Buddhist Burnham and Root

click images for larger view
(and apologies for the sun catching a spec of dust on the lens)

 It's one of the few surviving works by architect John Wellborn Root, and one of his last.  He designed it just before he died prematurely in January of 1891, just days after holding a dinner at his Astor Street home for the architects who would create the buildings for 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, and insisting on seeing each one to their carriage on a bitterly cold night.

His partner Daniel Burnham completed construction for a largely Polish congregation, and the Immanuel Presbyterian Church  opened at 1035 West 31st street in 1892.    It's a compact as a bulldog, as simplified as the Monadnock, sort of Boullée cenotaph . . .

 meets Dutch Medieval, complete with shallow brick buttresses . . .

None of the interior detail survives.  After the Presbyterians moved on, the building became a gym, and then a Knights of Columbus Hall.  In 1994, it became home for the Lin Shen Tze Temple, which continues to be the tenant to this day.

John Wellborn Root was known to be a musical prodigy “who could sing before he could talk.”  Was that his spirit I sensed on Wednesday in the white-shelled sanctuary, contemplating the passage of time and joining in with the chanting?

Chicago Streetscene: Tree on Root

click on image for larger view

Live in John Wellborn Root's house: just $3,250,000!

This is the 1887 house that architect John Wellborn Root built for himself on Astor Street in Potter Palmer's then new Gold Coast. It is less than 19 feet wide. This is the house where he lived, and the house where, on a blustery January evening, he hosted a reception for the illustrious team of architectural superstars, the pride of both Chicago and the East Coast, who would design the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

This is where he insisted on seeing his guests to their carriages in the bitter cold, and where he died, only days later, from pneumonia. And this is the house where, just down the stairs from the bedroom where Root's body was already growing cold, in a state of shock from his partner's passing, Daniel Burnham agitatedly paced like a wounded lion, muttering to himself

I have worked. I have schemed and dreamed to make us the greatest architects in the world. I have made him see it and kept him at it—and now he dies—Damn! Damn! Damn!

In the Fall of 2006, the house changed hands for $1,950,000. A year later, it was again on the market with a price tag of $4,500,000. Now Prudential Rubloff is offering to you for a measly tariff of $3,250,000.

You can see purchase information, and photo's of the current interior, on the realtor's website here. You can read our previous history of the house here.