Monadknock Building
53 W. Jackson Boulevard
The Monadnock was the model for Henry Blake Fuller’s Clifton Office Building in The Cliff-Dwellers (1893). Fuller was one of the first writers to depict business and social life in “modern” Chicago and is credited as a pioneer in urban social realism. Dreiser, Norris, Upton Sinclair, Jame T. Farrell, Wright, and Algren, all benefitted from Fuller’s innovative approach. CLHOF’s Lifetime Achievement Award is named after Fuller.
This 1891 Burnham & Root structure, at 16 stories, was—and remains—the world’s tallest load-bearing masonry skyscraper. In The Cliff-Dwellers, Fuller’s description of the 18-story LaSalle Street Clifton Building, with its towering, sheer vertical brick facade and bustling internal ecosystem, is almost precisely in line with the Monadnock.
Fuller makes full use of this metaphorical “cliff” and its requisite canyons to comment on greed, especially among the business class but also among the city’s high society culture.
A marker on the Dearborn side of the street, is one of at least two "Chicago Cultural Walk" markers erected on Dearborn Street; a second one, about a half-block south, was removed in 2016. "Chicago Cultural Walk" markers can also be found on State Street, a few blocks to the east.
