The Rookery Building is a historic office building at 209 South LaSalle Street in the Loop community area of downtown Chicago, Illinois, United States. 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 in height, twelve stories tall, and is considered the oldest standing high-rise in Chicago. It features exterior load-bearing walls and an interior steel frame. Inside is a light court, which illuminates a two-story atrium lobby with ornamental stairs. The building is designated a Chicago Landmark, and it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as a National Historic Landmark.
Edward C. Waller agreed to lease the site in 1885 for 99 years and hired Burnham and Root to design the building. The lobby was remodeled between 1905 and 1907 by Frank Lloyd Wright, and Wright assistant William Drummond remodeled the structure in 1931. The building was sold in 1982 to Continental Illinois, which cleaned the facade and resold it in 1989 to Baldwin Development. From 1989 to 1992, the lobby was restored to Wright's design. The building was resold twice in the 2000s; following the latter sale, the building was renovated yet again in the 2010s.
Architecture The Rookery is located at 209 South LaSalle Street in the Loop community area of downtown Chicago, Illinois, United States. It was built by the architectural partnership of Daniel H. Burnham and John Wellborn Root, known as Burnham and Root. The building, designed in the Chicago School architectural tradition, is one of the few results of their partnership that is still standing. While much of the Loop's 19th-century architecture has been demolished, the Rookery has been preserved and renovated over the years.
In the architectural boom that followed the Great Chicago Fire, architects in what would become the Chicago School competed with each other to create the world's first true skyscrapers. In their design for the building, Burnham and Root mixed modern building techniques, such as metal framing, fireproofing, elevators and plate glass, with traditional ones, such as brick facades and elaborate ornamentation. At the same time, they intended their buildings to be commercially successful. 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.
Facade The Rookery Building rises 12 stories. The marble, granite, terracotta, and brick facade of the building is a combination of Roman Revival and Queen Anne styles that embraced Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. The facade is largely tinted in a reddish-brown hue. The lower two stories are clad in rough-faced granite, with columns made of red granite, while the upper stories are clad with brick. Thick blocks are used at the lower stories to give the facade the impression of sturdiness. Birds are carved into the facade near the entrance, an allusion to the building's name.
Structural features
The structure uses a "floating" foundation—a reinforced concrete slab that provided the building's weight with a solid platform atop Chicago's notoriously swampy soil. Root designed a grillage foundation, in which 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.
The building uses a combination of cast and wrought iron framing and masonry bearing walls. This marked a transitional moment in a switch from masonry to steel skeleton structures, and, according to the architectural critic Paul Goldberger, was a precursor to the steel frames of early skyscrapers. 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". Metal-framed perimeter walls are used only on two sides of the building, and only on two floors; the rest of the walls are made of masonry. This was because the developers had been concerned that the metal frames were not sturdy enough to hold up the building's weight.
Interior
Root and Burnham designed a two-story central light court to serve as the focal point for the entire building and provide daylight to interior offices. The light court, clad in white terracotta, provides natural illumination for the interior offices. The skylight atop the light court is composed of 5,000 glass panes. The lower stories also had a retail arcade, described in one source as the first indoor arcade in the U.S..
The lobby originally had a mosaic-tile floor. 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 Rookery atrium is his only work on any building in the Chicago Loop, as most of his work in the Chicago metropolitan area was in outlying neighborhoods or the suburbs. Among Wright's most significant alterations was the addition of white marble with Persian-style ornamentation, along with brownish steel and golden tracery. These details added a sense of luxury to the lobby's steel-laden interior, marked by Burnham and Root's skeletal metal ribbing. A curving, heavily ornamented double staircase winds upward from the lobby's second floor, with ornamental urns at the bottom of the staircase. A balcony wraps around the lobby on the second floor.
Each of the upper floors covers and surrounds an open-air lightwell above the light court. On the 11th floor is a library that originally belonged to Burnham and Root, who had been one of the building's tenants. When completed, the building was served by a hydraulic elevator. The building also has a semi-circular staircase west of the light court.
History The city government obtained the site in 1852, at which point there was a reservoir there. The name is variously cited as a reference to the pigeons that nested on the reservoir, or the temporary city hall building that occupied the land afterward. After the Great Chicago Fire, an interim structure was built to serve as the city hall, being constructed 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. This water tank once housed part of the Chicago Public Library's collection.
Development and early years Edward C. Waller agreed to lease the site in 1885 for 99 years, paying $35,000 a year. He hired the architectural partnership of Daniel H. Burnham and John Wellborn Root, and Root hired a European artist, William Henry Burke, to create a mosaic tile floor for the Rookery. The original owner was Peter Brooks, an investor based in Boston. In the years preceding the Rookery's construction, Brooks had developed numerous buildings in the Loop dating back to 1879. Many of Brooks's developments were significantly taller than the other structures in the area, which were generally at most five stories high. Brooks initially considered giving the building a Native American name before he decided on the "Rookery".
The structure was completed in 1888. 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. Daniel Burnham was a friend of Wright patron Edward C. Waller, who managed the Rookery. Burnham & Root had their offices at the Rookery for a while upon its completion, as did the Northern Trust Company. Another major tenant was the Illinois Trust & Savings Bank, which occupied the first floor; the bank and its successors, including the Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company, occupied the building for a century. Architect Hermann V. von Holst, advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, and lawyer Clarence Darrow were also listed as early tenants, as were the law office of Carter Harrison III and his son Carter Harrison IV; businessman Samuel Insull; and industrialist John Warne Gates. A 1908 tenant directory listed six real-estate firms, in addition to such companies as travel agencies, pig iron manufacturers and cattle loan agencies.
Early 20th century From 1905 to 1907, Frank Lloyd Wright was hired to remake the interior spaces, particularly the lobby and mezzanine. 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 was completed in 1931 by former Wright assistant William Drummond. It modernized many of the interior elements, including new elevators, and brought period touches to the building, such as Art Deco detailing. Drummond's design included the addition of a protruding staircase connecting the lobby floor and balcony. Over the years, some of the glass roof tiles were dislodged. In addition, the light court's roof was covered with tarpaper in the 1940s. In the 1970s, the building's consulting architect added plants to enliven the interior spaces.
1980s and 1990s renovations In 1981, the Chicago Plan Commission approved a plan to sell the building at auction. While the Chicago Department of Water and Sewers owned the underlying land, the building itself was owned by a blind trust benefiting the University of Chicago. At the time, the building's largest tenant was Continental Illinois, which occupied 25 percent of the space. The city government began soliciting bids for the building in 1982, mandating that any potential buyer preserve the exterior and part of the interior; since the building was a city and national landmark, a potential buyer would be able to claim a preservation tax credit. The city re-launched the bidding process after determining that none of the bids were high enough. That October, the city sold the building for $15.1 million to Continental Illinois, which planned to spend up to $19 million on renovations and use the building as office space, leasing out the space it did not occupy. Continental Illinois began cleaning the facade in 1983; this process involved using gasoline and hot water to remove of grime. In addition, the windows were replaced or fixed, and a skylight was built above the 11th story. When the cleaning was finished in 1984, the overall renovation was scheduled to cost $26.6 million.