Has the story of the architect's life, then, been a kind of blueprint for Monaghan's own?
"Oh, I don't know," he replies. "I've read so much about Wright over the years that I suppose I may have absorbed some of [his example] unconsciously. It's Wright's buildings, though, that have always spoken to me in ways I can't put into words well. His sense of space, the details, the proportions . . . the feeling I get when I stand inside his structures. His life? I find that stuff entertaining, you know, but it really doesn't have much meaning for me beyond that. It definitely isn't something I've tried to emulate."
Honoring that distinction, one still sees in Monaghan a certain Wrightian talent for taking internal design elements and expressing them eloquently in external form. Wright was an engineer by training, and it was often said of his buildings that all one needed to know about his "organic" approach to interior space could be readily seen in the exterior line. Similarly, Monaghan has used pieces of his own experience and imagination to build monuments to his value system. He does this with personal history, making himself a public model of every earthly reward that virtue and perseverence can bring a man. ("If there's something material I want," he avers, "I only want the best of whatever it is, or I don't want it at all.")
He has done it with Domino's, a company "risked for principles" on several occasions, and one in which his belief in customer service has attained the status of religion. He does it with a wholly separate enterprise, Thomas S. Monaghan Inc., a combination real estate group, lease-and-lend resource for franchisees, and personal service firm. In three short years, TSM has grown from 3 employees to 75, matching the expansion of Monaghan's dreams. "If Tom decides he needs a helicopter to commute to Tiger Stadium in," explains director of research and development Gerald Custer, "he finds out exactly what he wants and calls us. We locate the right machine, arrange the financing, get the pilot, check his qualifications, set up the maintenance schedule, and hand him the keys. Whatever Tom puts in motion, we execute."
And now, with money almost literally no object, he is doing it with Domino's Farms. "I want the farm to have the same kind of feeling Wright had at Taliesin," said Monaghan last May. "Not a cold, commercial-type building, but a campus-type facility, surrounded by agriculture, where families can come and enjoy themselves. I worked on a farm as a kid, you know, and I guess I've always wanted to [recapture] the best things from that experience."
Gee, that green's too bright. I hadn't seen it up there before. It wasn't supposed to look that bright."
Monaghan is staring through the windshield of his chauffeur-driven Cadillac at the roof of his new office building. Flanking the Caddy are dozens of pieces of heavy machinery, all standing in a sea of mud.Workmen scramble everywhere, humming like bees over phase one of Domino's Farms, the first hard evidence of Monaghan's pastoral dream come to life. His gaze remains riveted on the partially painted, copper-shipped roof.
"I'm sure the samples weren't that green," he mutters, craning his neck for a better view. "We may have to change that."
Clamped under a hard that, he enters the building and begins meandering from room to room. Although much of the finish work on the 218,000-square-foot facility remains to be done, Monaghan moves through it with the practiced eye of a man who sees the detail behind the detail.
"My office is on two levels," he says, striding briskly down a second-floor corridor. "Up here will be my work area. They're designing me this huge circular desk, with built-in TV monitors and control panels and all sorts of other gadgets. I decided a while ago that I wanted to open this area up to visitors. My actual working office will be back here, this smaller space behind the partition."
The time already grows short between this mid-November Tuesday and moving day, December 9, the 25th anniversary of the founding of Domino's Pizza. Monaghan seems curious but untroubled. He examines some of the bronze-beaded wood paneling going into the split-level suite he and project architect Gunnar Birkerts collaborated on after he "decided to get personally involved."
"Down below is the conference room, a sunken seating area, and of course a big fireplace," he continues. "The bathroom's all done in marble. I even had them find me one of those big cracked-porcelain urinals that you used to see in train stations. My expercise room is over there. Did I mention the Japanese masseur? Sparky [Tiger manager Sparky Anderson] met him when he was touring over there with the Cincinnati Reds. He's supposed to be the finest in the world."
Superlatives roll easily off his tongue. Physiotherapists, like lighting fixtures or Shire horses, are "the finest," "the biggest," "the best in the world." When completed, the main complex at Domino's Farms will swell to 750,000 square feet, enough to house the scattered pieces of Domino's distribution subsidiary, the merchandising and supply arm for company commissaries and most of its stores; the new warehouse, says Monaghan, will be "the most modern of its kind anywhere."
