The Fountainhead: Part 1: Chapter 13 Summary & Analysis

Jimmy Gowan approaches Roark to build his filling station because he likes the Heller house. He has worked very hard for 15 years, saving for a business of his own. People he knows try to talk him out of hiring Roark, but Gowan listens to their objections politely but isn’t dissuaded. The filling station opens in December and it is “a study in circles,” like “shapes caught in a flow.”

This is Roark’s last commission for months. Heller asks him if he’s worried but Roark says he’s not—he’s just waiting for his “kind of people.” He says he needs other people to give him work, but that he doesn’t need people in “a closer, more personal way.” Heller laughs and says Roark is “a self-centered monster” who is more monstrous because he is “utterly innocent about it,” and Roark agrees. Heller says that he can’t understand why he always feels that Roark is “the most life-giving person” he’s ever met, since he is also the coldest.

Mrs. Wayne Wilmot is a fan of Austen Heller’s and approaches Roark in February, saying she wants him to be her architect because he was Heller’s. She has never really seen the Heller house but would like Roark to design her house in the Tudor style because her friends think it would suit her. Roark refuses, thinking that there is no such person as Mrs. Wilmot—there is only “a shell containing the opinions of her friends.”

In March, Heller sends Roark a man named Robert L. Mundy, who wants to build a house in Connecticut. He explains to Roark that he is rich now but spent many hard years without much money, and the dream of his house kept him going. Then, when he had the money for it, he was afraid to build it, but he finally has decided to. Roark understands him. Mundy wants his house to look just like a grand plantation house he saw while growing up in Georgia. Roark tries to explain to him that, by doing this, he would be building a monument to other people rather than asserting his freedom from them, but Mundy doesn’t really hear him. Roark turns down the commission.

In April, Nathaniel Janss meets with Roark, saying that his real estate company plans to build a small office building. He says he isn’t sold on Roark and is meeting him only because his friend Heller insisted. He asks Roark to convince him to hire him, and Roark argues against superfluous ornamentation and asks why ornaments have to be tacked on an office building to please the public. Janss seems convinced, and he tells Roark to make up some drawings to show to the board of directors. At the meeting, Janss tries to defend Roark’s designs, but Roark knows the board isn’t impressed. He receives his letter of rejection soon after.

John Fargo, who was once a pushcart peddler, wants to build a new department store and immediately decides that Roark is the man for the job. He has seen Gowan’s Service Station and Heller’s house and is very impressed, and he trusts Roark completely. Roark finally has work again.

In May, Roark is buried in work for the department store. He receives another commission from Whitford Sanborn, who owns an office building designed by Cameron and now wants to build a house in the country. Cameron recommends Roark for the job and Sanborn hires him, despite his wife’s objections—she wants the house to look like a French chateau. When Sanborn sees Roark’s sketches, he is pleased at the house of “plain fieldstone, with great windows and many terraces.” But his wife and their friends think the house look awful, and Mr. Sanborn is not very sure about it anymore, requesting Roark to make a few changes to appease his wife. Roark refuses, and Sanborn agrees to the original drawings.

But during the construction, Mrs. Sanborn demands several small changes—additional cupboards, a different kind of staircase—that raise the construction costs. Roark decides he needs to redesign one wing of the house to make it perfect, but Mr. Sanborn refuses, saying the house is too expensive already. Roark decides to proceed with the new design, paying for it himself, which is more than the commission he will receive. After the house is built, Mrs. Sanborn refuses to live in it, and the A.G.A. notes this in their bulletin: “Designed by one Howard Roark […] this house was found by the family to be uninhabitable. It stands now, abandoned, as an eloquent witness to professional incompetence.”