John Wellborn Root, born on 10 January 1850, was an American architect.
Background
John Wellborn Root was born on 10 January 1850 in Lumpkin, Georgia, the son of Sidney and Mary (Clark) Root. His father, a descendant of Thomas Root or Roote, one of the first settlers of Hartford, Connecticut, was a native of Vermont. As a lad, despite an eager wish to become an architect, he had been apprenticed to a jeweler. In his twenties he left the North and settled in Georgia, opened a dry goods store in Lumpkin, and married the daughter of Judge James and Permelia (Wellborn) Clark. The Clarks were a brilliant family, not without eccentricity. Judge Clark wrote voluminously, and carefully destroyed what he had written. An uncle of Mary Clark Root, John Wellborn, for whom the architect was named, was well-to-do and at one time a member of Congress; in middle life he suddenly gave all his wealth to the church and devoted himself to preaching to the poor.
Education
John Wellborn Root's talents showed early. He was a precocious musician as well as a draftsman, and is said to have made recognizable portraits at the age of seven. In the house in Atlanta to which the family moved during his boyhood he had a special studio room. When the Civil War began, Sidney Root invested all his spare capital in blockade runners and made a fortune trading with England. After the capture of Atlanta, John was sent to Liverpool where his father had many friends. He was put in school at Claremont, nearby, and in June 1866 matriculated at Oxford. He also continued to study music, especially the organ.
Soon after the close of the war the Roots settled in New York, where the father lost his fortune almost as swiftly as he had made it, and John entered the University of the City of New York as a sophomore in the civil engineering department.
He graduated in 1869 at the head of his class and was Commencement orator.
Career
Since the family fortunes were by the time of his graduating insufficient to allow him to be sent to Paris, he entered the architectural office of James Renwick the younger, where he stayed for a year without pay; then he got a job in the office of J. B. Snook, the designer of the old Grand Central Station.
In 1871, Peter B. Wight, who had seen some of Root's drawings in New York, invited him to Chicago to become head draftsman for the firm of Carter, Drake & Wight. Here in 1872-73 Root met another young draftsman, Daniel H. Burnham, and an instant sympathy developed between the two. In July 1873 they went into partnership.
The panic of that year almost at once wiped out their first prospect, a new suburb, and for a while their progress was difficult. They could only give part time to the partnership, spending the rest in other offices earning their office rent; at one time Root helped out by serving as organist in the First Presbyterian Church. Late in 1874 their first big job, the house for John B. Sherman, came to the office through a real estate friend of Root's, and after 1875 their rise was rapid and the firm of Burnham & Root became well known.
Burnham was the job-getter and developed the primary plan idea, while Root designed the exteriors--sometimes following rough sketches of his partner's, often developing the whole himself. His engineering training stood him in good stead; although he was never a brilliant mathematician, he had the creative engineering mind. Thus, in order to save space in the cellar of the ten-story Montauk Building he devised the system of grillage foundations, by which the weights on piers are spread over sufficient area by means of steel rails (he later used rolled beams) set criss-cross and embodied in concrete--a method more economical than the cut stone foundations formerly used. This method has since become standard practice except where loads are extraordinarily heavy.
Root's design was in many ways epoch-making. Though--like most of the work of his period, even that of the rebel, Louis Sullivan -- it was superficially based on the Romanesque of H. H. Richardson, it was all essentially personal and, as far as Root could make it, modern, honest, and structurally true. His business buildings showed a continually growing grasp of the fundamentals: the verticality, the uniformity, the composition of the whole became ever more important, the dressing of Romanesque detail less and less so. The climax was the Monadnock building. Its simplicity was the result of a suggestion by Burnham, but the superb working out of that simplicity, the beauty of proportion, the masterly handling of the simple base and the slight outcurving of the cornice, were all Root's and these created a building that more than a generation later still seems modern.
The cooperation between Burnham and Root was superb. Each, in his way, idolized the other, and to Burnham's freely expressed admiration for his partner's talents is due in no small measure their success.
Root was one of the founders of the Western Association of Architects, and was instrumental later in its merging with the American Institute of Architects, of which he was secretary at the time of his death.
When Chicago was finally settled upon as the location for the World's Columbian Exposition, it was natural that Root, as the foremost Chicago architect, should be appointed consulting architect (August 1890); on September 4, 1890, at his request, this appointment was changed to include his partner.
The World's Fair activity was the climax of his life.
It was after a dinner to the architects that he caught a cold which rapidly developed into the pneumonia from which he died.
Root was co-author with Russell Sturgis, Bruce Price, Donald G. Mitchell, and others, of Homes in City and Country (published in 1893, after his death), to which he contributed "The City House in the West. "
Achievements
In order to save space in the cellar of the ten-story Montauk Building Root devised the system of grillage foundations, by which the weights on piers are spread over sufficient area by means of steel rails (he later used rolled beams) set criss-cross and embodied in concrete--a method more economical than the cut stone foundations formerly used. This method has since become standard practice except where loads are extraordinarily heavy.
They could only give part time to the partnership, spending the rest in other offices earning their office rent; at one time Root helped out by serving as organist in the First Presbyterian Church.
Membership
Root was one of the founders of the Western Association of Architects.
Personality
Root was exceedingly popular. He loved playing the piano, chiefly extemporizing, and his playing was widely appreciated; it was much more than a mere amateur's talent. Next to music, his chief recreation was sailing. He was witty and something of a Bohemian; as an amateur actor he was widely sought; and this personal popularity helped his professional reputation.
Interests
Music & Bands
He loved playing the piano, chiefly extemporizing, and his playing was widely appreciated; it was much more than a mere amateur's talent.
Connections
John Root married Mary Louise Walker in 1880; already a victim of tuberculosis, she died six weeks after the wedding. On December 12, 1882, he married Dora Louise Monroe. They had three children, two daughters and a son who became an architect.
Father:
Sidney Root
Mother:
Mary (Clark) Root
Granfather:
James Clark
Wife:
Mary Louise
John Root married Mary Louise Walker in 1880; already a victim of tuberculosis, she died six weeks after the wedding.
Wife:
Dora Louise
On December 12, 1882, he married Dora Louise Monroe.
