First skyscraper chicago 18859/18/2023 ![]() Luckily, two pivotal inventions from the mid-19th century made the introduction of soaring steel-framed buildings possible. And with the Great Fire as their lesson, architects also knew these structures had to be much more durable than those that had been so easily destroyed. With commerce and industry downtown exploding exponentially, these structures had to accommodate more residential space and more office space - leading to verticality as a solution. As the city looked to rebuild, architects pondered what the next generation of urban structures looked like. But it was a devastation that gave way to the opportunity to rebuild anew. How the World’s First Skyscraper Came to Be But did you know Chicago was also home to the world’s first ever skyscraper? Today we’re taking a look at the historic Home Insurance Building and how it came to be. While many of the buildings inspired by the Home Insurance Building still stand, the source of the inspiration itself fell to the wrecking ball in 1931, to make way for another skyscraper, the Field Building.Chicago boasts many historical architectural feats - it was the host of the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 and the playground of greats including Frank Lloyd Wright and Louis Sullivan. These skyscrapers rapidly became tourist destinations for the views of the wider city they provided from their upper floors and as attractive sites in their own right. The movement quickly caught on in Chicago, and by 1893, less then ten years after the Home Insurance Building was completed, the city had built twelve skyscrapers between 16 and 20 stories tall, tightly clustered in the center of the financial district. Buildings of this style was characterized by the use of steel-framework with masonry cladding, allowing large plate-glass window areas and limited exterior ornamentation. ![]() The Home Insurance Building not only did stand, it gave rise to an entirely new architectural movement called Chicago School. ![]() They even temporarily halted construction of the building, after it was permitted, in order to investigate further whether the building could really stand up on its own. When Jenney submitted his designs to the city council, the committee was incredulous. The Home Insurance Building weighed only one-third as much as a masonry building would have. This allowed buildings to be taller as well as lighter than masonry buildings of identical size and height. In Jenney's design, the walls were thin because the load of the building was borne by the steel frame rather than the walls. Until then buildings were constructed with thick load-bearing walls. Monadnock Building: The Last Brick Skyscraper Designed by architect William Le Baron Jenney, the Home Insurance Building was a major technological improvement, one that dictated skyscraper construction for decades to come. Rather it was in Chicago in 1885, where the first building was constructed using a skeleton of steel columns and beams rather than massive masonry walls. The modern phenomenon of skyscrapers developed in America, but it might surprise you to learn that it wasn’t Manhattan where the first skyscraper went up. Then in the later part of the 19th century, with economic prosperity and advancement in construction technology buildings began to supersede in height, and the term skyscraper was applied to these soaring steel-framed constructions. Photo credit: Underwood & Underwood/Corbisīefore “skyscraper” became a synonym to tall buildings, it was used to describe in jest anything that was tall, such as a tall horse or a tall man, or tall hats and bonnets, or the sail at the top of a ship's mast. The Home Insurance Building built in 1885, in Chicago, is often regarded as the world’s first skyscraper. In San Gimignano, in Italy’s Tuscany, there was once more than seventy towers, two hundred feet tall, all constructed before the 15th century. In the desert city of Shibam, in Yemen, there are mudbrick residential buildings as tall as ten stories, built in the 13th century. But the idea of multi-storied buildings was hardly new. The word “skyscraper” was used to describe a tall building for the first time during the construction boom that rippled across many America cities in the late 19th century. ![]()
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