Chicago’s Architectural Mainstay

“In the vast pageant of Chicago architecture, Holabird & Root is in every scene. From the Beaux Arts to Art Deco, from the era of Louis Sullivan to that of Mies van der Rohe and beyond, Chicago’s most venerable architecture firm has been continually onstage, often in a leading role — rarely flashy but always rock-solid, durable and reliable… Although Holabird & Root was rarely an innovator (except in its pioneering use of materials such as steel skeletons and pre-cast concrete), it had a way of adapting to the prevailing styles of the day successfully enough to produce memorable, even iconic structures — such as the original Soldier Field — that defined Chicagoans’ ideas of what civic architecture ought to look like.”