America's Favorite Architecture

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Photo by Carol M. Highsmith

Marvelously preserved, the Rookery is one of Burnham and Root’s last surviving commercial buildings in Chicago. The square building was designed around a central court surmounted by a skylight above the second story. Frank Lloyd Wright was commissioned to remodel the ground-floor lobby in 1905. In the 1940s the light court was covered with tar paper and paint, leaving the lobby dark until the late 1980s, when it was restored to its original grandeur.