The Monadnock Building: Architecture, History & Legacy
This paper examines the Monadnock Building in Chicago, Illinois, tracing its origins from an 1884 proposal through its completion as a landmark of late nineteenth-century American architecture. The paper explores the building's unusual dual character: its restrained, modernist-leaning northern half designed by John Wellborn Root of Burnham and Root, and its more classically ornamented southern half completed by Holabird and Roche after Root's death. Drawing on the Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks and other sources, the paper discusses the design precedents, the developers' competing visions, and the building's lasting influence on both the Chicago School and Beaux-Arts architecture that followed.
- The Monadnock Building in Context: Historical setting and commercial origins of the building
- Design Precedents and Development: Burnham and Root's prior work and client negotiations
- Architectural Innovation and Dual Authorship: Split design caused by Root's death mid-construction
- Root's North Half: A Departure from Convention: Root's organic masonry design and its unique qualities
- Combined Legacy of Both Firms: Immediate critical reception and Beaux-Arts influence
- Lasting Influences on Chicago Architecture: North half's enduring reputation as masonry masterpiece
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper uses a single landmark building to illuminate broader architectural history, grounding abstract stylistic concepts in a concrete, well-documented case study.
- It balances primary design analysis with historical context, explaining how commercial pressures, client preferences, and mid-project architect changes all shaped the final structure.
- Direct quotations from the Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks and from contemporaries like Louis Sullivan give the argument authoritative texture.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper employs comparative analysis across the building's two halves to show how a single structure can embody competing stylistic periods simultaneously. By contrasting Root's spare masonry north side with Holabird and Roche's steel-framed classical south side, the author frames the Monadnock as a visible seam between nineteenth-century ornamentation and proto-modernist restraint — a technique that transforms a building description into an argument about architectural history.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with historical and geographic context, then establishes the project's commercial origins and design precedents. It moves through the building's construction history, focusing on Root's innovative north half and the circumstances of its completion by a second firm. The final sections assess immediate and long-term critical reception, concluding with the building's status as the high-water mark of masonry commercial construction.
The Monadnock Building in Context
Today, the Monadnock Building's location in Chicago, Illinois' downtown Loop district places it squarely in the heart of the city's financial section. However, at the time this area was still expanding, and "few Chicagoans had faith in the proposal to locate a new building so far south" of what was then the existing commercial core of the city in 1884, when construction of the office building was first proposed ("Monadnock Building," Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks, 2008, p. 1). Plans to build in the area were not finalized until 1889, after skyscrapers began to creep into the district.
The aspirations that brought the building into being were both artistic and commercial — to create an architectural spectacle while also attracting tenants and generating revenue for the Boston-based developer brothers Peter and Shepard Brooks. The Monadnock's period and design place it at the tail end of nineteenth-century architectural grandeur, owing to its impressive size and the elaborately crafted south half. Yet its older northern half, with its subtly curving lines and faint traces of Egyptian architecture, acts as a harbinger of the later modernist period and the Frank Lloyd Wright Chicago School. The lack of breaks and projections and the utter continuity of line makes this part of the building look far younger than its construction date (Roth 176).
Design Precedents and Development
The Chicago-based architectural firm of Burnham and Root was selected to design the new building. "Burnham and Root had previously done two other successful commercial projects for Brooks and his agent Owen Aldis: the Montauk Building in 1882 and the Rookery Building in 1886" ("Monadnock Building," Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks, 2008, p. 1). The primary architects, John Wellborn Root and Daniel Hudson Burnham, originally wanted to create a tall pylon structure of Egyptian design, with elaborate ornamentation and different shadings of surface texture and materials — similar to, but even more ambitious than, the Montauk. Peter Brooks, however, insisted on an utterly Spartan concept (Roth 176). Brooks's one concession to practicality was to allow the inclusion of bay windows, after Owen Aldis pointed out that they would make the building more marketable, since employees working inside were likely to want more natural light ("Monadnock Building," Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks, 2008, pp. 3–4).
Architectural Innovation and Dual Authorship
The ultimate fusion of spare grandeur combined with subtle curves that still reflect the original pylon design is what makes the north half of the Monadnock so revolutionary. The building was originally intended to be even taller, but Brooks eventually settled on a sixteen-story structure, with a seventeenth "attic" floor in the southern parapet ("Monadnock Building," Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks, 2008, p. 3). The north side's design is both subtle and oddly haunting. Because of the fusion of styles, the final overall result is holistically something both prototypically modernist and classical at once — a jarring juxtaposition of forms.
The distinct differences in style reflect the fact that architects were switched mid-stream during the Monadnock's construction. The northern side was solely Root's work, based upon a masonry-style approach, but Root died of pneumonia before he could finish the entire building ("History," Monadnock Building, 2008). The southern half, based on a steel frame, was completed by the architectural firm Holabird and Roche and is far more classical in nature ("History," Monadnock Building, 2008).
Root's North Half: A Departure from Convention
Although Root was already a well-established Chicago architect, the north side of the Monadnock "emerges as a definite departure from the mainstream of Root's practice and the rest of the contemporary Chicago School at the time," with only its "carefully conceived proportions" and sculptural form echoing earlier Root works ("Monadnock Building," Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks, 2008, p. 5). Root created the illusion that the structure "grew" organically from the massive granite blocks of the ground floor, while the "inward curve of the wall at the second story" suggests a pylon without making explicit pastiche or parodic references to the Egyptian era ("Monadnock Building," Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks, 2008, p. 2).
Likewise, "the outward flare of the parapet, the gentle chamfering of the building's corners, and the rhythm of uniform oriel windows … seem to grow from the wall surface," as do the contours of brick beside them ("Monadnock Building," Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks, 2008, p. 2). When completed, observers marveled that "here, in a span of 400 feet, the unassuming expertise of Holabird and Roche sensitively combines with a distinctly atypical scheme from Burnham and Root. The work of both firms has much to do with Monadnock's integral role in early modern architecture" ("Monadnock Building," Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks, 2008, p. 5). The building was highly praised, and tenants flocked to rent space within its walls — as they still do in Chicago today.
Works Cited
"History." Monadnock Building. 11 May 2008.
Roth, Leland M. A Concise History of American Architecture. Excerpted at Great Buildings Online. 11 May 2008. http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Monadnock_Building.html
"Monadnock Building." Based on "The Monadnock Block" by the Commission on Chicago Historical and Architectural Landmarks. 11 May 2008.
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