The Fountainhead: Part 1: Chapter 10 Summary & Analysis

Ralston Holcombe, president of the Architects’ Guild of America (the A.G.A.), believes that one should not put “originality over Beauty” and he favors the style of the Renaissance. Kiki Holcombe, his wife, maintains a salon on architecture that meets every Sunday, and Keating attends reluctantly because it bores him. There, he sees Dominique again and persuades Francon to introduce them, which he does, telling Keating not to blame him for it afterwards. Dominique immediately tells Keating she and her father don’t get along and that he would like Keating to treat her horribly, but that she knows Keating will want to be nice to her.

When discussing the house she’d criticized in the Banner, Dominique says that Keating ended up being the victim of one of “her rare attacks of honesty.” She says she also likes to be unpredictable, which is why she praised the horrible capitol that Holcombe designed. They talk about Toohey, and Dominique calls him “wonderful” and the “perfect black-guard” in the same sentence. She says Toohey is perfect, like “a monolith,” while everyone else seems broken up in comparison. Francon drives Keating home after the party, and he tells him he’s impressed that Keating managed to talk to Dominique for so long. He seems worried about his daughter because she “just won’t behave like a human being.” He says that perhaps Keating will be “the man to handle her.”

In another part of the city, John Erik Snyte tells his designers that they have a project that could potentially bring them a lot of honor—Austen Heller is looking for architects to design his house, and he was unhappy with the work of two other firms. Roark asks him what Heller wants, and Snyte tells him that Heller wants “a building that would mean something”—a house different from the other houses he sees.

Snyte takes his designers to Connecticut to show them Heller’s site—a rocky cliff over the sea. While the other designers start drawing as soon as they get back to the office, Roark returns alone to the site many times. He loves Heller’s house already. When he is done designing it, he is exhausted. The house he has designed looks like an extension of the cliff it would stand on, and it follows the lines of the rocks and the sea, rising in many levels. Two days later, when Snyte chooses the design that will be sent to the client, Roark sees that his house has won—but Snyte has made some changes to make it look more conventional.

When Heller sees the drawing Snyte shows him, he says it is close to what he has in mind but that it still lacks integrity. He doesn’t like the flourishes that Snyte has tacked on. Roark approaches, uninvited, and uses his dark pencil to make corrections on the drawing. When Snyte gets over his shock and tries to stop him, Heller holds him back. When Roark is done, Snyte tells him he’s fired, but Heller invites Roark to go to lunch with him. There, he asks Roark if he can design and build the house for him, and Roark says he can. Heller makes out a check to “Howard Roark, Architect.”