Cosmo-Slotnick's Most Beautiful Building In The World

Peter Keating, with the secret assistance of Roark, enters Cosmo-Slotnick’s “Most Beautiful Building in the World” contest to build a ten million dollar skyscraper for the company. In winning the competition, Keating solidifies his fame in the architecture community, but also seals his fate as a second-hander because he took credit for Roark’s design. The design was classically ornate Renaissance, which Roark cannot stand, but the public adores. Many say that despite the fact that The Fountainhead was set in New York City, Chicago was the basis for the novel, as its architectural history is as unique, various, and beautiful as they come. Around the same time period of the competition in the book, the Chicago Tribune sponsored a large campaign to build a new headquarters, which was …show more content…
Wright’s Fallingwater House parallels Roark’s Monadnock Valley. Raymond Hood may also be an inspiration for Peter Keating. Both won the “Most Beautiful Building in the World” competitions. Wright and Hood also had a falling out similar to Keating and Roark’s because of the March of the Centuries World’s Fair. Keating refuses to invite Roark, saying “I won’t work with Howard Roark. You’ll have to choose. It’s either he or I” (538). Roark appeals to the committee asking to design the Fair alone, which the committee refuses. For the 1933-1934 World’s Fair, a group of architects, led by Raymond Hood were put together and Wright was discluded. Wright called their architecture a sham. Similar to Roark, Wright released three radical designs of what he wished the Fair to look like if he alone had designed it. The Chicago Tribune building is a perfect representation of the Cosmo-Slotnick building. Both buildings, fictional and real share conspicuous historicist styles of architecture and their designers share undisputable similarities in their rise to fame and relationships with their