IN 1895, critic Montgomery Schuyler confronted Monadnock Block in Chicago (Fig. I) and was exalted to an almost Transcendental response. This, one cannot help seeing, is thing itself, he wrote.' Some years later Lewis Mumford agreed with Schuyler's judgment; and recently, in surveying downtown Chicago, he wrote that Monadnock still was the handsomest office structure of all.2 Now if he modern high office block has been one of most distinctive architectural types to have appeared since Gothic cathedral, and if Monadnock Building truly is a superior example, it may seem odd that building has s ood since 1892 without inspiring efforts to discover its history or its meaning. But problem has lain submerged in quaint, engaging tale told by Harriet Monroe, poet, in her sentimental memoir of architectJohn Wellborn Root.3 Her story of Monadnock Building, accepted on faith, has been repeated by Mumford, Sigfried Giedion, and Carl Condit.4 Not that anyone thought she wrote with critical detachment; for Root was her brotherin-law, indeed a man for whom she bore almost unseemly affection (in her autobiography, published posthumously, she confessed she had remained unmarried for fear that no man could bear comparison with John Root).5 Yet her memoir was published only four years after Monadnock Building was finished, and it could be assumed that she wrote with authority. She did not. Her account was inaccurate both in detail and in substance; and it recklessly diminished extent of Root's deep involvement with building. Her legend was this: agent of clients urged extreme simplicity, rejecting Root's more ornate sketches; and while Root was spending a fortnight at seashore (a vacation he took in middle of July 1889), Daniel H. Burnham, his partner, ordered from one of draftsmen a design of an uncompromising brick box. Root, upon his return, was angry, but gradually caught spirit and got into his mind heavy, sloping lines of an Egyptian I. Montgomery Schuyler, D. H. Burnham & Co., Architectural Record, v, No. 2 (Dec. 1895), 56. 2. Lewis Mumford, The Sky Line, Nev Yorker, XXXIX, No. 42 (7 Dec. 1963), I43.