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When a civilization ends, it does not leave behind a tombstone. Instead, it leaves stackings of stones (i.e. buildings.) We lose the remembrance of individual people, the things they said, did, and wrote, but we remember what they built because those things endure for much longer. The Ancient Greeks and Romans tell us about themselves through their Classical Architecture. We remember the Medieval period in Europe from its castles and Gothic Cathedrals. We remember the early 20th century from the Art Deco buildings it left behind. The style tells us something about their priorities, what they believed, what they knew, and what their hopes were. In a sense, the buildings a culture leaves behind are a kind of epitaph.
Let’s look through the structural epitaphs of our ancestors.
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Rookery Building
Location
209 South LaSalle Street Chicago, Illinois
Coordinates
41°52′44.7″N 87°37′55.6″W
Built
1888
Architect
Burnham & Root; Frank Lloyd Wright; William Drummond; et al.
Architectural style
Chicago school with Moorish, Byzantine, Venetian and Romanesque motifs
If you were to list off America’s great cities, Chicago would come up relatively quickly. The Windy City has been one of the largest and most economically important cities in the U.S. for more than a century.
As a result, you might expect Chicago to be home to a trove of architecturally significant buildings and skyscrapers to rival New York City. While Chi-town is not devoid of great buildings, it lacks the numbers that you might expect. Why? The Great Chicago Fire seems to be among the leading reasons. In 1871, 3.3 square miles of the city burned, and took with it 17,000 structures.
That said… there the Rookery Building (built after the Great Conflagration) is one of the finest buildings in the United States. I love the color and its stately modern elegance. It is built from a Chicago School style, using Moorish, Byzantine, Venetian and Romanesque motifs.
What ‘s “Chicago School” you might next ask? Well, there are two “Chicago Schools” but as the second dates to the mid 20th century, we’ll only concern ourselves with the first:
The Chicago School refers to two architectural styles derived from the architecture of Chicago. In the history of architecture, the first Chicago School was a school of architects active in Chicago in the late 19th, and at the turn of the 20th century. They were among the first to promote the new technologies of steel-frame construction in commercial buildings, and developed a spatial esthetic which co-evolved with, and then came to influence, parallel developments in European Modernism. Much of its early work is also known as Commercial Style.
A “Second Chicago School” with a modernist esthetic emerged in the 1940s through 1970s, which pioneered new building technologies and structural systems, such as the tube-frame structure.
First Chicago School
Historically unprecedented grid of wide windows, clear expression of structural frame, and minimalist ornamentation on the Marquette Building (1895).
While the term “Chicago School” is widely used to describe buildings constructed in the city during the 1880s and 1890s, this term has been disputed by scholars, in particular in reaction to Carl Condit‘s 1952 book The Chicago School of Architecture. Historians such as H. Allen Brooks, Winston Weisman and Daniel Bluestone have pointed out that the phrase suggests a unified set of esthetic or conceptual precepts, when, in fact, Chicago buildings of the era displayed a wide variety of styles and techniques. Contemporary publications used the phrase “Commercial Style” to describe the innovative tall buildings of the era, rather than proposing any sort of unified “school.”
A steel skeletal frame, like that of the Fisher Building (built 1895–1896, and still standing), meant the height of a building was no longer limited by the strength of its walls.
Some of the distinguishing features of the Chicago School are the use of steel-frame buildings with masonry cladding (usually terra cotta), allowing large plate-glass window areas and limiting the amount of exterior ornamentation. Sometimes elements of neoclassical architecture are used in Chicago School skyscrapers. Many Chicago School skyscrapers contain the three parts of a classical column. The lowest floors functions as the base, the middle stories, usually with little ornamental detail, act as the shaft of the column, and the last floor or two, often capped with a cornice and often with more ornamental detail, represent the capital.
The “Chicago window” originated in this school. It is a three-part window consisting of a large fixed center panel flanked by two smaller double-hung sash windows. The arrangement of windows on the facade typically creates a grid pattern, with some projecting out from the facade forming bay windows. The Chicago window combined the functions of light-gathering and natural ventilation; a single central pane was usually fixed, while the two surrounding panes were operable. These windows were often deployed in bays, known as oriel windows, that projected out over the street.
If you read carefully above, you might have noticed something that perhaps sounded ominous.
“Some of the distinguishing features of the Chicago School are the use of steel-frame buildings with masonry cladding (usually terra cotta), allowing large plate-glass window areas and limiting the amount of exterior ornamentation.”
If you’ve ever wondered why ornamentation on the exterior of buildings began to decline in the 20th century, this may play a large role. After centuries of ornamentation on exteriors having no limit, except will and resources, and therefore no expectation of limitation, the style here created decorative limits. This did not lead to ugly lifeless buildings right away, but it set a precedent that was following to an increasing degree over time.
The Rookery building though proves that an ornamentation limitation does not need to mean embracing lifelessness or ugliness in architecture. This building is a beauty. Perhaps the steel framed concrete and glass boxes of the 20th century can begin to give way to the more elegantly styled towers built in the late 19th.
There is a long history for The Rookery, so before I get into that, I’m going to share a virtual tour first. It might help to whet your appetite to learn more.
Now than you’ve taken the tour, you can read more about this landmark below.
The Rookery Building is a historic office building located at 209 South LaSalle Street in the Chicago Loop. Completed by architects Daniel Burnham and John Wellborn Root of Burnham and Root in 1888, it is considered one of their masterpiece buildings, and was once the location of their offices. The building is 181 feet (55 m) in height, twelve stories tall, and is considered the oldest standing high-rise in Chicago. It has a unique construction style featuring exterior load-bearing walls and an interior steel frame, providing a transition between accepted and new building techniques. The lobby was remodeled in 1905 by Frank Lloyd Wright. From 1989 to 1992, the lobby was restored to Wright’s design.
The Rookery was built by the architectural partnership of Daniel H. Burnham and John Wellborn Root, known as Burnham and Root. In the architectural boom that followed the Great Chicago Fire, architects in what would become known as the Chicago School of commercial architecture competed with each other to create the world’s first true skyscrapers. By mixing modern building techniques, such as metal framing, fireproofing, elevators and plate glass, together with traditional ones, such as brick facades and elaborate ornamentation, Burnham and Root sought to create a bold architectural statement. At the same time, they intended their buildings to be commercially successful. This building is one of the few results of their partnership that is still standing.
As the master artisan, Root drew upon a variety of influences in designing the interior and exterior spaces, including Moorish, Byzantine, Venetian and Romanesque motifs. He also provided the architectural innovations that brought together many contemporary cutting edge building techniques. Of particular note was a “floating” foundation—a reinforced concrete slab that provided the building’s weight with a solid platform atop Chicago’s notoriously swampy soil. The term for the type of foundation that Root designed is grillage foundation, a foundation where iron rails and the structural beams are combined in a crisscross pattern and encased in concrete to support the building’s immense weight without heavy foundation stones. This construction is particularly useful when structural loads are high compared to the natural bearing capacity of the soil.
Light court and lobby
The Rookery Building in 1891
Using light and ornamentation extensively, Root and Burnham designed a central light court to serve as the focal point for the entire building and provide daylight to interior offices. Rising two stories, the light court received immediate critical acclaim. “There is nothing bolder, more original, or more inspiring in modern civic architecture than its glass-covered court”, wrote Eastern critic Henry Van Brunt. At a time when Chicago’s bold experiment in architecture was looking eastward for affirmation, this was welcome praise. The light court provides natural illumination for the interior offices.
The lobby, redesigned by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1905, recast the entryway in his Prairie style, with a simple, modern-style lighting design. Wright’s work on the Rookery is his only work on any building in the Chicago Loop. Among Wright’s most significant alterations was the addition of white marble with Persian-style ornamentation. The marble and decorative details added a sense of luxury to the lobby’s steel-laden interior, marked by Burnham and Root’s skeletal metal ribbing. The entire interior space is bright and open. A double set of curving, heavily ornamented stairs wind upward from the lobby’s second floor into the building’s interior. A wrap-around balcony on the second floor enhances the feeling of being within the interior of a “clockwork.” The Wright remodel opened the building up to more of the available light.
Load bearing walls and steel structure
Looking up at the oriel staircase, designed by John Wellborn Root
A staircase in the light court
The red marble and granite, terra cotta and brick façade of the building is a combination of Roman Revival and Queen Anne styles that embraced Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. The building, which is a combination of cast and wrought iron framing and masonry bearing walls, marked a transitional moment in a switch from masonry to steel skeleton structures. The Landmarks Commission citation commends “development of the skeleton structural frame using cast iron columns, wrought iron spandrel beams, and steel beams to support party walls and interior floors”. Aside from the first two floors of metal-framed perimeter walls, the walls are all masonry. The building is known for its semi-circular staircase west of the light court.
History
The name is a reference to the temporary city hall building that occupied the land before the current structure. After the Great Chicago Fire, a quickly constructed building was used as an interim city hall, built around a large water tank that had survived the fire. That building was nicknamed the “rookery”, in reference to the crows and pigeons that flocked to its exterior, as well as the alleged corrupt politicians it housed. Several other names were considered when the new structure on the site was proposed, but The Rookery won out, and birds, perhaps rook birds, appear in some of its decorative stonework.
The Rookery was built in 1888 by the architectural partnership of Daniel H. Burnham and John Wellborn Root. Daniel Burnham was a friend of Wright patron Edward C. Waller, who managed the Rookery. Frank Lloyd Wright, a young architectural assistant working with Adler and Sullivan at the time of the Rookery’s completion, later had his offices in the building in 1898–1899. Burnham & Root had their offices at the Rookery for a while upon its completion.
Contrasted with the original wrought iron surfaces (seen here), Wright’s renovations significantly brightened the lobby’s appearance
The Rookery’s light court, redesigned by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1905, serves as a focal point for the building
20th century
While much of the Loop’s 19th-century architecture has been demolished, the Rookery has been preserved and renovated over the years. From 1905 to 1907, Frank Lloyd Wright was retained to remake the interior spaces. In keeping with contemporary tastes, Wright’s design covered Root’s elaborate wrought iron finishes with white carved Carrara marble surfaces. Wright was highly regarded by the public at this point, and his changes brought enhanced status to the building, making the Rookery one of the most sought after buildings of Chicago. Some of Wright’s other changes included incorporating simplified ironwork and adding his trademark style planters and light fixtures.
The second renovation, completed August 24, 1931, by former Wright assistant William Drummond, modernized many of the interior elements, including new elevators, and brought period touches to the building, such as Art Deco detailing. The third renovation, in 1992 by Daprato Rigali Studios, brought the building back to much of its original splendor, reopening the light court ceiling after it had been covered over to protect against leaks.
21st century
A banner draped over the entrance references US Bank—a tenant—and the Blackhawks– Chicago’s NHL team
The building was purchased in October 2007 for $73 million by an investment group controlled by a European family, and advised by Zeb Bradford of Metzler North America Corp. The seller was Broadway Real Estate Partners of New York, which had bought the Rookery for $56 million in April 2006. BREP was reported to have increased occupancy of the building’s 281,000 sq ft (26,100 m2) from 80% in January 2007 to 96% at the time of the sale.
After the 2007 sale, the new owners announced plans for an extensive renovation of the building’s common areas. In 2011, Office for Visual Interaction completed the lighting design for the facade, illuminating the architectural features of the building with state-of-the-art LED technology. The Rookery achieved LEED Gold certification in 2014. In 2015 the restrooms were upgraded and a full-featured bike room was added. Additionally, a full elevator modernization was completed, inclusive of a destination dispatch and visitor system in 2017
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