Chicago: The Birthplace of Skyscrapers [1885]

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Chicago has literally sprung from the ashes ... The Great Fire of 1871, gutted about a THIRD of the city; burning 17,000 buildings and leaving 100,000 people homeless. Although the fire was one of the largest U.S. disasters of the 19th Century, the rebuilding that began almost immediately spurring Chicago's development as one of the most important American cities ... Talk about a catasthrope that was turned into an oppurtunity to built an ultra modern city ...

Chicago had a special problem ... It stood on swamp ... It came up with DARING solutions ... constructed the world's first completely iron-and-steel-framed building in the 1880s ... the world's FIRST SKYSCRAPER ... The credit for this goes to the architect/engineer William LeBaron Jenney [the father of skyscrpers] ... who designed the Home Insurance Building in 1885 ... [it was demolished in 1931] ... What I find really interesting is that this first skyscraper was just 10-floors high and rose to a height of 138 feet [42 m]... But what was unique about it is that it was the first building entirely supported by a steel frame and so is considered the first skyscraper. In fact the building weighed only one-third as much as a stone building would have and the city officials were so concerned that they halted construction while they investigated its safety.

Soon the "iron-&-steel frame" skyscraper evolved into the signature edifice of Chicago School of Architecture ... This new construction, while costly, had overwhelming advantages. 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.

Although in early skyscrapers, the metal-frame were clothed in historical styles, with walls of brick and stones ... BUT eventually the walls become more GLASS than stone ... and we had the STEEL-&-GLASS buildings ...

So the catastrophic fire cleared way for the emergence of an ultra modern city. In fact many factors contributed to this new phenomenon:

Though many buildings were destroyed; but somehow the industrial base was left intact. The demand of office space was increasing; but since the land is bound by Lake and River; so the only way to expand was to GO UP.

In the early 19th century; important technical advances took place that made high-rise buildings possible; like: safety-elevators, electricity, fire-proofing, telephone-services.

Many architects setteled in Chicago ... like William LeBaron Jenney ... His office in Chicago which became the training ground for a number of leading architects of the First Chicago School [of architecture], including, among others, Martin Roche, William Holabird, and Louis Sullivan ... Later the Second Chicago School of architecture evolevd with prominent names like ... Ludwig Mies van der Rohe ... Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), C.F Murphy, Helmut Jahn ...

REFERENCE: Architecture: The First Chicago School click here ... from the Encyclopedia of Chicago ...