John Mills Van Osdel, Architect, and his Chicago: The Story of His Life, 1811 to 1891

There is no question that Chicago is an architecturally significant city. But before Louis Henry Sullivan, John Wellborn Root, and Frank Lloyd Wright, before modernism, there lived a man whose designs built it from the ground up. Written by his descendant, retired architect Burtram C. Hopkins II, more than a century later, this book traces the incredible mark left on Chicago by architect John Mills Van Osdel-a mark tragically largely wiped out by the Great Fire of 1871. From the time he arr...