Everything about John Wellborn Root totally explained
John Wellborn Root (
January 10,
1850 –
January 15,
1891) was a significant
American architect who worked out of
Chicago with
Daniel Burnham. He was one of the founders of the
Chicago school style. Root was born son of
Sidney Root in
Lumpkin, Georgia, and raised in
Atlanta. When Atlanta fell during the
American Civil War, he fled to the
Liverpool in the
United Kingdom, it said his later work was influenced by the work of Liverpool Architect
Peter Ellis. While there he studied at
Clare Mount School. He returned to the U.S. and received a degree from
New York University in 1869. After he graduated, Root took a job with
James Renwick, Jr. of Renwick and Sands of New York as an unpaid apprentice. Later he took a job with J.B. Snook in New York. While working for
John Butler Snook, he was a construction supervisor on
New York City's
Grand Central Station. He and
Daniel Burnham formed the firm of
Burnham and Root and worked together for 18 years. During an economic downturn in 1873, he earned extra income by hiring himself out to other firms and as the organist at the First Presbyterian Church.
He developed the
floating raft system of interlaced steel beams to form the foundation of tall buildings that wouldn't sink in Chicago marshy soil for the
Montauk building in 1882. He later transferred this steel frame to the vertical load bearing walls in the Phenix building of
1887, in imitation of
William LeBaron Jenney's
Home Insurance Building of 1885. He worked on the plan for the
World's Columbian Exposition but died before it was constructed. Along with many other famous Chicago architects, his final resting spot is in
Uptown's
Graceland Cemetery.
Root, Burnham,
Dankmar Adler, and
Louis Sullivan formed the
Western Association of Architects because they felt slighted by East Coast architects. Root served as president in 1886. In
1887, he was elected a director of the national
American Institute of Architects.
Root married Mary Louise Walker in 1879 but she died six weeks later. He married again in
1882 to Dora Louise Monroe.
Root died from
pneumonia in 1891 at the age of 41.
His son
John Wellborn Root, Jr. was also a Chicago architect
Significant buildings
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