Photographer. Documented and tried to preserve the work of Louis Sullivan, icon of American architecture. When Nickel learned that Sullivan's Stock Exchange building was to be demolished, he was able to save a portion of the building's ornament, now preserved at the Chicago Art Institute. Even after the official salvage operation ended, Nickel returned to the site. Four weeks after his disappearance on April 13, 1972, his body was found in the rubble of the building. He had been crushed when a floor collapsed. A Chicago Sun-Times editorial cartoon honored him with a drawing of a gravestone with the epitaph: Richard Nickel, 1928-1972, "Killed in Action rescuing Chicago architectural treasures." The Chicago Daily News characterized Nickel's death as "a sacrifice to art--a civic offering on the altar of greed."
Photographer. Documented and tried to preserve the work of Louis Sullivan, icon of American architecture. When Nickel learned that Sullivan's Stock Exchange building was to be demolished, he was able to save a portion of the building's ornament, now preserved at the Chicago Art Institute. Even after the official salvage operation ended, Nickel returned to the site. Four weeks after his disappearance on April 13, 1972, his body was found in the rubble of the building. He had been crushed when a floor collapsed. A Chicago Sun-Times editorial cartoon honored him with a drawing of a gravestone with the epitaph: Richard Nickel, 1928-1972, "Killed in Action rescuing Chicago architectural treasures." The Chicago Daily News characterized Nickel's death as "a sacrifice to art--a civic offering on the altar of greed."
