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.
