The Chamber of Commerce then, the Grain Exchange now. The building on the corner is the finest, and perhaps the only, pure Sullivan-style building in Minneapolis. Built in 1902, it would get two more additions before they were finished, and neither had the skill and style of this building. It's the best example of Louis Sullivan's organic / geometric ornamentation downtown. Louis thought everything would look like this, and should look like this, if only everyone listened to him.

They didn't, of course; architecture had shaken off the heavy Richardsonian model and was in the mood for something classical, something that legitimized the new world with the architectural vocabulary of the old. To some, Sullivan's stuff must have looked too idiosyncratic to work, too fevered, too new.

You'll see why in a few pages.