The Marshall Field Wholesale Store: Materials toward a Monograph

Despite its central position in the history of architecture, H. H. Richardson's Marshall Field Wholesale Store remains a largely mythical building, known primarily from a limited number of photographs often reproduced and from Louis Sullivan's eulogy in the Kindergarten Chats. This paper presents a factual history and description of the building conceived by the client in 1881, designed in 1885, and quietly opened in 1887. It was U-shaped and red originally, rather than Sullivan's "four-square and brown." Since it was not innovative either in design or in technology (although aspects of both are remarkable), its historical reputation is attributed to its fortuitous location in time and place, the reputation of the architect, the cohesiveness of its design at an urban scale, its symbolic impact as an urban commercial structure, and the quality of its execution.