The Marquette Building
140 South Dearborn
Chicago
This spectacular, and difficult to photograph, mosaic is in the rotund of the Marquette building. Designed by J.A. Holler of the Tiffany Company it depicts the Mississippi voyage of Louis Jolliet and Father Marquette.
Louis Tiffany was the son of jeweler Charles Tiffany. His career took off after the display of his mosaics in the chapel at the 1893 Columbian Exposition, also known as the Worlds Fair in Chicago.
Jacob Adolph Holzer was a Swiss artist who worked for Tiffany as chief designer and art director, he was responsible for the design and execution of the Marquette murals.
Jacob Adolphus Holzer (1858–1938) was associated with both John La Farge and Augustus Saint-Gaudens before he left to direct the mosaic workshops of Louis Comfort Tiffany. Holzer worked with Tiffany until 1898. In 1898 he left to form his own studio.
Holzer designed the sculptural electrified lantern that became famous at that World’s Columbian Exposition, one of two electrified lanterns that have been called the “ancestors” of all later Tiffany lamps.
Holzer’s works include: in New York, the lobby of The Osborne, 205 West 57th Street. In Boston, the Central Congregational Church, 67 Newbury Street (1893), and perhaps the Frederick Ayer Mansion, Commonwealth Avenue (1899–1901). In Chicago, the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 East Washington Street, as well as the Marquette Building. At Princeton, his mosaics of subjects from Homer fill the rear wall of Alexander Hall. In Troy, New York, his stained-glass east window and baptistry mosaics can be seen in St Paul’s Church.
On leaving Tiffany studios, he traveled in the Near East. He provided some of the illustrations for Mary Bowers Warren, Little Journeys Abroad (Boston, 1894).
In 1923 Holzer moved to Florence where he lived out his life painting and taking on mosaic commissions until his death at the age of 80.
