Auditorium Building

Brief information

In the Auditorium Building, the theater was not a separate jewel in a box: it was surrounded by offices and a hotel that were meant to pay for the operation of the hall. Therefore, the building should be read as a complex machine for public culture. At its center was a 4,300-seat hall, and around it operated 136 offices and a 400-room hotel. The idea was not only architectural but also economic: the theater was conceived as nonprofit and was supposed to support itself.

The most unexpected fact is connected not with the stage, but with the ground. Beneath the building lies soft blue clay, so Adler, together with engineer Paul Mueller, developed a special foundation made of crisscrossing railroad ties and a double layer of reinforced concrete covered with tar. The foundation distributed the pressure, but because of the difference between the heavy walls and the lighter interior, the building is gradually sinking into the ground.

What to notice first

It makes sense to compare three parts of the building: the facade, the hall, and the lower level. The facade here is not just a shell: the project was designed as a tall building with load-bearing facade walls, and the exterior appearance was partly based on the Marshall Field Warehouse. This helps explain why the theater building looks not like a light pavilion, but like a massive urban block.

Inside, the main device was the central hall: 4,300 seats were arranged so that each one had good visibility and audibility. This layout is tied to the idea of making culture accessible to the broad public, not only to a select part of the city. Another important detail is the lobby and the first-floor spaces. In 1952, they were partially dismantled for the sake of a sidewalk after the widening of a nearby road. Thus, two pressures can be read in one building at once: from below it is held by a complex foundation, while from the street it was changed by urban infrastructure.