Wright was no stranger to Daniel H. Burnham and John Wellborn Root’s late-1880s Chicago office building when he was commissioned to remodel the entrance and first-floor public areas in 1905. Wright himself had maintained an office there from 1898 to 1899. His design for the lobbies included refacing walls and encasing the metalwork of courtyard columns with white marble, unifying the three large first-floor spaces. The gilded relief of the marble panels reflects Wright’s own interpretation of Root’s ornamental schemes elsewhere in the building. Wright also designed the geometric light fixtures, replacing large electroliers on the courtyard stairways with marble urns of similar scale.