Root, John Wellborn, 1850-91, American architect, b. Lumpkin, Ga. He worked in New York City with James Renwick and became a partner of D. H. Burnham in Chicago. The firm created the modern type of highly organized architectural office suited to the planning of metropolitan buildings. Its partners were pioneers in the development of the steel-frame office building, and won international attention by their planning of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 1893. Root developed a type of ornament, based upon Romanesque design, that was later further developed by Louis Henry Sullivan.

John Wellborn Root, Jr. (1887 - 1963) was a significant U.S. architect based in Chicago. He was the son of architect John Wellborn Root. As a young man, he graduated from Cornell University and studied architecture at Paris' Ecole des Beaux-Arts, where he became friends with John Augur Holabird, the son of another famous Chicago architect. Root returned to the States and joined his friend on the architectural staff at Holabird & Roche in 1919.

After the deaths of William Holabird in 1923 and Martin Roche in 1927, the firm was reorganized under the new partnership of Holabird & Root. They worked on many dazzling projects in the late '20s and early '30s, before the Great Depression slowed new construction. These years are notable for the firm's many impressive Art Deco buildings.

The firm weathered the Depression and Root remained an active partner into old age.

Significant buildings

• Palmolive Building, 1929
• 333 North Michigan Building, 1928
• Chicago Board of Trade Building, 1930
• Chicago Daily News Building, 1929
• Chrysler Building at the Century of Progress 1933-34 World's Fair

References

Bruegmann, Robert. Holabird & Roche/Holabird & Root: An Illustrated Catalog of Works, 1880-1940. New York: Garland Publishing, 1991.

External links

• Holabird & Root's current website
• Holabird & Root Chicago Encyclopedia entry
• Holabird & Root Archive at the Chicago Historical Society