social institution, every
undertaking, however great, however small, every symbol of
enlightenment or degradation, each and all have sprung and are still
springing from the life of the people, and have ever formed and are
now as surely forming images of their thought. Slowly by centuries,
generations, years, days, hours, the thought of the people has
changed; so with precision have their acts responsively changed; thus
thoughts and acts have flowed and are flowing ever onward, unceasingly
onward, involved within the impelling power of Life. Throughout this
stream of human life, and thought, and activity, men have ever felt
the need to build; and from the need arose the power to build. So,
as they thought, they built; for, strange as it may seem, they could
build in no other way. As they built, they made, used, and left behind
them records of their thinking. Then, as through the years new men
came with changed thoughts, so arose new buildings in consonance
with the change of thought--the building always the expression of
the thinking. Whatever the character of the thinking, just so was the
character of the building.

What is Architecture? A Study in the American People of Today, by
LOUIS SULLIVAN.

Architecture and Democracy

I

BEFORE THE WAR

The world war represents not the triumph, but the birth of democracy.
The true ideal of democracy--the rule of a people by the _demos_, or
group soul--is a thing unrealized. How then is it possible to consider
or discuss an architecture of democracy--the shadow of a shade? It is
not possible to do so with any degree of finality, but by an intention
of consciousness upon this juxtaposition of ideas--architecture and
democracy--signs of the times may yield new meanings, relations may
emerge between things apparently unrelated, and the future, always
existent in every present moment, may be evoked by that strange magic
which resides in the human mind.

Architecture, at its worst as at its best, reflects always a true
image of the thing that produced it; a building is revealing even
though it is false, just as the face of a liar tells the thing
his words endeavor to conceal. This being so, let us make such
architecture as is ours declare to us our true estate.

The architecture of the United States, from the period of the Civil
War, up to the beginning of the present crisis, everywhere reflects a
struggle to be free of a vicious and depraved form of feudalism,
grow