Editing Louis Sullivan (section)

==Later career and decline==
[[File:LSTransportation2.jpg|thumb|250px|right|Ornamentation on the World's Fair Transportation Building, Chicago, 1893–94]]

In 1890, Sullivan was one of the ten U.S. architects, five from the east and five from the west, chosen to build a major structure for the "White City", the [[World's Columbian Exposition]], held in Chicago in 1893. Sullivan's massive Transportation Building and huge arched "Golden Door" stood out as the only building not of the current [[Beaux-Arts architecture|Beaux-Arts]] style, and with the only multicolored facade in the entire White City. Sullivan and fair director [[Daniel Burnham]] were vocal about their displeasure with each other. Sullivan later claimed (1922) that the fair set the course of American architecture back "for half a century from its date, if not longer."<ref name="idea325">{{cite book |title=Autobiography of an Idea |last=Sullivan |first=Louis |year=1924 |publisher=Press of the American institute of Architects, Inc. |location=New York City |page=325 }}</ref> His was the only building to receive extensive recognition outside America, receiving three medals from the French-based ''Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs'' the following year.

Like all American architects, Adler and Sullivan suffered a precipitous decline in their practice with the onset of the [[Panic of 1893]]. According to [[Charles Bebb]], who was working in the office at that time, Adler borrowed money to try to keep employees on the payroll.<ref>Jeffrey Karl Ochsner and Dennis Alan Andersen, ''Distant Corner: Seattle Architects and the Legacy of H.H. Richardson'' (Seattle and London: [[University of Washington Press]], 2003), 287-288.</ref> By 1894, however, in the face of continuing financial distress with no relief in sight, Adler and Sullivan dissolved their partnership. The Guaranty Building was considered the last major project of the firm.

By both temperament and connections, Adler had been the one who brought in new business to the partnership, and following the rupture Sullivan received few large commissions after the Carson Pirie Scott Department Store. He went into a twenty-year-long financial and emotional decline, beset by a shortage of commissions, chronic financial problems, and alcoholism. He obtained a few commissions for small-town Midwestern banks (see below), wrote books, and in 1922 appeared as a critic of [[Raymond Hood]]'s winning entry for the [[Tribune Tower]] competition.

In 1922, Sullivan was paid $100 a month to write an autobiography in installments to be published in the journal for the [[American Institute of Architects]]. Sullivan worked on the series with Journal editor [[Charles Harris Whitaker]], who advised he "plot out the material by periods."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Connely |first1=Willard |title=Louis Sullivan as He Lived: The Shaping of American Architecture |date=1960 |publisher=Horizon Press Inc |location=New York |isbn=978-1-258-15389-2 |url=https://archive.org/stream/louissullivanash007824mbp/louissullivanash007824mbp_djvu.txt |access-date=19 January 2024}}</ref> ''The Autobiography of an Idea'' began its publication in the June 1922 Journal for the [[American Institute of Architects]]<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Sullivan |first1=Louis |title=The Autobiography of an Idea |journal=American Institute of Architects |date=June 1922 |volume=10 |issue=6 |page=178 |url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015016764345&seq=210&q1=sullivan |access-date=22 January 2024}}</ref> and upon its conclusion was published as a book.

He died in a Chicago hotel room on April 14, 1924. He left a wife, Mary Azona Hattabaugh, from whom he was separated. A modest headstone marks his final resting spot in [[Graceland Cemetery]] in Chicago's [[Uptown, Chicago|Uptown]] and Lake View neighborhood. Later, a monument was erected in Sullivan's honor, a few feet from his headstone.

[[File:SullivanGraceland.jpg|thumb|left|187px|Monument for Sullivan in [[Graceland Cemetery]], Chicago, Illinois, with an alternative spelling of his middle name]]