Hello, people planning your trip to Chicago!! On Sunday I went downtown on the train. The Gryffin and I didn't meet as originally planned, so to kill some time, I walked around the financial district a bit. Of course, everything was closed, but I did get some pictures.
I'll start with the panorama I made. Click on the thumbnail to see a larger view of The Rookery.
When I looked in the door, I saw a sign with facts about The Rookery. (I took a really awful photo of it, and here's what it looks like it says:)
1871, after the Great Chicago Fire, the area at the southeast corner of LaSalle and Adams streets was the location for a temporary city hall, a water tank, and at one time, the Chicago Public Library.
1885, Daniel H. Burnham and John Wellborn Root were commissioned to design a building for the Central Safety Deposit Company at the corner of LaSalle and Adams.
The Central Safety Deposit Company secured a lease from the city that would not expire until 1982.
Construction had begun by the spring of 1886, and the buidling was completed in the early spring of 1888.
The Rookery developed its name for a variety of reasons:
- A Rook is a crowlike bird. Since birds used to nest in the temporary water tank, the site was referred to as a "rookery"
- The slang term "rook" or "rooking" refers to swindling, therby applying to the political climate and politicians of city hall.
- A rook is also the term for a chess piece, or "castle," as it is sometimes referred to. The Rookery resembles a castle to some extent with its turrets, marble and (something) edifices, light court, spiral staircase, and arched entrances.
The Rookery, standing twelve stories high, was the tallest building in the world at the time of its completion.
In 1906 to 1907, Frank Lloyd Wright was brought in to update the design and plan of the light court and lobbies.
Wright removed most of Root's elaborate ironwork and ornamentation and replaced it with a simpler design.
1931, William Drummond was commissioned to work on the building. He further updated the lobbies and elevator banks. Drummond did bring some much needed mechanical improvements to the building but he also altered important architectural aspects of the building, he created a double lobby level within the building and removed several of the four original marble staircases from the entrances.
1970, The Rookery was placed on The National Register of Historic Places.
1972, the city of Chicago designated The Rookery Building as an official Chicago Landmark.
1988, L.T. Baldwin III purchased the Rookery Bulding and formed Baldwin Development Company.
1989, Baldwin Development Comapny hired McClier Corporation as the restoration architect, and landmark restoration began.
1992, the restoration of the Rookery Building was completed.
May 6, 1992, Grand Opening - The Rookery Building
This photo turned out a bit more clear:
Meet the rooks:
They sit on either side of the archway over the main entrance:
This is looking up at the archway:
The street sign on the (south) corner wall:
A marble column along the front of the building:
The lobby through the (locked) door:
Here's what my nifty new Pocket Guide to Chicago Architecture says about The Rookery:
Nicknamed for the birds that roosted in the temporary City Hall that had occupied this site, the eleven-story Rookery combines structural and mechanical innovations with a sophisticated aesthetic. Designer John Wellborn Root, trained as an engineer, was challenged to support the enormous bulk of this building on Chicago's marshy soil. He devised a new foundation system, called "floating foundations," concrete rafts interleaved with iron rails for added strength. The architects, experimenting with steel-frame technology, emplyed a metal frame for the Quincy Court side of the building, but the rest of the Rookery uses traditional bearing-wall construction. The robust Romanesque exterior has a two-story rusticated granite base punctuated by glass and stone columns, a grand arched entry (note the two rooks), and intricate terra-cotta ornament. But the Rookery's interior is its glory: a two-story glass-roofed atrium supported by an iron frame, providing maximum light to interior offices while creating a dynamic spatial experience. Note the curving, cantilevered oriel staircase, with its carved Moorish details. Twenty years after the atrium's completion, Frank Lloyd Wright (1867 - 1959) modernized the space by replacing much of the delicate ironwork with gold-incised white marble.
Recently, I'd had requests for photos of the Chicago Board of Trade (CBOT), so here we go - first, from in front of The Rookery:
The statue at the top of the building is Ceres:
A closer look:
The decoration to the left of "Chicago":
And the clock (which had not yet sprung ahead):
The main entranceway:
A plaque here reads:
These two statues, one symbolizing agriculture and the other industry, once stood over the main entrance of the Board of Trade Building in 1885. The statues greeted commodity traders and the public for 45 years. Thought lost forever when the building was demolished in 1929 to make way for the exchange's current Art Deco Structure, in 2005, the statues were graciously returned to their origins through the generosity and goodwill of the DuPage County Forest Preserve District.
Forest Preserve District officials discovered the twelve foot, five and one half ton granite statues at Hidden Lake Forst Preserve near Downers Grove, Illinois in 1978. The forest preserve was the former estate of Arthur Cutten, a prominent Chicago Board of Trade speculator of the early 1900's. How the statues made the journey from LaSalle Street to the Cutten estate is a mystery.
They wanted you to know what street you were on, too:
I started walking east, and looked south down the next street, where I saw the William J. Campbell U.S. Courthouse Annex:
My Pocket Guide to Chicago Architecture tells me that it was designed by Harry Weese and Associates, 1973 - 1975.
To the east, I saw this building:
You'd think I could remember that name, but I never can.
A look up the side of the building:
The front (North Side) was designed by Burnham and Root. The handy Pocket Guide says:
In the northern section, John Root (1850 - 91) of Burnham & Root, who had also designed the Rookery for the Brooks Brothers, maximized rentable space by stretching the building to an unheard of sixteen stories and punching out a grid of bay windows that also added light and ventilation. To support this height, exterior masonry walls six feet thich at the base were required. Note how the curve of the corners is repeated in the cavetto cornice.
Looking North to South:
I started heading south again (to catch a bus back to the station, to meet The Gryffin). First I saw the John C. Kluczynski Office Tower, part of Federal Plaza designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (completed after his death):
And behind it is a favorite sculpture of mine - the Flamingo, by Calder:
At one of the flamingo's "feet" was evidence of a recent protest:
I think this is a birds-eye view:
While I was outside Union Station, trying to call the Gryffin to let him know that I should be at the gate when he disembarked, I looked to the north:
And saw the Boeing Building (I think it used to be Morton Thiokol). We've discussed it in Chicago Treasure comments before, so I zoomed in:
The small, shorter part was what we'd discussed - this:
I'll let the Field Guide explain the look:
It was a particularly difficult site - long, narrow, irregular, and bounded by the Chicago River on the east. Furthermore, the passage through this site by the busy Metra commuter railroad line added the complication of building over existing tracks and rights-of-way. ... Since a structural column could not be placed where the train tracks curved, a rooftop truss was used to redistribute loads.