T he first time Rick Erwin, executive director of the City Museum in Saint Louis, tried to buy a piece of a Louis Sullivan building, a Catholic priest damned him to hell. That was back in 2012. The museum had sent workers to Hammond, Indiana, to pick up some terra-cotta by the architect George Grant Elmslie. On that trip, one of Erwin’s colleagues negotiated a deal with Father Donald Rowe, a former head of Saint Ignatius College Prep in Chicago and an avid collector of architecture, who was involved in procuring architectural artifacts for the school’s atrium. The City Museum had arranged to buy a section of cornice from the Sullivan-designed Chicago Stock Exchange building, which had been demolished in 1972. Then, as Erwin tells it, “it just went south really, really fast. Next thing I know I get this e-mail from Father Rowe where he’s basically damning myself and the owner of the City Museum to hell. We’re like, what? We didn’t do anything!”
Much of the museum’s fourth floor is devoted to work by Sullivan, one of the most influential Chicago School architects. Many of his iconic buildings have been demolished over the years, but pieces were salvaged by Chicago-area collectors. Some of those architecture custodians are getting older, though, Erwin says, and are ready to part with their collections.
Mon-Thu 9 AM-5 PM, Fri-Sat 9 AM-midnight, Sun 11 AM-5 PM, 750 N. 16th St., Saint Louis, MO, 314-231-2489 (CITY), citymuseum.org, $14.
