions upon millions of dollars in damages.a1a In the late 19th century, Chicago was at the height of unrest between the classes. Joseph Siry, leading American architectural historian and professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Wesleyan University, wrote an article titled Chicago's Auditorium Building—Opera or Anarchism.a2a Siry argues that the social political environment of 19th century Chicago gave birth to this space; note the many variations on the same name—Chicago Auditorium Building-Auditorium Hotel-the Auditorium Theater-Roosevelt University-the Auditorium Theater at Roosevelt University.

Chicago was suffering from social/political unrest. The political climate between the elite and the working classes was volatile. This came to a head on May 4th, 1886 during the Haymarket Massacre-Riot-Event—"From newspaper comments on secret meetings of Anarchist groups, and the utterances of their organ, the Arbeiter Zeitung, edited by

August Spies, and the Alarm, edited by Albert Parsons, it became known to the police that the Anarchists would probably attempt to seize upon the opportunity of expected labor disturbances on the 1st of May, 1886 to precipitate an outbreak against capital, and the law and order of the city."a3a Ferdinand Peck, member of the elite class but also a philanthropist and politically left, used Haymarket to make his case for the need for a public space that catered to ALL. Peck hired the reputable architecture firm Adler & Sullivan to prove the importance of his purpose in design as well as programming. Dankmar Adler was known as a great structural engineer and acoustic genius who married into a politically driven reform Jewish family. Sullivan's designs generally involved a simple geometric form decorated with organic ornamentation informed by local nature. He was considered one of the most influential architects in the Chicago School. His political and spiritual views were informed by transcendentalists such as John Trumbull and Ralph Waldo Emerson. A like-minded team was born.

The word/root polis- refers to a state or society, characterized by a sense of community. This is the root of a number of contemporary words including policy, politics, police, and metropolis. One might also translate this word as The Public. Edward R. Garczynski wrote a commemorative text of The Auditorium, Chicago in 1890. "Garczynski perception of the building's allusions to Rome aligned with Peck's choice of the name "Auditorium" rather than the term "Grand Opera House." In its ancient Latin usage, auditorium (as distinct from a ruler's private palace, or palatium) referred to the space of the audience in a theater as a public hall for cultural and political gatherings, just as Chicago's Auditorium would hold both opera and conventions."a4a

The building's history is a bold one. The doors opened on December 9th, 1889 with a huge gala, including a concert with opera star Adelina Patti singing "Home Sweet Home". (This year is the theater's 125th year anniversary and Patti Lupone who is Patti's great grand niece will sing the same song at a celebratory gala on the same date.) President Harrison was in attendance. In 1893, the year of the first World's Fair in Chicago—The Columbian Exposition-The White City, Imre Kiralfy's "Grand Historical Spectacle: America" opened at the Auditorium Building. According to Kiralfy, originally from Pest, an Austro-Hungarian Empire city, "The pageant is dealing with the history of four centuries of American civilization...tableaux would be a mere trifle."a5a In the monumental original poster for the show I viewed at Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, what struck me was the caption to the scene depicted in gorgeous bold color paints: "The Temple of Peace". Is it America that is "The Temple of Peace" or the Auditorium? Ferdinand Peck had been named the First Vice President of the World's Columbian Exposition, so this historical spectacle must have been a means of welcoming the world to the progressive minds of Chicago whom he hoped would share in his democratic ideals.

In 1900, Booker T. Washington spoke on the stage. In 1912, President Theodore Roosevelt gave his famous "Armageddon" speech at the building. By 1930, the doors couldn't be kept open any longer, but the building remained as it would have been more expensive for the city to tear it down and replace it. In 1942, the USO took over the space for soldiers during WWII. A bowling alley and hotdog stands took over the interior. And then the doors were closed and locked. But in 1967 with the assistance of another Chicago philanthropist Mrs. Beatrice Spachnera6a, architect Crombie Taylor's ornamental precisiona7a, and eighty eight year old architect and original draftsman of the building Frank Lloyd Wright, the building reopened with "Midsummer" and became a partnership with Roosevelt University.

Politics

In the introduction to the text Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural Language, & the Culture of Performance by Jay Fliegelman, he reminds us that "American culture is revolutionary."a8a The moment in time that the Chicago Auditorium Building was conceived was the moment of Chicago's rebirth, three dense years before the Columbian Exposition. The journey was not so easy.

For years, Chicago philanthropists tried to open a civic opera house in Chicago as a physical and political response to New York's Metropolitan Opera House, a space owned and operated by the elite class of New York city. Ferdinand Peck was on the board of the Auditorium Association. Peck incorporated the Chicago Auditorium Association in December 1886 to develop what he wanted to be the world's largest, grandest and most expensive theatre. Ferdinand Peck also dreamed of creating a venue that embodied the democratic ideals in which he believed. On the board were Marshall Field, Edson Keith, Martin Ryerson, George Pullman, and other Chicago business tycoons. The renowned firm of Adler and Sullivan were hired to design the project.a9a

The Haymarket Riot had created quite a stir in the ever-bubbling pot of unrest between classes. The Socialist Party and the labor class, which some argued were one and the same, had an adverse reaction to the trial. Members of the mob were being accused of planting a bomb that killed a few people and injured many. Local mainstream media referred to the event as a massacre. Four men were tried and hanged for initiating the bombing. Two of the men were August Spies and Albert Parsons, members of the Socialist Party and organizers of the popular underground publications Zeitung and Alarm. Rumors spread that the men were wrongly accused. Needless to say animosity grew exponentially and people with money in Chicago were terrified. Peck used the rhetoric of fear to promote his ideals for the Auditorium Building. His empathic rhetoric presented this basic inquiry: Why not have the auditorium be a common ground? This could be a place of dialogue as well as a place of rest for the laborers of the city who couldn't afford to seek out luxurious cultural experiences.

The physical act of building such a massive space and the conceptual act of purposefully planning a space that must be intricate and thoughtful enough to convince the public to unite was a monstrous endeavor. This needed an exorbitant amount of funding. The Chicago Auditorium Association did not want to ask the government to fund this project, due to the traditional system of the wealthy paying with perks for several box seats, the best seats in the house. Peck specifically asked for box seats to be taken out of the design; they weren't democratic. Peck's idea was to have private funders for the project and then include a hotel, banquet hall, and apartments to facilitate a self-sustaining auditorium that would remain separate from the city's budget.

The building would have multiple purposes: conventions of all kinds, political and otherwise, mass-meetings, reunions of army organizations, and, of course, great musical occasions in the nature of festivals, operatic and otherwise, as well as other large gatherings. Unfortunately, sound financial planning for the operations of the project was wanting. So, tragically, the rent was not enough to keep the building open beyond 1931.

Design

The Auditorium Building, Chicago is an arrangement of an experience in time just like a speech. The plan for the auditorium sprouted from the genius of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan, who were both deeply influenced by the combined structures and democratic ideals of ancient Greece and Rome as well as the detail and spirit of nature. Sullivan's design was a "unified program", echoing the unity that the building inspires in The Public. Adler's design explicitly recalled the amphitheater-like shape of the ancient Greek theaters. The building became Classical allusion. During performances, the Greek idea of rising tiers of seats gave the opportunity for everyone in the hall to see almost everybody else. This social effect anticipated descriptions of the Auditorium's opening, when the full house became a metaphor for civic unity.a10a

Adler's acoustical engineering for the interior of the auditorium was modeled after classical designs. He echoed dimensions from the Greeks so that no matter where you were sitting as an audience member your sight lines and hearing paths were equal to all. There shouldn't be a bad seat in the house. There could be nothing in the sound path that would block the flow which meant minimal soft surfaces. The means of moving into the auditorium's Romanesque interior with the main programs on the proscenium stage was by way of the vomitoria. This is a tunnel-like structure that makes use of the compression and expansion technique (contrary to the misconception of a Roman space for regurgitating to make room for more food): "When entering into the theatre's front orchestra level, every patron must go through the small, low and dark vomitoria. This allows for the largest contrast possible when then stepping into the very large, open and bright theatre house."a11a

The exterior of the theater offered a public monument for democratic ideals to take shape. The structure had the look and feel of a fortress—safe and sturdy. The stones used for the building were made of limestone from Indiana near Peck's family property. As people of Chicago waited to enter the space, they stood and spoke underneath the colonnades arches that welcomed organic and spontaneous conversation. These were planned moments by the creators of the space. The intentions of the building came shining through the design of the building. As Garczynski wrote, between such structures and the Auditorium, "the progress has been a mighty leap forward . . . making this building the commencement of a new era. Here all is simplicity, stateliness, strength. There is in its granite pile a quality that strongly reminds the traveled spectator of those grand engineering constructions which the Romans raised in every part of their vast empire."a12a This was a space designed for necessity in a democratic society.

The interior utilized Sullivan's study of nature and architecture to create its ornate beauty. The theater was illuminated by Edison bulbs and the bulbs seemed to burst out of a supple sunflower, native to the midwestern prairies. The patterned designs used to decorate walls, floors, and ceilings were inspired by the seed of a milkweed plant, native to Chicago. The murals that towered above the audience members to the north and south were modeled after dells in Wisconsin by Madison and the woods just north of the city in Highland Park. The arch-shaped mural that framed the proscenium used real human beings as models for the elusive figures. In this spirit, all forty-five figures were painted by a young American artist, Charles Holloway. Louis Sullivan decided to write the poem himself that was to be engraved on the walls of the theater.a13a

Sullivan had attended school for design in Paris, France and came back to the states with a new mantra: "form ever follows function (the golden words of the Chicago School of Architecture)". What does this truly mean for the public who utilizes and inhabits these planned spaces? And can you anticipate function? How do you insist that a building ebbs and flows with time? If a building is a living monument, what does its function become and become and become again?a14a We must acknowledge that Ferdinand Peck, along with the Association felt the need to keep the space's purpose flexible. As referenced before, the auditorium was used for lectures, dialogue about current issues, choral functions, etc. Adler said that the space was used to its fullest potential when a chorus populated the stage representing voices of Chicago at the same time as having a full house in the audience to present the call and response act.

The building did not function according to its original design for over forty years. But this space lived many lives in its monumental form and then had a revival in 1967. The architects who fought for the revival were Frank Lloyd Wright, who had worked as a draftsman for Adler & Sullivan, Crombie Taylor, along with Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill as design partners. Roosevelt's partnership seemed natural, given the parallels in the mission of the university conceived by FDR and the democratic mission of the Auditorium Building. Taylor especially, in partnership with Roosevelt University, wanted to flaunt the history of the building instead of concealing the richness. His work on rehabilitation with restorative architect John Vinci reinvented the ornate interior and this meant carving through years of covered-up art. The building now strives to be a space "engaging us at our own complexity".a15a

Rhetoric

Again, as Joseph R. Roach suggested to me, the building is an arrangement of an experience in time just like a speech. The building speaks. One might ask: How can a building speak? Well, it is a conceptual jump but we can follow it. If an audience listens, the speaker is heard. The building wants to be heard, right? As was planned by the creators, the function must come first and the building's function is a consolidated democracy. The form comes next and the form is that of a monument-fortress-safety net on the outside and down home inspiration on the inside. The exterior's argument is that of permanence while the interior's argument is that we must accept the complexities of a democracy and see the fluidity of the natural details.

As in the art of speech the building reflects the Classical Invention, Arrangement, Style, Memory, and Delivery. The Invention, Arrangement, and Style of the building has the rhetorical structure of a funeral oration: honoring the dead and instructing the living. It is monumental. The building is chock full of transparency-deliberate design but with genuine feeling/purpose in the democratic ideals that this space is meant for The Public. Sullivan's spiritual ties to nature must have played a part in this. Matthew Craske writes of panegyrics, or eulogies, in his text The Silent Rhetoric of the Body.a16a In considering the Auditorium Building as a monument through local symbolism, deriving from a system of patronage and by in large being fully political in nature, one might argue that the building eulogizes Classical rhetoric. It demands to be seen.

There are several rhetorical tropes that can be used to assist this concept of buildings speaking. Allusion happens to be present in the references to nature and classical architecture throughout the interior and exterior of the building. The theater's lights have been compared to jewels as a metaphor. If we personify the building, its speaking is not surprising. As a person walks through the entryway to the alcove she would view several allegorical figures on walls, including that of wisdom. An oxymoron used to describe the space by media is "sumptuous and chaste." A rhetorical scheme is used to fuel the spirit of the place with antithesis: life and death again and again and again. Strength and vulnerability has great power in a speaker and a building. Most important though is the extended metaphor—the interior of the theater "speaks" of its social ideals [continuity, eloquence, community] & the exterior "speaks" of its communicated social intentions (an auditorium is a space for its audience in a theater as a public hall for cultural and political gatherings) through its architectural style.

Eloquence is the great leveler. With the assistance of Garry Wills, consider President Lincoln who had less than a sixth grade education, but he was a performer, an avid audience member, and an extremely eloquent writer. The writing of the Gettysburg Address indirectly follows Louis Sullivan's words of wisdom, "Form ever follows function." It was William Saunders through the design of the Gettysburg Cemetery and Edward Everett who took The Public through the ritualistic function of mourning for his address and then it was Lincoln who delivered a speech act in which the country could move on: "(that) all men are created equal". Lincoln was an artist like Sullivan or Adler. The building definitely echoed a revolution in thought and style.a17a