Designed by Louis Sullivan, completed 1904 Chicago, Illinois The Carson Pirie Scott (originally the Schlesinger and Mayer) Store in Chicago, designed and built in 1898–1904, was the last large commercial structure designed by Louis Sullivan. In later modernist historiography, this building was acclaimed for its forthright expression of steel-and-glass construction in its upper elevations. As such, Carson Pirie Scott was seen as a forerunner of the International Style in commercial architecture of the mid-20th century, epitomized by the later tall buildings of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Carson Pirie Scott was also pivotal in the international development of the department store as a building type in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. From a Postmodernist perspective of the 1980s, the building’s outstanding feature is Sullivan’s ornamental enrichment of the show-window frames along the two-story base that served to enhance the display of apparel to a largely female clientele. Since 1...