The Rookery Building

The Rookery Building wears a massive, two-story oriel window of iron and glass that hangs over the corner of LaSalle and Adams. It replaced a temporary city hall that stood here after the Great Chicago Fire. When architects John Wellborn Root and Daniel Burnham designed it in eighteen eighty-eight, they squeezed a light court into the center to draw sunshine into the deep interior offices. Later, Frank Lloyd Wright renovated that lobby, wrapping the structural columns in white marble and geometric gold-leaf patterns.