Chicago-Kent College of Law Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law 125th Anniversary Materials 125th Anniversary 2-23-2013 The Rookery Building and Chicago-Kent A. Dan Tarlock Chicago-Kent College of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/docs_125 Part of the Legal Commons, Legal Education Commons, and the Legal History Commons Recommended Citation Tarlock, A. Dan, "The Rookery Building and Chicago-Kent" (2013). 125th Anniversary Materials. 12. https://scholarship.kentlaw.iit.edu/docs_125/12 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the 125th Anniversary at Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in 125th Anniversary Materials by an authorized administrator of Scholarly Commons @ IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. For more information, please contact [email protected], [email protected]. 14 Then & Now: Stories of Law and Progress Rookery Building, Historic American Buildings Survey, Library of Congress. THE ROOKERY BUILDING AND CHICAGO-KENT A. Dan Tarlock hicago-Kent traces its ori- sustain Chicago as a world city, thus gin to the incorporation of making it an attractive and exciting the Chicago College of Law in place to practice law to the benefit C1888. Chicago-Kent’s founding coin- of all law schools in Chicago in- cided with the opening of the Rook- cluding Chicago-Kent. ery Building designed by the preem- The Rookery is now a classic ex- inent architectural firm of Burnham ample of the first school of Chica- and Root. There is a direct connec- go architecture which helped shape tion between the now iconic Rook- modern Chicago and continues to ery Building, located at Adams and make Chicago a special place, de- LaSalle, and the law school building spite decades of desecration of this further west on Adams. There is also rich architectural heritage. The Great a more indirect but interesting con- Fire of 1871 destroyed the Loop and nection between the first and second the newly developed residential ar- schools of Chicago architecture and eas to the north. It did, however, nar- Daniel Burnham’s vision of the mod- rowly miss the lumber yard which ern city. Architects, but especially occupied the site of the current law Daniel Burnham, helped make and school. Architects were immediately A. Dan Tarlock 15 attracted to Chicago because of the partially load-bearing, but the inte- opportunities to rebuild the city. rior used the state-of-the-art steel The skyscraper was perfected here, frame, developed by William Jenny, and this technological innovation, to permit it to become the tallest along with the telephone and Otis building in Chicago. The building Elevator, created the modern office is a mix of early modernist and ret- city by separating industrial pro- rospective styles. The walls of large duction from its administration. By windows allowed maximum use of 1888, Chicago, along with Buenos light because of the dimness of the Aires and Sao Paulo, was emerging 20 watt bulbs powered by Common- as a major example of a modern city wealth Edison’s first loop generating unconstrained by any significant ur- station across the street. The exterior ban past. The city had grown from building is also an example of Chi- about 100,000 persons when Lin- cago Romanesque. This style, whose coln was nominated for President, distinctive feature was the arch, was a few blocks from the current law based on pre-Gothic Romanesque school, to one million inhabitants architecture in southern France. Ini- and counting. tially adopted by Frank Richardson Chicago had surpassed Philadel- in Boston, the great Louis Sullivan phia and became America’s second brought it to Chicago. The Auditorium city. Chicago’s location as a rail and Theater, which opened in 1889, is water hub enabled it to become the the best surviving example. processing center for the agricultural After the elite lost interest in bounty of the Midwest and Great “modern architecture,” innovation Plains as well as the distribution cen- languished in Chicago until the ter for this region. For a brief period post–World War II modernist school of time, wealthy Chicagoans used emerged. Until the 1980s, Post-War their new wealth and power to pa- Chicago architecture was a monu- tronize a progressive group of archi- ment to Mies van der Rohe. Fleeing tects to build modern, forward-look- Nazi Germany, he ultimately settled ing cathedrals of commerce. in Chicago, headed IIT’s then De- A group of Chicago architects, partment of Architecture, designed led by Dankmar Adler, Louis Sul- its landmark campus, and more livan, John Root, Daniel Burnham generally helped make the German and later Frank Lloyd Wright, de- Bauhaus the dominant form of post– veloped a distinctive style of archi- World War II Chicago architecture. tecture geared to the technological The law school’s current building, innovations that were changing the which opened in 1992, is a synthesis nature of business. The Rookery is of the two great schools of Chica- a perfect example. The walls were go architecture. Its scale and facade 16 Then & Now: Stories of Law and Progress “Rookery Building, exterior,” photo from 1891, Images of America Collection, Frances Loeb Library. recall the post-fire Prairie School, the Encyclopedia of Chicago explains, especially the Rookery Building. “believed that the sometimes frantic However, the incorporation of an quest for ‘American-ness’—the ob- arch into early designs was rejected session with New World originality as disproportionate to the building. and horror of all things Europe- Not only is it about the same height, an—was itself a kind of insecurity, it was designed by Holabird and and that maturity would consist in Root, the successor firm to Burnham an acknowledgment that America and Root. The relatively austere stone was not culturally isolated from the facade, rather than a pure steel and rest of the world. Burnham and his glass frame characteristic of Mies’s associates saw the United States as main campus buildings, echoes the a rightful heir to the traditions of Rookery in both style and underly- Western culture.” ing philosophy. And, like the law, it Daniel Burnham’s larger legacy both respects the past and looks to for Chicago and its vibrant legal the future. Burnham rejected the ar- community is twofold. First, Prairie gument of Louis Sullivan and Frank School architecture both symbolized Lloyd Wright that America needed Chicago’s emergence as a world city a distinctive style of architecture. in the late nineteenth and early twen- Rather, “Burnham and his allies,” as tieth century by allowing it to drain A. Dan Tarlock 17 the surrounding region of both re- dard housing, rampant corruption, sources and talent, legal and other- and juvenile and gang violence have wise. This legacy along with Burn- provided endless opportunities for ham’s partially realized 1909 plan lawyers and future lawyers trying to also helped Chicago to evolve into a obtain justice for individuals caught major financial center, after its origi- in the net of poverty, corruption, nal industrial base of Chicago eroded brutality, and discrimination equally after World War II. The concentra- characteristic of Chicago, including tion of law firms to serve Chicago’s a young Columbia University grad- economy provided employment for uate (and Chicago-Kent commence- thousands of lawyers. ment speaker), Barack Obama. ◆ The second legacy of Burnham’s plan is much darker but also benefit- ted Chicago lawyers. The much hailed Sources and Further Reading ■ William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago plan envisioned Chicago as a great and the Great West (1987). city in the mold of Paris or Imperial ■ Encyclopedia of Chicago, www.encyclopedia.chi- cagohistory.org. Vienna. But the plan primarily con- ■ George A. Larson, Jay Pridmore & Hedrich centrated on a magnificent core and Blessing, Chicago Architecture and Design (2005). ■ Donald L. Miller, City of the Century: The Epic of lakefront for the wealthy. The un- Chicago and the Making of America (1997). ruly, poor, polluted, and dangerous ■ Carl Smith, The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham rest of the city, home to the waves of and the Remaking of the American City (2006). immigrants from around the world and migrants from other parts of the country, was depicted only by end- A. Dan Tarlock received his under- graduate and law degrees from Stanford less low rise, uniform blocks. In other University. He joined the Chicago-Kent words, the city that actually existed faculty in 1982 after teaching at the Uni- was largely ignored. It was left to versity of Kentucky and Indiana Uni- others to deal with what was in fact versity, Bloomington. Professor Tarlock happening on the streets of Chica- is one of the founders of the law school’s go. In the twentieth century, Chi- Program in Energy and Environmental Law. He has taught energy law, environ- cago’s continuing attempts to deal mental law, land use control, property with urban problems such as racial and water law and has published widely segregation, urban poverty, substan- in these fields..