CHAPTER 1

EARLY LIFE AND TRAINING

Louis Sullivan's account in The Autobiography of an Idea of his life fromthe time he met John Edelmann until he was able to claim the title "Architect"as the junior partner in the firm of Adler & Sullivan is so factually distortedand devoid of many significant details that many historians have beenperplexed as to why Sullivan would single out Edelmann as his "benefactor,"a distinction he gave to no one else, not even Dankmar Adler. One can onlyspeculate as to what Sullivan was thinking about as he wrote this account. Itseems obvious that in order to portray himself as a youthful prodigy withoutany comparable peers, as he does in The Autobiography, Sullivan could noteasily acknowledge that Edelmann had already been recognized as an architectat the age of twenty-one, a full nine years before Sullivan was able to claimthe same distinction at age twenty-six, let alone admit that he had served a twoyear apprenticeship under Edelmann. After all, even if someone were to takeissue with his account, as Irving Pond almost immediately did, wrong datesand forgotten events could always be dismissed as lapses of memory on thepart of an elderly author.

It should not be surprising that Edelmann was not twenty-four years old asSullivan claimed in The Autobiography, (suggesting 1849 as the year of hisbirth) when they first met at the end of 1873. The United States Census for1900 was the first in which at least the month and year of a person's birth waslisted. It states that he was born in October 1852. With the exception of theCensus of 1870, where Edelmann was reported as being eighteen years oldon June 2 of that year, the census records for 1860 and 1880 (he is not listedin the few records of the 1890 Census that survive) do not dispute that date.However, Mrs. Sonia Clements, Edelmann's daughter, told Donald Egbert thather father was born on September 19, 1852. Since that date is relatively closeto that in the Census, it seems reasonable to assume that it is correct. His givenname, according to his father's will, was Johan Herman Edelmann. His firstname, like that of his father, was later anglicized to John.

Aside from his places of residence and religious affiliation, documentedsources provide no direct information about his early life until the year 1869.Nevertheless these sources provide clues from which it seems reasonable todraw specific conclusions about his life prior to that year.

Edelmann's father, John Michael Edelmann (Michael Edelmann, as hewas generally known) was born in Erligheim in the district of Besigheim, justnorth of Stuttgart, in the Kingdom of Wuerttemberg on September 6, 1818.He applied for permission to emigrate from Erligheim to America with hisfamily in August 1851. According to Edelmann's son, the family name wasoriginally Edelmann von Lilienthal, the "von Lilienthal" having been dropped,when they left Germany. He further stated that the reason for their departurewas that, "they fled the German revolution [of 1848] not because they thoughtit would fail but because they, members of the minor nobility, feared it wouldsucceed." Upon arrival, the family settled in Cleveland, Ohio. It may beinferred from the Census of 1860 that he emigrated with his wife, John'smother, the former Sophia Christina Ekstein, who was roughly a year olderthan him; her daughter by a previous marriage, Hannah Louise (born JohannaLouise Gaeckle) and his mother Louisa, ages 15 and 64 respectively at thetime of the Census. The earliest known residence of the family in Clevelandwas at 21 Fountain Alley in what was then a multiethnic neighborhood northof the Public Square and just east of the business district, which the Census for1870 indicates had a good number of Germans in it but was not dominated bythem. Perhaps this was where John Edelmann was born. Certainly his youngersister, Louise Sophia, was born there in 1857. On September 7, 1868, Hannahmarried Jacob Bluim. By 1870, according to the Census of that year, thecouple had given birth to a daughter and were living with the other Edelmanns,but the absence of the grandmother's name suggests that she had died. OnNovember 19, 1874 Louise Sophia Edelmann married Fred Koblenzer.

By 1866, the family had moved across town to a working-classneighborhood on Cleveland's West Side, which the Census of 1870indicates was predominantly German. There they joined the nearby GermanUnited Evangelical Protestant Church of the West Side (now the West SideUnited Church of Christ). At that time the church was affiliated with theGerman United Evangelical Protestant Church, a denomination noted for itsecumenical views (it was an offshoot of the Prussian Protestant Church, thestate church which recognized both the Lutheran and Reformed confessions).Throughout the 1870s, the family remained members of this church. That bothof Edelmann's sisters were married there and their father was buried fromthere suggests that the Edelmann family were among its stalwart members.A strong attachment to the faith this church represented might explainEdelmann's obvious fondness for the Gothic, as a specifically Christian style,and ecclesiastical work during the early years of his career.

For roughly the first two decades of his life in America, MichaelEdelmann worked as a teamster. In 1870, he went into partnership with hisstepson-in-law in a grocery business named Edelmann & Bluim. MichaelEdelmann died shortly thereafter on May 31, 1871, leaving all his propertyto his widow. After his death, John Edelmann appears to have agreed to takehis father's place as a partner in the grocery business, a decision he wouldlater have reason to regret. Having moved to Chicago within a few months ofhis father's death, Edelmann could have contributed nothing to the operationof the business. Presumably this was done to protect his mother's assets fromclaims of potential creditors while allowing a share of the business' profits tostill be funneled to her.

According to his son, John Edelmann apprenticed himself in, "anarchitect's office at the age of sixteen." This assertion is supported by theCleveland directories from 1869 through 1871, in which Edelmann is listedas a draftsman living with his parents. The 1870...