As a member of New York’s Photo League in the 1930s, Aaron Siskind led classes that produced social documentary projects. During those years, he also created photographic studies of vernacular architecture on Martha’s Vineyard and in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. When he began teaching at the Institute of Design in 1951, he was thus perfectly suited to lead the Sullivan Project with a group of students, among them Richard Nickel (see related photographs on view nearby). The project aimed to comprehensively document buildings designed by the early 20th-century architect Louis Sullivan that were slated for demolition to make way for urban renewal projects. This photograph shows the Walker Warehouse, completed in 1889, just as it was being torn down. Like many of Siskind’s images, this one focuses on Sullivan’s elegant use of ornament even in utilitarian structures.
