Reader’s Choice

Monadnock Building

Is there a building anywhere in the world quite like Burnham and Root’s 1893 Monadnock? In developer Peter Brooks, architect John Wellborn Root had a client who held tight to a dollar. Brooks wanted a skyscraper, but an all-steel frame was too expensive. Excess ornament not only cost money but accumulated dirt and pigeons. Root obliged with a vengeance. The Monadnock has no applied ornament—the building’s form is the ornament. From a base of brick bearing walls more than six feet thick, the facades curve inward, then outward again at the top. The Monadnock abhors a right angle. Its bay windows don’t jut but gently swell. Though the skin is brick, it’s more continuous and organic than a glass curtain wall. Root created a structure both monumental and plastic; it would be a century before architects like Frank Gehry and Greg Lynn would begin to catch up with him. 53 W. Jackson, monadnockbuilding.com. —Lynn Becker

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Wrigley Building

400-410 N. Michigan.

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