The Prudential Guaranty Building | Louis Sullivan | Architecture Enthusiast

The Guaranty Building, formerly called the Prudential Building, is an early skyscraper in Buffalo, New York. Designed by Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler, it was completed in 1896.

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Sullivan’s design for the building was based on his belief that "form follows function". The supporting steel structure of the building was embellished with terracotta blocks. While the exterior skin of the Guaranty expresses a new form for the steel skyscraper, its plan indicates those hard realities of function necessary to construct such a building and to sell it. The building is essentially a U-shaped plan stacked upon a rectangular solid. The interstitial spaces between wings of the "U" create opportunities to introduce skylights to the lobby below and to cover the ceilings with stained glass. The plan contained a single vertical circulation core with four elevators, a mail slot, and a staircase. No fire-stair was provided or necessary. The internal portion of the "U" faces south to collect light for the interior recesses of the building- light being a necessary commodity to attract good tenants. Sullivan spared nothing to accomplish this end for: "To increase the amount of light to the interior, the stairwell and the light slit facing the inner courtyard were lined with white glazed terracotta that was more costly than normal tiles."[4]

The most remarkable problem for those wishing to cast Sullivan exclusively in the camp of early modernist designers is his steadfast and adroit insistence to ornament his buildings. Ornament is one of the most defining characteristics of the Guaranty as "The entire facade of this building is clothed in ornament, like hieroglyphs on the columns and walls of temples in ancient Egypt." Sullivan’s ornament is unmistakably original, but it is not without precedents in the contemporary tradition of the English Arts and Crafts movement.

The Guaranty, for all its evocative general expression of tectonics, is equally as evocative at the scale of its modular terracotta components. "Here the balance of interest between the individuals and the group to which they belong is precarious, and the sheer number of compositional elements makes it difficult to attend to them individually.

Especially near the base, ornamental patterns reflect the span and connection of underlying steel members. As the components rise, a rigid pattern is followed, story upon story until the cornice where the pattern explodes into an umbrageous tangle of leaves and vines, encapsulating the windows and reaching outward over the street below. The ornament tells the same story as the theory which created it: bottom, middle, top- light steel skeleton within.

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