images of architectural ornament on permanent display at city musuem in st. louis

the following images were taken while chicago architect john vinci and i spent the afternoon on a self-guided tour of st. louis-based city museum's architectural artifact installations scattered on multiple floors of an old colossal warehouse.

the majority of the ornament comes from chicago, with large caches of terra cotta from building commissions designed by louis h. sullivan and george grant elmslie. their collection of chicago stock exchange building (1894, adler & sullivan) terra cotta ornament is exhaustive, with a rebuilt section of the demolished building's cornice being their most impressive building fragment assemblage.

while documenting the rebuilt cornice section i photographed vinci standing against it much like he did in 1972, when the building was in the early phases of demolition. during that time, the terra cotta cornice was being painstakingly dismantled under the guidance of richard nickel.

vinci would later hire nickel to assist in deconstructing the building's trading room in the hopes that it would be rebuilt in the near future (vinci and partner larry kenney completed the reconstruction of the trading room at the art institute in 1976. sadly, richard nickel wasn't there to see it - he was killed in the trading room during demolition in april of 1972 when a floor collapsed on him.

albert sullivan house (1891) lunette replica. the original - housed at sie - is made of hand-carved bedford limestone. design elements were used in adler & sullivan's transportation building (1893), making it the only surviving link to that building (destroyed by fire shortly after the fair concluded in 1894). sie bought the sullivan house for eight thousand dollars to have richard nickel salvaged the lunette for their collection. nickel took it further by salvaging much of the facade with the intention it would be rebuilt at a later time.

the lunette was likely sculpted by modeler kristian schneider, who would go on to collaborate with adler and sullivan and sullivan alone.

richard nickel image of the albert sullivan house lunette after being extracted from the facade. image courtesy of the richard nickel committee, ryerson and burnham library, art institute of chicago. digitized and edited by eric j. nordstrom.