Yet the Home Insurance Building also relied on old technology. All were key players in creating the muscular, structurally expressive office buildings that historians would come to call the first Chicago School of Architecture. The combination of structural innovation and flexible, light-filled interiors is said to have influenced future Chicago architectural giants who apprenticed in Jenney’s office, among them Daniel Burnham, Louis Sullivan, William Holabird and Martin Roche. In the background looms the Board of Trade Building. The metal internal structure of the old Home Insurance Building on South LaSalle Street is divided into sections that can be removed conveniently, seen in a photo circa Oct.
#OLDEST SKYSCRAPER CHICAGO WINDOWS#
(It was the the first use of the material in a building.) Windows could thus be larger, bringing in more natural light - a crucial economic advantage in an era of primitive electric lighting.
The architect used cast iron and wrought iron for his internal structure, switching to newly available steel for the upper floors. Army Corps of Engineers, appears to have improvised the structure, as he would have done when he designed fortifications at Shiloh and Vicksburg. Jenney, who had earned the rank of major in the Civil War during his hitch with the U.S. In contrast, Jenney’s Home Insurance Building did employ advanced structural technology, though the extent to which it did so is subject to debate. The buildings were, in essence, dinosaurs - large and impressive, but, structurally at least, exemplars of a dying breed. The walls also chewed up valuable interior space. Their thick exterior walls likely prevented ample amounts of natural light from entering offices. They point to the fact that lower Manhattan had tall office buildings on its Newspaper Row, like the clock tower-topped New York Tribune Building (a 260 footer), as early as 1875 - 10 years before the Home Insurance Building was completed.īut although the New York towers used commercial passenger elevators, which had been around since the 1850s, they were constructed of load-bearing masonry. New York’s proponents have long stressed that great height is the defining feature of skyscrapers. Along Newspaper Row: The New York World Building, second left, The Sun Building, The Tribune Building (with clock tower) and the Times Building. A photograph shows New York City Hall, at left, and Newspaper Row circa 1889.
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