The Chicago School marks the beginning of a new development in architecture. Based on the earlier Victorian models, from about 1885 great commercial structures are built with new designs and new construction techniques. During these later years Richardson produced the buildings upon which his reputation principally rests. He designed houses, community libraries, suburban railroad stations, educational buildings, and commercial and civic structures. Instead of the splintered massing, narrow vertical proportions, and disparate Gothic features used by his contemporaries, he favoured horizontal lines, simple silhouettes, and uniform, large-scale details of Romanesque or Byzantine inspiration . Since his best commercial structure, the Marshall Field Wholesale Store in Chicago (1885-87), were demolished long ago (1930).Constructed between 1885 and 1887, seven storeys high, covering an entire city block, the Marshall Field Wholesale Store, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson, is just that. The store was not the tallest masonry structure in Chicago. Moreover, the design featured many soon-to-be anachronistic elements common to the design philosophy taught at Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris , the premier architectural school of the day. Indeed, Richardson had trained in Paris. The building’s importance was not Richardson’s adherence to convention; rather it was his departure from convention. Grandeur, strength, and distinction, he demonstrated, could be achieved without ornamentation. The versatility of concrete, steel and glass had not yet developed. Richardson’s work did, however, maximize the utility of masonry while demonstrating the reduction of design to function rather than have it merely anchor an elaboration of form. This approach was a precursor to the techniques, which would find fullest expression with the new building materials. Moreover, Richardson demonstrated that a structure worked best if it reflected the envi...
