Henry Cameron retires, financially ruined, and Roark opens his own small office. In just a few years, he becomes a partner at the firm after he causes Francon's previous partner to have a stroke.

Roark and Cameron create beautiful work, but their projects rarely receive recognition, whereas Keating's ability to flatter and please brings him almost instant success. Roark's schoolmate, Peter Keating, moves to New York and goes to work for the prestigious architectural firm Francon & Heyer, run by the famous Guy Francon. He goes to New York to work for Henry Cameron, a once-famous and lauded, but now disgraced architect whom Roark admires. Howard Roark, a brilliant young architect, is expelled from his architecture school for refusing to follow the school's outdated traditions. The Fountainhead was made into a Hollywood film in 1949, with Gary Cooper in the lead role of Howard Roark, and a screenplay by Rand herself. The book was rejected by twelve publishers before a young editor, Archibald Ogden, at the Bobbs-Merrill Company publishing house wired to the head office, 'If this is not the book for you, then I am not the editor for you.' Despite generally negative reviews from the contemporary media, the book gained a following by word of mouth and sold hundreds of thousands of copies. The Fountainhead examines the life of an idealistic young architect, Howard Roark, who chooses to struggle in obscurity rather than compromise his artistic and personal vision by pandering to the prevailing taste in building design. The book's title is a reference to Rand's statement that 'man's ego is the fountainhead of human progress'. It was Rand's first major literary success and its royalties and movie rights brought her fame and financial security. The Fountainhead is a 1943 novel by Ayn Rand.

Peter keating the fountainhead