SKYSCRAPERS
Skyscrapers were invented in the United States. As early as the Eighteen-Eighties,
two new technical developments made these taller buildings possible. One development
was the mechanical elevator. It meant that people would not have to climb many steps to
reach the upper floors of tall buildings. The development of steel also helped make taller
buildings possible.
1885 First Skyscraper
The Home Insurance Building, erected at the northeast corner of LaSalle and
Adams streets is called the first skyscraper. Home Insurance Building was almost fifty-
five meters tall.
History of skyscrapers
In 1852 the first hydraulic elevator was made by Elisha Graves Otis and was
introduced one year later at the world exhibition in the Manhattan Crystal Palace. 1857
marked its first use in a building, the Haughwout Building in New York.
The most important invention for skyscrapers, however, was the steel skeleton,
with that it was possible to build very tall buildings. The new thing about it was that the
façade was now without any carrying function, it was like a second skin or shell. The
steel skeleton made building more flexible and created more room on each level without
any loss of the ground space. The expression the ‘curtain wall’ was used to refer to a
façade made of light materials like aluminum, chrome or glass, which were used for the
new facades of skyscrapers.
For a long time the Home Insurance Building in Chicago (1885) with its ten stories
was considered to be the first skyscraper because it used the steel skeleton technique.
However there were other buildings based on this technique before. For example, the
steel skeleton technique had already been used in the Crystal Palace or in the Eiffel
Tower. The first building which had a façade made entirely out of glass was the Hallidie
Building by William Polks (1917). This would have never been possible to realize if the
steel skeleton technique had not been invented.
The Chicago school of architecture 1880 - 1900
To describe Chicago as the birthplace of skyscraper architecture would not be very
accurate; however, it is the only metropolitan city where you can see the starting point of
architecture and follow it until today. During the big fire of 1871 in Chicago most of the
buildings melted and people had to realize that iron was not invulnerable. In order to
make buildings more resistant against, fire the architects coated the iron and steel
supports with face bricks.
The rapid increase of inhabitants from 1870 until 1890 made it necessary to create
the most space on the smallest ground, therefore the building of skyscrapers flourished.
Chicago soon became the leading city of service industries. While the city of New York
became more international and the buildings more enriched by ornaments, French style
patterns and a splendid interior, the buildings in Chicago were more practical, up-to-date
and lower in cost.
The architect Le Baron Jenny was the first of the architects of Chicago who sought
for practical architectural solutions. His seven stories high ‘First Leiter Building’ (1879)
had only the supports and the crossbeams of the façade faced and filled to create a screen
with huge windows. Since the façade was simple one could have thought this to be a loss
of the expression of art but instead it was a building of high originality and had already
many characteristics of the modernism.
Furthermore, one cannot talk about the strict, simple and mainly functional skeleton
constructions of the school of Chicago without mentioning, besides Jenny, the architects
Louis Sullivan and Burnham & Root who perfected the art of Chicago. Sullivan’s credo
“form follows function” became the base for modern architecture. The classical
skyscraper is structured in a base, a shaft and a capital. The base is the pedestal of the
lower stories; the smooth shaft includes some office stories, parted into similar windows
with pillars and ledges; the capital is a compromise of a roof ledge and a crown. His
three-part theory, based on his observations of nature is still considered to be true today.
His buildings form a total harmony of construction and natural entity; seldom did theory
and practical construction. By the early 1970s, when Citibank began plans for a huge new
headquarters tower in midtown New York, the art of designing and building a strong, safe
skyscraper seemed nearly perfected.
The skyscraper, like any other architectural form, had gone through a long period
of evolution. After Elisha Otis's successful introduction of the first safety-brake-equipped
elevator in the 1850s and the introduction of steel-frame construction, buildings began to
grow upward. In 1910, the Metropolitan Life building broke all records for height until
that time: it was 50 stories high.
By the 1930s, with the construction of the
102-story Empire State Building, skyscrapers, thanks to their widespread success, had
begun to sprout in many cities worldwide. Areas populated with these tall buildings
found them growing, literally, ever upward. The skyscraper, coupled with the
introduction of modern, efficient subway systems in cities like New York, made it
possible for companies to employ workforces unprecedented in size. Consequently, city
populations increased immensely.
By 1930, daring, creative architects and engineers had even begun to depart from
what had been accepted as the "traditional" method of designing and constructing
skyscrapers. Innovations in skyscraper design such as lighter materials, increased window
area, and cantilevered supports, resulted in taller, lighter, and slimmer buildings. For
instance, Chicago's record-breaking Hancock Building, incorporating an innovative
system of diagonal bracing that allowed the building to be much leaner and lighter than it
could be if it had been constructed in a traditional manner.
Examples
19th Century Architecture
Skyscrapers
GB Post: N.Y. World
Building, 1890. 309' ht.
RM Hunt: N.Y. Tribune
Building, 1873-75
McKim, Mead and White: Madison
Square Garden, NY, 1889-9
New York Skyscrapers
1. Gillender Building, NYC, 1896-97. (demolished) Charles Berg and Edward H. Clark, architects.
273' ht. from a postcard.
2. New York World Building, New York, 1889-90. George B. Post, architect.
3. Madison Square Garden, New York, 1889-90. McKim, Mead & White, architects.
Park Row Building, 1896-99, R.H. Robertston, architect.
4. New York Tribune Building, New York, 1873-5. Richard Morris Hunt, architect.
Louis Sullivan and Dankmar Adler - Chicago Skyscrapers
Sullivan and Adler: Auditorium
Building, Chicago, 1887-89 Sullivan and Adler:Guaranty
Building, Buffalo, 1894.
