Marshall Field's

by Jay Pridmore

Marshall Field built the largest department store in the world at the time, and his architect Daniel Burnham, following Field's dictum "dazzle the customer with opulence," created a store unmatched in elegance. Influenced by the Florentine palazzi of the Renaissance, Beaux-Arts monumentalism, and the Chicago School, the exterior of Marshal Field's radiated a luxury that only hinted at the elegance inside. An extravagantly beautiful Louis Tiffany tesserae dome poured light onto all who entered; a soaring balcony allowed women to see and be seen. Field's was as close to a temple of commerce as any building has ever come. Jay Pridmore is an architectural historian who has written widely about the people and ideas behind the building of Chicago. His 1993 book Chicago Architecture and Design, coauthored with George Larson, is one of the city's most popular books about local architecture.

Genres: Architecture

63 pages, Hardcover

First published February 1, 2002

Reviews

[David Fulmer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a brief but amply illustrated book about the Marshall Field’s building in Chicago. The book gives an account of the history of the department store and the way the building was built and added onto over the years, including the origins of the business in a dry goods store which burned down in the Great Chicago fire of 1871. The pictures give you a sense of what the building looked like both inside and out when the book was published in 2002 and it also includes historic photos of the previous buildings on the site, restaurants and areas of the store, including a couple of Louis Comfort Tiffany domes that were beautiful. It’s short and what’s there is great, I only wish it were longer and included more detail.