There was little response to Roark’s fame among the solid gentlemen of wealth who were the steadiest source of architectural commissions. The men who had said: “Roark? Never heard of him,” now said: “Roark? He’s too sensational.”
But there were men who were impressed by the simple fact that Roark had built a place which made money for owners who didn’t want to make money; this was more convincing than abstract artistic discussions. And there was the one-tenth who understood. In the year after Monadnock Valley Roark built two private homes in Connecticut, a movie theater in Chicago, a hotel in Philadelphia.
In the spring of 1936 a western city completed plans for a World’s Fair to be held next year, an international exposition to be known as “The March of the Centuries.” The committee of distinguished civic leaders in charge of the project chose a council of the country’s best architects to design the fair. The civic leaders wished to be conspicuously progressive. Howard Roark was one of the eight architects chosen.
When he received the invitation, Roark appeared before the committee and explained that he would be glad to design the fair–alone.
“But you can’t be serious, Mr. Roark,” the chairman declared. “After all, with a stupendous undertaking of this nature, we want the best that can be had. I mean, two heads are better than one, you know, and eight heads…why, you can see for yourself–the best talents of the country, the brightest names–you know, friendly consultation, co-operation and collaboration–you know what makes great achievements.”
“I do.”
“Then you realize…”
“If you want me, you’ll have to let me do it all, alone. I don’t work with councils.”
“You wish to reject an opportunity like this, a shot in history, a chance of world fame, practically a chance of immortality…”
“I don’t work with collectives. I don’t consult, I don’t cooperate, I don’t collaborate.”
There was a great deal of angry comment on Roark’s refusal, in architectural circles. People said: “The conceited bastard!” The indignation was too sharp and raw for a mere piece of professional gossip; each man took it as a personal insult; each felt himself qualified to alter, advise and improve the work of any man living.
“The incident illustrates to perfection,” wrote Ellsworth Toohey, “the antisocial nature of Mr. Howard Roark’s egotism, the arrogance of the unbridled individualism which he has always personified.”
Among the eight chosen to design “The March of the Centuries” were Peter Keating, Gordon L. Prescott, Ralston Holcombe. “I won’t work with Howard Roark,” said Peter Keating, when he saw the list of the council, “you’ll have to choose. It’s he or I.” He was informed that Mr. Roark had declined. Keating assumed leadership over the council. The press stories about the progress of the fair’s construction referred to “Peter Keating and his associates.”
Keating had acquired a sharp, intractable manner in the last few years. He snapped orders and lost his patience before the smallest difficulty; when he lost his patience, he screamed at people: he had a vocabulary of insults that carried a caustic, insidious, almost feminine malice; his face was sullen.
In the fall of 1936 Roark moved his office to the top floor of the Cord Building. He had thought when he designed that building, that it would be the place of his office some day. When he saw the inscription: “Howard Roark, Architect,” on his new door, he stopped for a moment; then he walked into the office. His own room, at the end of a long suite, had three walls of glass, high over the city. He stopped in the middle of the room. Through the broad panes, he could see the Fargo Store, the Enright House, the Aquitania Hotel. He walked to the windows facing south and stood there for a long time. At the tip of Manhattan, far in the distance, he could see the Dana Building by Henry Cameron.
On an afternoon of November, returning to his office after a visit to the site of a house under construction on Long Island, Roark entered the reception room, shaking his drenched raincoat, and saw a look of suppressed excitement on the face of his secretary; she had been waiting impatiently for his return.
“Mr. Roark, this is probably something very big,” she said. “I made an appointment for you for three o’clock tomorrow afternoon. At his office.”
“Whose office?”
“He telephoned half an hour ago. Mr. Gail Wynand.”
2.
A SIGN hung over the entrance door, a reproduction of the paper’s masthead:
THE NEW YORK BANNER
The sign was small, a statement of fame and power that needed no emphasis; it was like a fine, mocking smile that justified the building’s bare ugliness; the building was a factory scornful of all ornament save the implications of that masthead.
The entrance lobby looked like the mouth of a furnace; elevators drew a stream of human fuel and spat it out. The men did not hurry, but they moved with subdued haste, the propulsion of purpose; nobody loitered in that lobby. The elevator doors clicked like valves, a pulsating rhythm in their sound. Drops of red and green light flashed on a wall board, signaling the progress of cars high in space.
It looked as if everything in that building were run by such control boards in the hands of an authority aware of every motion, as if the building were flowing with channeled energy, functioning smoothly, soundlessly, a magnificent machine that nothing could destroy. Nobody paid any attention to the redheaded man who stopped in the lobby for a moment.
Howard Roark looked up at the tiled vault. He had never hated anyone. Somewhere in this building was its owner, the man who had made him feel his nearest approach to hatred.
Gail Wynand glanced at the small clock on his desk. In a few minutes he had an appointment with an architect. The interview, he thought, would not be difficult; he had held many such interviews in his life; he merely had to speak, he knew what he wanted to say, and nothing was required of the architect except a few sounds signifying understanding.
His glance went from the clock back to the sheets of proofs on his desk. He read an editorial by Alvah Scarret on the public feeding of squirrels in Central Park, and a column by Ellsworth Toohey on the great merits of an exhibition of paintings done by the workers of the City Department of Sanitation. A buzzer rang on his desk, and his secretary’s voice said: “Mr. Howard Roark, Mr. Wynand.”
“Okay,” said Wynand, flicking the switch off. As his hand moved back, he noticed the row of buttons at the edge of his desk, bright little knobs with a color code of their own, each representing the end of a wire that stretched to some part of the building, each wire controlling some man, each man controlling many men under his orders, each group of men contributing to the final shape of words on paper to go into millions of homes, into millions of human brains–these little knobs of colored plastic, there under his fingers. But he had no time to let the thought amuse him, the door of his office was opening, he moved his hand away from the buttons.
Wynand was not certain that he missed a moment, that he did not rise at once as courtesy demanded, but remained seated, looking at the man who entered; perhaps he had risen immediately and it only seemed to him that a long time preceded his movement. Roark was not certain that he stopped when he entered the office, that he did not walk forward, but stood looking at the man behind the desk; perhaps there had been no break in his steps and it only seemed to him that he had stopped. But there had been a moment when both forgot the terms of immediate reality, when Wynand forgot his purpose in summoning this man, when Roark forgot that this man was Dominique’s husband, when no door, desk or stretch of carpet existed, only the total awareness, for each, of the man before him, only two thoughts meeting in the middle of the room–“This is Gail Wynand”–“This is Howard Roark.”
Then Wynand rose, his hand motioned in simple invitation to the chair beside his desk, Roark approached and sat down, and they did not notice that they had not greeted each other.
Wynand smiled, and said what he had never intended to say. He said very simply:
“I don’t think you’ll want to work for me.”
“I want to work for you,” said Roark, who had come here prepared to refuse.
“Have you seen the kind of things I’ve built?”
“Yes.”
Wynand smiled. “This is different. It’s not for my public. It’s for me.”
“You’ve never built anything for yourself before?”
“No–if one doesn’t count the cage I have up on a roof and this old printing factory here. Can you tell me why I’ve never built a structure of my own, with the means of erecting a city if I wished? I don’t know. I think you’d know.” He forgot that he did not allow men he hired the presumption of personal speculation upon him.