Several months after the resort’s completion, in the fall of the year, Roark and Mallory discover the reason for that fear. The resort is commercially successful. Roark had been correct in his conviction that there was a need for this kind of vacation spot. Even though Mr. Bradley’s staff virtually stopped advertising the place, within a month of its opening every house in Monadnock Valley was rented. The vacationers love the design, and word of mouth causes the resort to become private news. One magazine, unsolicited, prints four pages of photographs of Monadnock Valley and sends a writer to interview Roark. Before the end of the season, the houses are leased in advance for the following year. In October, the story hits the newspapers that Mr. Bradley and his gang built Monadnock Valley as a swindle. They acquired the land for very little and sold two hundred percent of its stock. They thought it was too out of the way and inaccessible, not near any train or bus lines. They thought the time was not right, that the low income of the Depression era precluded the construction of a successful resort. They had an ingenious scheme for declaring bankruptcy when the place failed, as they were sure it would. They chose Roark as the worst crank they could unearth to design the place, and thought that his plan for individualized recreational areas was an antisocial idea. They prepared for every contingency except success. Therefore, they cannot go on, because now they have to pay back twice the amount the place earns in a year, and, as Mallory points out, it earns plenty. Bradley and his gang are arrested and face trial and possible prison time for their fraudulent scheme. But Roark understands that, although the owners will now sue each other, the place will not be torn down and neither he nor Mallory will be dragged into the legal wrangles. Quietly, he goes on with his work.
Before Roark can rent a house at Monadnock Valley and spend the summer, as he intends, he is summoned back to New York to finally complete the construction of the Aquitania Hotel. He receives a telegram from Kent Lansing saying, “I told you I would, didn’t I? It took five years to get rid of my friends and brothers, but the Aquitania is now mine—and yours. Come to finish it.” After five years of legal battles, Kent Lansing now owns it outright; Lansing and Roark finish it together. Roark sees the rubble and the dust cleared away from the building’s girders. He sees the unfinished symphony completed and its light glowing at night in the city’s skyline.
Roark has been busy in the last two years. The resort at Monadnock Valley was not his sole job. From different parts of the country, requests came for him. The reasons were always the same: Individuals were in New York and liked the Enright House, the Cord Building, or both; or someone saw a picture of the Stoddard Temple and loved it. He designed these new structures—shops, private homes, small office buildings—on trains and planes that carried him from the construction site at Monadnock Valley to these far-off towns: “It was as if an underground stream flowed through the country and broke out in sudden springs that shot to the surface at random, in unpredictable places.” These are small jobs that do not generate publicity, but Roark is designing and building as he wants.
Because the financing behind the construction of Monadnock Valley is revealed to be fraudulent, there is a scandal in art circles as well as a trial, but Roark is not directly involved. Austen Heller writes an impassioned article in defense of Roark’s genius that creates a stir among those interested in the arts. Heller describes the buildings Roark has designed and the brilliant innovativeness of his work. He exhorts his readers to understand and appreciate the achievements of Roark’s career—and he does so not in his usual calm tones, but as an outraged cry against injustice: “And may we be damned if greatness must reach us through fraud!”
Ellsworth Toohey is worried. The commercial success of Monadnock Valley, the completion of the Aquitania Hotel, and the publicity generated by Heller’s article have once again brought Roark to the forefront of public attention. Toohey breaks his general silence regarding Roark to attack the architectural qualities of the Monadnock resort. He writes that Caleb Bradley’s morals were certainly questionable, but his artistic judgment was impeccable. Bradley, Toohey claims, was martyred by the bad taste of his customers. “In the opinion of this column his sentence should have been commuted in recognition of his artistic discrimination. Monadnock Valley is a fraud—but not merely a financial one.” Roark’s fame causes little change among the established gentlemen of great wealth, who are responsible for the preponderance of architectural commissions. Where previously their response was “Roark—never heard of him,” now it is, “Roark—he’s too sensational.” But there are entrepreneurs who are impressed by the simple fact that Roark made money at Monadnock for owners who did not want to make money. “This was more convincing than abstract artistic discussion.” Roark is gaining recognition. In the year after Monadnock, he builds two private homes in Connecticut, a movie theater in Chicago, and a hotel in Philadelphia. In the fall of 1936 Roark moves his office to the top floor of the Cord Building. At the time he designed it, he had intended that one day he would have his office there. He stops and looks briefly at the sign on the door that says simply, “Howard Roark, Architect.” His inner office contains three walls of glass, high over the city, from which he can see the Enright House, the Aquitania Hotel, and far to the south, the Dana Building designed by Henry Cameron. On a rainy day in November, returning from a construction site on Long Island, he is accosted by his secretary, who tells him that he just received an important phone call. He has an interview the following afternoon with Gail Wynand.
