The Old Home: Louis Sullivan's Newark Bank

One hundred years ago a local banker and a world-renowned architect came together to build a striking new facility for The Home Building Association Company in Newark, Ohio. The Old Home celebrates the centennial of this collaboration by exploring the parallel lives of the banker, Emmet Baugher, and the architect, Louis Sullivan, and by reviewing the history and legacy of the remarkable building they created in downtown Newark. In addition, two chapters place The Old Home and its aesthetics in the context of Sullivan s time and his philosophy of form follows function. The Old Home is the first comprehensive account of the Newark bank, one of eight small-town banks built by Louis Sullivan in his twilight years. Dismissed by Frank Lloyd Wright as the remnants of Sullivan s genius, these banks are now considered to be the magnificent culmination of his career. The Old Home examines the built environment that surrounded the bank when it was built in 1914 1915 and again, as this book was being written, in 2013-2014, and it integrates newly recovered documents, including Sullivan s original cost estimates, with other historical evidence to tell the story of Newark s architectural jewel box.