Free previewStop 3 of Chicago Loop Architecture Walking Tour
The Building a Stingy Man Made Beautiful
You're on Jackson Boulevard at Dearborn, and the dark tower in front of you is the Monadnock. Look at the north half of it, the plain one. Purple-brown brick, sixteen stories, and almost no decoration at all. Now find the base, where the wall flares gently outward, like the bottom of a column. That curve is hiding something: walls about six feet thick.
This building was paid for by Peter Brooks, a Boston investor whose family had made its fortune in shipping insurance. The Brooks family had been buying Chicago real estate since 1863, and they hired the same architects you just met at the Rookery, Daniel Burnham and John Wellborn Root. Root loved ornament. Brooks loved saving money.
In an 1884 letter to his Chicago manager, Owen Aldis, Brooks laid out what he wanted. Everything flush. No projections.
That's the opening. The rest plays at stop 3 of Chicago Loop Architecture Walking Tour (3 min in all). Unlock the tour to hear it all, or try stop 1 free first.
