structural:reformatting
Later career and decline

In 1890, Sullivan was one of the ten U.S. architects, five from the east and five from the west, chosen to build a major structure for the "White City", the World's Columbian Exposition, held in Chicago in 1893. Sullivan's massive Transportation Building and huge arched "Golden Door" stood out as the only building not of the current Beaux-Arts style, and with the only multicolored facade in the entire White City. Sullivan and fair director Daniel Burnham were vocal about their displeasure with each other. Sullivan later claimed (1922) that the fair set the course of American architecture back "for half a century from its date, if not longer." His was the only building to receive extensive recognition outside America, receiving three medals from the French-based Union Centrale des Arts Decoratifs the following year.

Like all American architects, Adler and Sullivan suffered a precipitous decline in their practice with the onset of the Panic of 1893. According to Charles Bebb, who was working in the office at that time, Adler borrowed money to try to keep employees on the payroll. By 1894, however, in the face of continuing financial distress with no relief in sight, Adler and Sullivan dissolved their partnership. The Guaranty Building was considered the last major project of the firm.

By both temperament and connections, Adler had been the one who brought in new business to the partnership, and following the rupture Sullivan received few large commissions after the Carson Pirie Scott Department Store. He went into a twenty-year-long financial and emotional decline, beset by a shortage of commissions, chronic financial problems, and alcoholism. He obtained a few commissions for small-town Midwestern banks (see below), wrote books, and in 1922 appeared as a critic of Raymond Hood 's winning entry for the Tribune Tower competition.

In 1922, Sullivan was paid $100 a month to write an autobiography in installments to be published in the journal for the American Institute of Architects. Sullivan worked on the series with Journal editor Charles Harris Whitaker, who advised he "plot out the material by periods." The Autobiography of an Idea began its publication in the June 1922 Journal for the American Institute of Architects and upon its conclusion was published as a book.

He died in a Chicago hotel room on April 14, 1924. He left a wife, Mary Azona Hattabaugh, from whom he was separated. A modest headstone marks his final resting spot in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago's Uptown and Lake View neighborhood. Later, a monument was erected in Sullivan's honor, a few feet from his headstone.