The Monadnock Building: The Last Skyscraper Built From Solid Brick

The Monadnock Building at 53 W Jackson Boulevard holds a contradiction within itself that makes it one of the most historically significant structures in the world. Its north half, completed in 1891 by Burnham and Root, is the tallest commercial building ever constructed with load-bearing masonry walls: 16 stories rising from walls that are six feet thick at the base and taper as they rise. It was an engineering achievement and a dead end simultaneously — walls that thick consumed too much rentable floor space. Its south half, completed just two years later in 1893 by Holabird and Roche, relied largely on a steel frame instead, freeing much of its walls from carrying the load. The two halves of the same building under the same roof represent the precise transition point between two eras of construction technology. Walk through the building north to south and you pass from one architectural era into the next. The name comes from Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire. The building still operates as commercial office space with ground-floor retail. The north half's subtly battered (inward-sloping) base and curved purple-brown brick facades have no ornament and need none.