Louis Henry Sullivan is considered the Father of modern American architecture. He was a profuse writer and inspirational leader of the American Prairie architecture movement.

His parents were both immigrants; Like F.L. Wright later, Sullivan worked on a family farm during summers as a youth. With encouragement of a family friend, Sullivan enrolled in MIT to study architecture (1872). After 1 year there, he left to move to Philadelphia with his grandfather, and then he began work as a short-term apprentice for the architect Frank Furness. The following year he moved to Chicago to live with his parents. Later that year he travelled to Europe and enrolled in Paris’ École des Beaux Arts. Becoming restless after one year, Sullivan returned to Chicago in 1875. The next few years Sullivan worked as a freelance draftsman and designer, and in1879, a school friend introduced him to the architect Dankmar Adler.

The rest is history, as Sullivan was hired and within a year Adler asked him to be his partner (at the age of 24). Adler & Sullivan quickly developed a reputation as a top architecture firm in Chicago with many prominent commissions, and they were responsible for numerous office buildings, theatres and private residences. Sullivan brought a distinctive design element that Adler’s previous office structures lacked, which focused on nature inspired design surfaces. Some of the more prominent commissions included the Auditorium, Wainwright and Guaranty Buildings, plus the Transportation Building for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Sullivan’s most noted protégé was Frank L. Wright, who referred to Sullivan as his “Leiber Meister.” The collaboration with Wright as his chief draftsman came to end in 1893.

The Adler & Sullivan partnership dissolved in 1895, and Sullivan continued as an independent architect. He began to see his commissions dwindle after this and his last major building was the Schlesinger & Mayer department store of 1898 (Chicago). In the following years, he completed a few residential commissions, and had a minor resurgence from 1906 to 1919. He earned 8 rural bank commissions spread across the American Midwest, and they became known as his “jewel-box” banks (e.g., National Farmers’ Bank in Owatonna, MN; Peoples’ Federal Savings & Loan Assoc. in Sidney, OH).

As he aged, he became more isolated because of alcoholism and possible depression. He was basically broke when he died on April 14, 1924 in Chicago, IL.