Architecture of Chicago
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Chicago's Home Insurance Building is regarded as the world's first modern steel–framed skyscraper.

The architecture of Chicago has influenced and reflected the history of American architecture. The city of Chicago, Illinois features prominent buildings in a variety of styles by many important architects. Since most buildings within the downtown area were destroyed (the most famous exception being the Water Tower) by the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, Chicago buildings are noted for their originality rather than their antiquity.


Contents

History

Chicago skyline
See also: Chicago school (architecture) and Chicago Loop

Beginning in the early 1880s, the Chicago School pioneered steel-frame construction and, in the 1890s, the use of large areas of plate glass. These were among the first modern skyscrapers. William LeBaron Jenney's Home Insurance Building of 1885 is often considered to be the first to use steel in its structural frame instead of cast iron, but this building was still clad in heavy brick and stone. However, the Montauk Building, designed by John Wellborn Root Sr. and Daniel Burnham, was built in 1882–1883 using structural steel. In his account of the World's Columbian Exposition and the serial murderer, H. H. Holmes, The Devil in the White City (2004), Erik Larson states that the Montauk became the first building to be called a "skyscraper" (Larson 2003: 29). Daniel Burnham and his partners, John Welborn Root and Charles Atwood, designed technically advanced steel frames with glass and terra cotta skins in the mid-1890s, in particular the Reliance Building; these were made possible by professional engineers, in particular E. C. Shankland, and modern contractors, in particular George A. Fuller.

The Chicago Building is a prime example of Chicago School architecture

Louis Sullivan was perhaps the city's most philosophical architect. Realizing that the skyscraper represented a new form of architecture, he discarded historical precedent and designed buildings that emphasized their vertical nature. This new form of architecture, by Jenney, Burnham, Sullivan, and others, became known as the "Commercial Style," but it was called the "Chicago School" by later historians.

In 1892, the Masonic Temple surpassed the New York World Building, breaking its two year reign as the tallest skyscraper, only to be surpassed itself two years later by another New York building.

Daniel Burnham led the design of the "White City" of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition which some historians claim led to a revival of Neo-Classical architecture throughout Chicago and the entire United States. It is true that the "White City" represented anything other than its host city's architecture. While Burnham did develop the 1909 "Plan for Chicago", perhaps the first comprehensive city plan in the U.S, in a Neo-Classical style, many of Chicago's most progressive skyscrapers occurred after the Exposition closed, between 1894 and 1899. Louis Sullivan said that the fair set the course of American architecture back by two decades, but even his finest Chicago work, the Schlesinger and Meyer (later Carson, Pirie, Scott) store, was built in 1899--five years after the "White City" and ten years before Burnham's Plan.

St. John Cantius, one of Chicago's 'Polish Cathedrals'.

Sullivan's comments should be viewed in the context of his complicated relationship with Burnham. Erik Larson's history of the Columbian Exposition, "Devil in the White City" correctly points out that the building techniques developed during the construction of the many buildings of the fair were entirely modern, even if they were adorned in a way Sullivan found aesthetically distasteful.

Frank Lloyd Wright's Prairie School influenced both building design and the design of furnishings.

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe's Illinois Institute of Technology campus in Chicago influenced the later Modern or International style. Van der Rohe's work is sometimes called the Second Chicago School.

Since 1963, a "Second Chicago School" emerged, largely due to the ideas of structural engineer Fazlur Khan.1 He introduced a new structural system of framed tubes in skyscraper design and construction. The Bangladeshi engineer Fazlur Khan defined the framed tube structure as "a three dimensional space structure composed of three, four, or possibly more frames, braced frames, or shear walls, joined at or near their edges to form a vertical tube-like structural system capable of resisting lateral forces in any direction by cantilevering from the foundation."2 Closely spaced interconnected exterior columns form the tube. Horizontal loads, for example wind, are supported by the structure as a whole. About half the exterior surface is available for windows. Framed tubes allow fewer interior columns, and so create more usable floor space. Where larger openings like garage doors are required, the tube frame must be interrupted, with transfer girders used to maintain structural integrity.

The first building to apply the tube-frame construction was the DeWitt-Chestnut apartment building which Khan designed and was completed in Chicago by 1963.3 This laid the foundations for the tube structures of many other later skyscrapers, including his own constructions of the John Hancock Centre and Sears Tower in Chicago, and can been seen in the construction of the World Trade Center, Petronas Towers, Jin Mao Building, and most other supertall skyscrapers since the 1960s.4 The Sears Tower would be the world's tallest building from its construction in 1974 until 1998 (when the Petronas Towers was built) and would remain the tallest for some categories of buildings until the Burj Dubai still under construction.

Numerous architects have constructed landmark buildings of varying styles in Chicago. Some of these are the so-called "Chicago seven": James Ingo Freed, Tom Beeby, Larry Booth, Stuart Cohen, James Nagle, Stanley Tigerman, and Ben Weese.

Timeline of notable buildings

Chicago Avenue Pumping Station
The Manhattan Building (right) on South Dearborn Street
The Chicago Merchandise Mart
Marina City from across the river
John Hancock
Buckingham Fountain.

Image Gallery

Krause Music Store in Lincoln Square

The Gateway Theatre's Solidarity Tower is a replica of the Royal Castle in Warsaw

Harold Washington Library

Emil Bach House, by Frank Lloyd Wright

McCormick Tribune Center, by Rem Koolhaas

Robie House, by Frank Lloyd Wright

S.R. Crown Hall, by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe

The Water Tower

A "Bungalow style" two-flat in Chicago's Portage Park neighborhood

St. Wenceslaus Roman Catholic Church in Avondale

Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral

Interior of Our Lady of Sorrows Basilica, East Garfield Park

Marina City

Tribune Tower

Wrigley Building

Merchandise Mart

See also


References

Notes

  1. ^ Billington, David P. (1985), The Tower and the Bridge: The New Art of Structural Engineering, Princeton University Press, pp. 234-5, ISBN 069102393X 
  2. ^ "Evolution of Concrete Skyscrapers". Retrieved on 2007-05-14.
  3. ^ Alfred Swenson & Pao-Chi Chang (2008). "building construction". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved on 2008-12-09.
  4. ^ Ali, Mir M. (2001), "Evolution of Concrete Skyscrapers: from Ingalls to Jin mao", Electronic Journal of Structural Engineering 1 (1): 2-14, http://www.ejse.org/Archives/Fulltext/200101/01/20010101.htm, retrieved on 30 November 2008 

Further reading

  • Pridmore, Jay and George A. Larson, Chicago Architecture and Design : Revised and expanded, Harry N. Abrams, Inc., New York, 2005. ISBN 0-8109-5892-9.

External links

v • d • e
Chicago Skyscrapers
Supertall Downtown Towers
Selected Downtown Towers
with 20 or more Floors
111 South Wacker Drive • 1700 East 56th Street • 181 West Madison Street • 311 South Wacker Drive • 330 North Wabash • 333 North Michigan • 333 Wacker Drive • 340 on the Park • 35 East Wacker • 55 East Erie Street • 77 West Wacker Drive • 860-880 Lake Shore Drive Apartments • 900 North Michigan • ABN AMRO Plaza • Allerton Hotel • Blackstone Hotel • Boeing International Headquarters • Carbide & Carbon Building • Chase Tower • Chicago Place • Chicago Board of Trade Building • Chicago Title & Trust Center • Citicorp Center • City Hall Square Building • Civic Opera House • CNA Plaza • Dirksen Federal Building • Fisher Building • Harbor Point • Home Insurance Building • Hyatt Center • James R. Thompson Center • Joffrey Tower • Kluczynski Federal Building • Lake Point Tower • LaSalle Bank Building • LaSalle-Wacker Building • Leo Burnett Building • London Guarantee Building • Marina City • Masonic Temple • Mather Tower • Metropolitan Tower • Montauk Building • NBC Tower • Old Dearborn Bank Building • Olympia Centre • One Magnificent Mile • One North LaSalle • One Prudential Plaza • Outer Drive East • Palmer House • Palmolive Building • Park Tower • Pittsfield Building • Powhatan Apartments • Regents Park • Richard J. Daley Center • River East Center • Roanoke Building and Tower • Skybridge • Smurfit-Stone Building • Chicago Temple Building • The Buckingham • The Fordham • Four Seasons Hotel Chicago • The Heritage at Millennium Park • The Pinnacle • Three First National Plaza • Time-Life Building • Tribune Tower • UBS Tower • Water Tower Place • Wrigley Building
Chicago Landmark skyscrapers
Towers With 12 or More Floors
See Also
v • d • e
Future Chicago skyscrapers
Under construction
Construction imminent
Proposed or approved
See also: Chicago Skyscrapers
v • d • e
Chicago Landmarks
v • d • e
City of Chicago
Flag of Chicago
See also: Chicago metropolitan area
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