Detail View: Archivision Base to Module 13: Rookery Building

Collection: 
Archivision Base to Module 13
Preferred Title: 
Rookery Building
Image View: 
Close view of the upper southwest corner
Creator: 
Burnham and Root (American architectural firm, 1873-1891); Frank Lloyd Wright (American architect, 1867-1959)
Location: 
site: Chicago, Illinois, United States
Location Note: 
209 S. LaSalle St.
Date: 
1885-1888 (creation); 1905-1907 (alteration)
Cultural Context: 
American
Style Period: 
Chicago School; Richardsonian Romanesque
Work Type 1: 
office building
Work Type 2: 
skyscraper
Classification: 
architecture
Material: 
stone
Technique: 
construction (assembling)
Description: 
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
Collection: 
Archivision Base Collection
Identifier: 
1A1-BR-RB-G2
Rights: 
© Scott Gilchrist, Archivision, Inc.