While the technical innovations of the First Chicago School had been sensational, what it needed to become a truly notable architectural movement was style. It was almost fireproof the thin curtain walls hung from the steel frame allowed for more interior rental space new floors could be added easily and since the exterior walls were no longer essential to holding up the building, they could be cut away and replaced by ever larger expanses of glass, an important consideration in the early era of electrical lighting. This new construction, while costly, had overwhelming advantages. Thus the Home Insurance Building at the northeast corner of LaSalle and Adams Streets became a truly seminal structure. ![]() After work began, the Carnegie-Phipps Steel Company, realizing the potential of a vast new market, informed Jenney that it could supply him with steel instead of iron beams. ![]() When, in 1884, the Home Insurance Company asked Jenney to design an office tower, the architect designed an iron skeleton to bear the weight of the structure. In 1868 Jenney established an office in Chicago which became the training ground for a number of leading architects of the First Chicago School, including, among others, Martin Roche, William Holabird, and Louis Sullivan. In the process he had mastered the nuances of metal construction. (Among his classmates was Gustave Eiffel.) During the Civil War Jenney had been assigned the task of demolishing buildings and bridges. Jenney had in 1853 enrolled in Paris's prestigious École Centrale des Arts et Manufactures. William Le Baron Jenney constructed the world's first completely The early structures of the First Chicago School, such as the Montauk and the Auditorium, had traditional load-bearing walls of brick and stone, but it was the metal skeleton frame that allowed the architects of the First Chicago School to perfect their signature edifice, the In 1894 Adler & Sullivan developed a type of caisson construction for the Chicago Stock Exchange which quickly became routine for tall buildings across the United States. Dankmar Adler's experience as an engineer with the Union army during the Civil War helped him devise a vast raft of timbers, steel beams, and iron I-beams to float the But Baumann's foundation occupied valuable basement space and could support only 10 stories.Īdler & Sullivan developed a far better solution. It was this type of foundation that Burnham & Root used for the Montauk Block (1882) on West Monroe Street. Chicago had a special problem, however: it stood upon a swamp.Īs early as 1873, Frederick Baumann had proposed that each vertical element of a building should have a separate foundation ending in a broad pad that would distribute its weight over the marshy ground. One of the keys to this development was the invention of the elevator. ![]() Retailing would now be the place where the tall office building would be perfected. Quickly, the low buildings constructed just after the fire were seen as an inefficient use of valuable space.Ĭhicago was ready to experiment with daring solutions. By 1890 it had a population of more than a million people and had surpassed Philadelphia to become the second-largest metropolis in the United States. It is no mere accident that in the 1880s Chicago produced a group of architects, now known as the “First Chicago School,” whose work would have a profound effect upon architecture.Ĭhicago was a boomtown.
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