Fine Books and Manuscripts

[Chicago–Architecture] The International Competition for a New Administration Building for the Chicago Tribune, MCMXXII. [Chicago: The Tribune Company, 1923]. First edition, first printing. Expertly rebound in full rust cloth by Scott Kellar in 2014, with original leather label affixed to spine. Illustrated with 281 full-page black & white plates of reproductions of designs submitted on glossy stock + frontispiece with tissue guard, 10 photographs, and several intertextual illustrations. Tall 4to. Former ownership signature to half-title, occasional offsetting from plates; otherwise square and sound. Near fine. In 1922, the Chicago Tribune hosted an international design competition for its new headquarters and offered $100,000 in prize money with a $50,000 1st prize for "the most beautiful and distinctive office building in the world". The competition worked brilliantly for months as a publicity stunt, and the resulting entries still reveal a unique turning point in American architectural history. More than 260 entries were received.  The winner was a neo-Gothic design by New York architects John Mead Howells and Raymond Hood, with buttresses near the top. The entry that many perceived as the best—a radically simplified tower by the Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen—took second place and received $20,000. Saarinen's tower, which anticipated the coming impact of stripped-down modernism on building form, was preferred by critics like Louis Sullivan, and was a strong influence on the next generation of skyscrapers including Raymond Hood's own subsequent work on the McGraw-Hill Building and Rockefeller Center.