One could be forgiven for thinking that one of the crows in terra cotta on Chicago\u2019s Rookery building depicts a current leader of the U.S. Congress. Some of our greatest buildings possess an expressiveness that speaks not only of the time period in which architects and builders created the structure but also to today. The Rookery captures this quality wonderfully. The squawking, quarrelsome birds in terra cotta on its exterior, for example, were said to represent the crows and pigeons who perched on the walls of the dilapidated structure that preceded this building at the corner of LaSalle and Adams streets.<\/p>\n
They had another meaning as well. The city of Chicago used that old structure for a time as City Hall after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and it became known as \u201cthe Rookery\u201d \u2013 a name that won out when a company constructed this high-rise on the site. The birds, some say, also personified the shady Chicago politicians of the day. To my eyes, they bring up the interminable squawking and stalemate we have come to know in today\u2019s Congress. Thus, the images are both historic and contemporary.<\/p>\n
The Rookery invites contemplation, wonder, and yes, perhaps a laugh or two at those gaping bird beaks. If buildings have life-like characteristics, the Rookery expresses very divergent qualities. Its dark and massively squared-off exterior gives way inside to a very light interior space. Such buildings exist, but the Rookery is one of the most dramatic.<\/p>\n
Yet both exterior and interior have a delicacy in decorative detail when you look up-close. The ability to appreciate it today is even more precious given that the structure somehow survived a wrecking ball for generations and that someone then carefully and lovingly restored and renovated the building in the late 1980s. It embodies beauty, engineering achievement, timelessness, varied and rich personalities, and sculptural appeal.<\/p>\n
Completed in 1888, the 11-story Rookery is Chicago\u2019s oldest standing high-rise building. Many come to see its dazzling interior courtyard that Frank Lloyd Wright, in the early years of his career, redesigned. However, the Rookery is much more than that: In one building is an array of the finest architectural expressions that three different architects brought to it over a period of nearly 50 years.<\/p>\n
After the Great Fire<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The Rookery reflects a city\u2019s resilience, too \u2013 and its creative force \u2013 after dire times. The construction of the Rookery came during the massive building boom that followed the Great Fire. The fire had decimated a four-mile long swath of Chicago, destroyed approximately 18,000 buildings, and left more than 100,000 people homeless. Out of this destruction, however, came a period of innovation, cutting-edge technology such as fireproofing, and bold design. The Rookery was the work of architects Daniel Burnham and John Wellborn Root<\/a>. Burnham was the visionary whose master plans shaped Washington, D.C., Chicago, and Cleveland, among others, and who was a preeminent leader in the late 19th century movement to conceive of cities as majestic centers of beauty and commerce. In the Rookery, however, we primarily see Root\u2019s architectural achievements, artisanship, and engineering genius.<\/p>\n Because Wright garners by far more attention for his redesign of the awe-inspiring light court, Root is, by comparison, somewhat neglected. Yet Root\u2019s accomplishments were many in the design and engineering of a building that set standards for later skyscrapers. In prior decades, the desires of architects and builders to go taller confronted a certain limit because of load-bearing walls of brick and stone, which were thick and made for darker interiors. The Rookery was one of the first skyscrapers to employ metal framing. While its exterior walls were of masonry, for the interior Root used an iron framework that supported the walls and floors, a technique that Chicago engineer William Jenney developed and used in the 1884 Home Insurance Building<\/a>. Root also incorporated other breakthrough technologies and materials of the era such as hydraulic elevators, fireproofing, and plate-glass windows.<\/p>\n