Monadnock Building
- Architect
- Burnham and Root
- Year
- 1891
- Style
- Chicago School
- City
- Chicago, IL
- Collection
- the chicago school
The Monadnock Building is a 16-story, 215-foot office block that Burnham & Root built starting in 1891 at the south end of the Loop, with Holabird & Roche adding a matching south half in 1893. It's the tallest load-bearing brick or masonry building ever constructed, a design that pushed unreinforced masonry to its structural limit just as steel framing was about to make that approach obsolete. When it opened it was the largest office building in the world, and its success helped catalyze development of a new business district at the south end of the Loop.
the building
Load-bearing walls at their limit. At 215 feet, the Monadnock is the tallest brick or masonry building ever built without a steel skeleton — its walls widen dramatically at the base to carry the full weight of 16 stories above, a structural approach that would be abandoned industry-wide within years as steel framing took over.
Engineering firsts. The building employed the first portal system of wind bracing used in the United States, and its ornamented staircases were the first structural use of aluminum in building construction.
Two halves, one profile. Holabird & Roche's 1893 south addition matches the original Burnham & Root half in color and profile but is more traditionally ornamented, letting a visitor read the shift in architectural fashion across a single unbroken facade.
the style
The Monadnock is a defining example of the Chicago School's engineering-driven aesthetic — the building's severe, unornamented massing wasn't a stylistic choice so much as a consequence of pushing masonry construction to its structural breaking point.
More on Chicago Schoolthe architect
Burnham & Root, one of the most consequential firms in the history of American skyscraper design, designed the original north half starting in 1891; Holabird & Roche, another leading Chicago School firm, added the matching south half two years later.
significance
The Monadnock is individually designated a Chicago Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, both as a standalone listing and as a contributing property to a historic district. It underwent one of the first major skyscraper renovations in 1938, a project meant to prove aging Loop skyscrapers could be modernized rather than demolished, and was sold to preservation-minded owners in 1979 who restored it.
nearby
- Kluczynski Federal Building
- Fisher Building
- Everett McKinley Dirksen United States Courthouse
- Chicago Federal Building
- Consumers Building
- Phenix Building