One of Chicago's most venerable architectural firms, Holabird and Root, is also one of the oldest in continuous practice in the United States. Founded in 1880 by William Holabird and Martin Roche, Holabird and Roche became Holabird and Root in 1928 on the succession of John Holabird (1886-1945) and John Wellborn Root, Jr. With the change of name came a shift in design method. Although both men had trained in Paris in the Beaux-Arts tradition, they concluded that historicism was inappropriate for modern buildings. While nurturing the Chicago tradition of the skeletal frame, the firm achieved national acclaim by supplanting classicism and devising a distinctive architectural expression with their powerful, vertical, streamlined skyscrapers of the late 1920s. Some critics, such as Carl Condit, contend that Holabird and Root might have pioneered a new American architecture had the Great Depression not intervened.

Holabird and Root’s assertive new style was first proclaimed in two Michigan Avenue office towers in Chicago, 333 Michigan Avenue (1928) and the Palmolive Building (1929). These simplified skyscrapers, which comply with the 1916 zoning law that increased the cubic volume of buildings and required setbacks, replace the bulk and mass characteristic of earlier large buildings. As its sheer vertical walls soar over the city and the Chicago River, 333’s pared-down silhouette and complex massing adhere to the skeletal principle of the Chicago School while simultaneously anticipating modernism's preferences for slab design. Root, the firm’s chief designer (Holabird’s expertise was engineering and management), acknowledged the lasting influence of Eliel Saarinen’s second-place entry for the Chicago Tribune Tower competition (1922), which inspired 333’s tower and long, narrow design. The 37-story machine-age Palmolive Building contains an unprecedented number of setback volumes (six) that create a pattern of receding masses and define the building’s sculptural disposition. Deep window channels set in the wall plane accentuate its pronounced verticality. The Chicago Daily News Building (1929; now Riverside Plaza), for which the firm was awarded the coveted gold medal from the Architectural League of New York in 1930, paved the way for development along the Chicago River. It was the first building constructed on air rights over railroad facilities; its foundation is cantilevered over Union Station’s tracks, and ventilation shafts are incorporated into the design. As commuters shuffle through the 26-story building and gather in the city’s first public plaza, the vertical surge and horizontal span are in equilibrium.

Arguably, the most successful commission for Holabird and Root was the Chicago Board of Trade (1930). The country's foremost agricultural trading center required offices, an exchange floor, trading pits, and retail space. The building’s nine-story base fills an entire city block while the lean, symmetrically arranged setbacks bound toward a pyramidal hipped roof capped by a cast aluminum sculpture of Ceres, the Roman goddess of the harvest, by John Storrs. At 45 stories, it was once the city’s tallest structure. Its streamlined massing and refined detail epitomize the modernistic, Art Deco skyscraper. Prior to the Depression, these modern, rational office towers, enlivened by complicated massing, striking verticality, and dramatic lighting, generated much enthusiasm, causing some to regard Holabird and Root as successors to Louis Sullivan and Frank Lloyd Wright. Critic Earl Reed, Jr., maintained “nothing so significant has happened here since the pre-Columbian Exposition days which witnessed the coming to our streets of the epoch-making works of that mighty band which surrounded Sullivan” (Reed, 1930, 1).

Ornament was not antithetical to Holabird and Root's early towers. Low reliefs and stylized carving, at times rectilinear, as in the Board of Trade, and at times narrative, as in the frieze at 333 Michigan Avenue commemorating Chicago’s pioneer days, frequently appear above windows, along cornice lines, and at entryways. While decorative elements nod at tradition, they do not interrupt the broad expanse of the curtain wall. The fully unadorned structural frame did not gain prominence until the late 1930s, with the arrival of Mies van der Rohe, whom Holabird was influential in bringing to Chicago’s Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology). Modern detail was prominent in Holabird and Root’s interiors as well. Materials such as walnut, marble, glass, and nickel, as well as murals, sculpture, exotic motifs, and polychromatic patterning, signify the firm’s response to the eclecticism of Art Deco. Diana Court, in the Michigan Square Building (1930; demolished 1973), was one of the most resplendent interiors of the period with its kaleidoscopic semicircular rotunda of polished metalwork and marble. Design was undertaken by the firm’s in-house sculpture and interior design departments and by several fine artists, such as Carl Milles and John Norton. As a collaborative practice, Holabird and Root created complete environments in their signature buildings.

The firm reached its pinnacle in 1930 with its lofty, modern office towers that glorified American commercialism, yet Holabird and Root has mastered many building types, including theaters, capital buildings (North Dakota), courthouses (Birmingham, Alabama; Racine, Wisconsin; and St. Paul, Minnesota), railroad cars, hotels, public and private housing, exhibition buildings for Chicago’s 1933-34 Century of Progress Exposition, and research-and-development buildings, such as the innovative A.O. Smith Laboratory (1929) with its aluminum and glass facade and free-span interior spaces. Illinois Bell and Monsanto have relied on Holabird and Root’s utilitarianism and adaptability for more than 75 and 40 years, respectively. The hegemony of international modernism and an emphasis on engineering rather than design typified the firm’s post-World War II production; however, from the early 1970s to the present, inventive design practices have once again solidified its reputation. In educational, institutional, and corporate schemes, modernist principles regarding detail and structural refinement are employed.

Holabird and Root can be characterized as a rational and pragmatic team whose focus is on collaboration and innovation. With attention to client needs and the ability to carry a project through from design to production, the firm has made substantial contributions, from its authoritative role in the development of the skyscraper to the shaping of the urban and suburban environment. Despite its pursuit of a modernist typology, it has never been an avant-garde practice; instead, progressivism, adaptability, and sound design and construction characterize Holabird and Root’s most celebrated buildings of the late 1920s as well as many of their other buildings. The centenarian firm reflects the nature of architectural practice in the United States throughout much of the 20th century and, quite possibly, in the present century.

ANDREA FOGGLE PLOTKIN

Sennott R.S. Encyclopedia of twentieth century architecture, Vol.2 (G-O).  Fitzroy Dearborn., 2005.

Born in Union, New York, 11 September 1854. Studied engi- neering as a cadet at the United States Military Academy, West

Point, Virginia 1871-73. Married; son was John Holabird, ar- chitect. Draftsman, office of William Le Baron Jenney, Chicago 1873-80. Partner, with Ossian Simonds, Chicago 1880; partner, with Simonds and Martin Roche, Chicago 1881-83; partner, Holabird and Roche, Chicago from 1883. Member, Western Association of Architects; fellow, American Institute of Archi- tects 1889. Died in Evanston, Illinois, 19 July 1923.