Who designed the Monadnock Block?
With its 17 stories (16 rentable plus an attic), its 215 feet (66 m) high load-bearing walls were the tallest of any commercial structure in the world. To support the towering structure and reinforce against wind, the masonry walls were braced with an interior frame of cast and wrought iron. Root devised for this frame the first attempt at a portal system of wind bracing in America, in which iron struts were riveted between the columns of the frame for reinforcement. The narrow lot allowed only a single, double-loaded corridor, which was appointed with a 3-foot (0.91 m) high wainscot of white Carrara marble, red oak trim, and feather-chipped glass that allowed outside light to filter from the offices on each side into the hallways. Floors were covered with hand-carved marble mosaic tiles. Skylit open staircases were made of bronze-plated cast iron on upper floors. On the ground floor, they were crafted in cast aluminum—an exotic and expensive material at the time—representing the first use of aluminum in building construction.The building was constructed by the firm of George A. Fuller, who trained as an architect but made his mark as the creator of the modern contracting system in building construction. His firm had supervised construction of the Rookery, and later built New York's Flatiron Building with Burnham in 1902. The Monadnock Block was built as a single structure but was legally two buildings, the Monadnock and the Kearsarge, named for Mount Monadnock and Mount Kearsarge in New Hampshire. Work was completed in 1891. The Monadnock, which Root called his "Jumbo", was his last project; he died suddenly while it was under construction.
Root