Collection:
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Archivision Base to Module 13
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Preferred Title:
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Rookery Building
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Image View:
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Detail depicting one of the terra-cotta street signs "LaSalle Street"
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Creator:
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Burnham and Root (American architectural firm, 1873-1891); Frank Lloyd Wright (American architect, 1867-1959)
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Location:
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site: Chicago, Illinois, United States
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Location Note:
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209 S. LaSalle St.
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Date:
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1885-1888 (creation); 1905-1907 (alteration)
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Cultural Context:
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American
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Style Period:
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Chicago School; Richardsonian Romanesque
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Work Type 1:
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office building
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Work Type 2:
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skyscraper
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Classification:
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architecture
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Material:
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stone
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Technique:
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construction (assembling)
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Description:
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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 that would nonetheless survive as a commercially successful office building. 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. Wright received the commission, in 1905, to redesign the lobby in the building; at the time considered the grandest in Chicago. Wright's work on the Rookery recast the entryway in his Prairie style and added a sense of modernity through his simple but effe
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Collection:
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Archivision Base Collection
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Identifier:
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1A1-BR-RB-F6
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Rights:
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© Scott Gilchrist, Archivision, Inc.
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