Masonry Magazine August 1983 Page. 12
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ROOKERY continued
for many of the city's pigeons. Later, a temporary city hall
was built around the tank after it survived the Chicago fire
in 1871.
According to one legend, "One day an irate citizen
stormed into Mayor Joseph Medill's office and protested
against the pigeon population in the district. 'Why this
building is nothing but a rookery,' he complained. The
name stuck. Twenty years later, when the skyscraper was
erected, it was formally given the name of the Rookery."
(Chicago Daily News, April 30, 1955)
One Chicago citizen claims that most of the brickwork
on the Rookery was done by prison inmates, who at the
time were called "rookies."
In his book, The Architecture of John Wellborn Root,
Donald Hoffman offers an explanation similar to the first
story: "As legend had it, a man accosted the mayor about
the nuisance of pigeons, and he called the building a rook-
ery. Because the word so pithily alluded to the crowding
of the building as well as to its dilapidation, to municipal
corruption as well as to the bird nuisance, the public prints
had been happy to adopt it."
Hoffman went on to say. "However, for Root much of
the spirit of the building came from its name. The rook
was a handsome, gregarious kind of bird, and so was Root;
Atmospheric pollution of nearly a century has left a legacy of soil
and carbon deposits on the surface of the Rookery. On some sur-
faces it is as much as in. or more thick (top). In contrast, a cleaned
area (below) shows how the building will look after exterior resto
ration.
and he, for one, must have been willing to wager all along
that so pungent a name stood a very good chance of pre-
vailing. The value of the name resided in its wealth of
associations.
"At the LaSalle Street entrance the little rooks carved
in the gray granite imposts, which surely would have sat-
isfied Ruskin by evincing the muscular action of the hu-
man hand, were only the most literal allusion. For the
building was pervaded by intricacies and lush foliate in-
tertwinings (were they not nest-like?); and the framing of
the glass-and-iron vault of the court suggested countless
roosts, a most fantastic aviary."
Masonry will follow the progress of the restoration work
and present updates from time to time on this truly his-
toric structure which stands as a tribute to the skills of the
masonry artizans of old.
12 MASONRY-JULY/AUGUST, 1983