WASHINGTON, DC.- The Library of Congress and the National Park Service announced today that the 2024 Leicester B. Holland Prize will be presented to architectural designer Laura Pressley for a drawing of the Wainwright Tomb at Bellefontaine Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, designed by the noted early American modernist architect, Louis Sullivan.

Considered one of Sullivan’s masterpieces, the Wainwright Tomb (1893) is a St. Louis landmark. It has been described as a powerful work of early American modernist architecture, praised for its bold geometry and elaborate organic-inspired ornamentation. As such, its design has been juxtaposed to the 19th century romantic garden-inspired tombs found in Bellefontaine Cemetery, established in 1850 at the height of the American Rural Cemetery movement.

It was the last of three tombs designed by Louis Sullivan. He also designed the Carrie Eliza Getty Tomb (1890), and the Martin Ryerson Tomb (1887), both located in the Graceland Cemetery in Chicago.

Pressley, an architectural designer from the Chicago area, was chosen as the clear winner from competing entries due to the quality of the field notes and the drafting, sheet composition, and proper use of dimensions and annotations. When Pressley entered the Holland Prize competition, she was an architecture graduate student at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She will receive a $1,500 cash prize and a certificate of recognition.

The prize honors Leicester B. Holland (1882-1952). Holland was a fellow of the American Institute of Architects; director of the Library of Congress Fine Arts Division (now the Prints and Photographs Division); co-founder of the Historic American Buildings Survey, and the program’s first curator.

The Leicester B. Holland Prize recognizes the best single-sheet, measured drawing of a historic building, site, or structure prepared to the standards of the Historic American Buildings Survey, the Historic American Engineering Record, or the Historic American Landscapes Survey. The prize is intended to increase awareness, knowledge and appreciation of historic sites, structures and landscapes throughout the United States, and to encourage the submission of drawings by professionals and students alike. All drawings accepted for the competition are added to the permanent collection in the Library of Congress