Early sketches show a 13-story building with Ancient Egyptian ornament and a slight flaring at the top, divided visually into five sections with a lotus-blossom decorative motif. This design was never approved, as Brooks waited for the real estate market in the south Loop, still mostly warehouses, to improve. Where Root was known for the detailed ornamentation of his designs (as seen in the Rookery Building), Brooks was known for his stinginess and preference for simplicity. For the Monadnock, Brooks insisted that the architects refrain from elaborate ornamentation and produce instead "the effect of solidity and strength, or a design that will produce that effect, rather than ornament for a notable appearance." In an 1884 letter to Aldis, he wrote: While Root was on vacation, Burnham had a draftsman create a "straight up-and-down, uncompromising, unornamented facade." Objecting at first, Root later threw himself into the design, declaring that the heavy lines of an Egyptian pyramid had captured his imagination and that he would "throw the thing up without a single ornament".