On the Move | Capturing Louis Sullivan: What Richard Nickel Saw

On the Move

Join us for lunch at Rosebud on Rush followed by a curator-guided tour of the Driehaus Museum exhibit, Capturing Louis Sullivan: What Richard Nickel Saw. After the tour, there will be time to explore the rest of the museum.

Richard Nickel (1928–1972) was an architectural photographer and preservationist. Nickel first encountered the work of Louis Sullivan (1856–1924) as a student, when photographing the architect’s buildings for a project at the IIT Institute of Design.

In the 1960s and 1970s, many of Sullivan’s buildings began to be demolished to make way for new development and Nickel became an activist. He picketed buildings designated for demolition, organized protests, and wrote letters to news media and politicians in the hopes of saving them from destruction. Realizing that his efforts were futile, he embarked on a mission to meticulously document the buildings in various stages of destruction.

Focusing on Adler & Sullivan’s Chicago buildings of the 1880s and early 1890s, the exhibition explores the firm’s architecture through the lens of Nickel’s photography, which provides a detailed record of these buildings and, in particular, Sullivan’s signature ornamentation. The exhibition will highlight the integral role Nickel played in preserving Sullivan’s legacy – the photographer’s work is all that remains of many of Adler & Sullivan’s major buildings – while ultimately losing his life in an effort to salvage artifacts during a demolition.