Rookery Building
- Architect
- Burnham & Root
- Year
- 1885
- Style
- Chicago School
- City
- Chicago, IL
- Collection
- the chicago school
Completed in 1888 by Daniel Burnham and John Wellborn Root, the Rookery Building at 209 S. LaSalle Street stands 181 feet and twelve stories — considered the oldest standing high-rise in Chicago. Edward C. Waller leased the site for 99 years in 1885 and hired Burnham and Root, who used the building as their own office and produced what is considered one of their masterpieces.
the building
Light court and lobby. At the center of the building is a light court that illuminates a two-story atrium lobby lined with ornamental stairs — a way of bringing daylight deep into a building whose exterior load-bearing walls limited how large its windows could be.
Two Wright renovations. Frank Lloyd Wright remodeled the Rookery's lobby between 1905 and 1907, and his former assistant William Drummond remodeled the structure again in 1931. The lobby was restored to Wright's design a second time between 1989 and 1992, after Baldwin Development bought the building.
Structure at a turning point. The Rookery carries its loads with exterior load-bearing masonry walls combined with an interior steel frame — construction that sits right at the transition between old-fashioned masonry towers and the fully steel-framed skyscrapers Chicago School architects were about to build.
the style
The Rookery is one of the defining Chicago School office buildings, built at the moment architects were combining traditional masonry walls with new interior steel framing to build taller than masonry alone would allow.
More on Chicago Schoolthe architect
Daniel Burnham and John Wellborn Root ran one of the major Chicago School firms and used the Rookery as their own office after completing it in 1888; it is considered one of Burnham and Root's masterpiece buildings.
significance
The Rookery is a National Historic Landmark, an individual Chicago Landmark, and listed on the National Register of Historic Places; it was designated a Chicago Landmark on July 5, 1972. It is considered the oldest standing high-rise building in Chicago.
nearby
- Field Building
- Continental And Commercial National Bank Building
- Phenix Building
- Chicago Board of Trade Building
- Kluczynski Federal Building
- Marquette Building