The team of Dankmar Adler and Louis…

The team of Dankmar Adler and Louis Sullivan completes the gorgeously ornamented, near perfectly acoustically designed Auditorium Building in 1889.

The building, which when constructed is the largest in the United States and the tallest in Chicago, is designed to be a multi-use complex, including offices, a theater, and a hotel.

Ferdinand Peck, a Chicago businessman, had incorporated the Chicago Auditorium Association in December 1886 to develop what he wanted to be the world's largest, grandest, most expensive theater that would rival such institutions as the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

He is said to have wanted to make high culture accessible to the working classes of Chicago.

The building was to include an office block and a first class hotel.

Peck had persuaded many Chicago business tycoons to go on board with him, including Marshall Field, Edson Keith, Martin A. Ryerson, Charles L. Hutchinson and George Pullman.

The association had hired the renowned architectural firm of Adler and Sullivan to design the building.

At the time, a young Frank Lloyd Wright is employed at the firm as draftsman, and he may have contributed to the interior design.