Lorenzo B. Wheeler makes a fascinating contrast to Louis Sullivan. Wheeler had his St. Louis office in Sullivan’s Wainwright Building (1890), and he built his own skyscraper across the street (the Holland Building, 1897).
In 1896, Louis Sullivan wrote his famous “form follows function” maxim:
It is the pervading law of all things organic and inorganic, of all things physical and metaphysical, of all things human and all things super-human, of all true manifestations of the head, of the heart, of the soul, that the life is recognizable in its expression, that form ever follows function. This is the law.[1]
A decade earlier, Wheeler wrote this:
A form, gracefully and beautifully shaped to perform its proper functions, is the greatest source of beauty and expression an object can have, and anything that interferes with this perfection of form or with the performance of the proper duties of the object, does not ornament, but on the contrary, detracts from it.[2]
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Version 8.8 of the list (pdf) contains several new Georgia projects by Wheeler:
- a design for a school for the Woman’s Industrial Union
- a design for a standard mausoleum for the New Mausoleum Company — this was a Kimball plan for a sort of national cemetery chain
- Atlanta houses for Hugh T. Inman and Louis Gholstin
The reference to Clark Howell, Sr. has been changed to Clark Howell, Jr. to match several contemporary references, even though Junior was not born yet; the likely client, Clark Sr. (1863-1936), was the son of Evan Park Howell.
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