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Chicago Board of Trade building designed by Holabird & Root, 1930. The figures on either side of the clock are supposed to be a Babylonian holding grain and a Native American holding corn, a reference to the exchange's history as a commodities market. Why a Babylonian? No idea.
Édouard Albert, Robert Boileau, Jacques-Henri Labourdette – Tour Croulebarbe (Paris, 1960)
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The University Club, at the corner of Michigan and Monroe St in Chicago, was designed by architect Martin Roche and completed in 1909. This is said to be the first skyscraper inspired by Gothic architecture. The more famous and elaborate Tribune Tower, less than a mile north of this building, was completed in 1925.
The Rookery is a Chicago landmark designed by architects Daniel Burnham and John Wellborn Root and completed in 1888. It was one of the first buildings to combine load-bearing masonry walls with interior metal framing in a technique known as a ‘grillage foundation’ that allowed the use of larger expanses of glass.
The building is now more famous for the interior remodeling done by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1905. See my adjacent post for photos of the interior.
The Marquette Building, 1895, designed by William Holabird, Martin Roche, and Edward Renwick.
“Over the doors of the main entrance are panels of bronze, designed and executed by Mr. Herman A. MacNeil, illustrating incidents in the life of Pere Marquette in his explorations of the Mississippi River and the state of Illinois…The inscriptions below the panels are taken from Marquette’s diary.” Architectural Reviewer, July 1897
(Post # 1 of 3)
The Monadnock Building, Chicago, designed by Burnham and Root, 1891
It may not look very impressive, but this is the tallest load-bearing brick building ever constructed in the world. Unlike all taller buildings, it has no steel frame. The walls at the base are six feet thick. The world’s oldest surviving skyscraper, the Manhattan Building, was completed nearby in the same year but with a steel frame. Both buildings have 16 stories. The Monadnock was also the first building to use aluminum as a structural material in its decorative staircases.
Osbert Lancaster, Early Skyscraper, From: A Cartoon History of Architecture
