Monadnock Building

This guide to the Monadnock Building in Chicago follows architect John Wellborn Root, who died at forty-one before his sheer, ornament-free tower was finished. It traces the brief he was handed in 1891 by a Boston property manager who wanted no cornices or carving at all, and how Root turned that bare-bones budget into what he called his Jumbo. The walls in front of you rise sheer and dark, curving outward at a base six feet of solid brick thick.