Louis H. Sullivan’s Chicago: From “Shirt Front,” to Alley, to “All Around Structures”

Through Chicago building and writing, Louis Sullivan explored the aesthetic and urban possibilities of skyscrapers, particularly their composition on urban skylines. Sullivan envisioned the skyscraper’s eclipse of the fairly uniform street-wall urbanism constituted by what he called “old single or ‘shirt front’ buildings.” In its place he promoted the skyscraper urbanism of “full four-front or all around structures.” He thus pointed the way toward a defining feature of modern architecture and modern skylines—their three-dimensional urban character. Here, Sullivan envisioned an important balancing of the rights to the city between private builders and the broader civic realm.